The Laws of Stupidity!
Oct. 4th, 2005 08:08 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
elfsStupidity is defined as such: a stupid person is a one who caused losses to another person or to a group of persons while himself deriving no gain and even possibly incurring losses.Read more at The Basic Laws of Stupidity.
Always and inevitably everyone underestimates the number of stupid individuals in circulation.
The probability that a certain person can be stupid is independent of any other characteristic of that person.
Non-stupid people always underestimate the damaging power of stupid individuals. In particular non-stupid people constantly forget that at all times and places and under any circumstances to deal and/or associate with stupid people always turns out to be costly mistake.
Stupid people are more dangerous than the deliberately deceitful or violent.
I was put in mind of these laws today while reading that American Veterans for Domestic Defense (never heard of them myself before) have announced plans to "raise awareness" about books in your library that "promote homosexuality" or "use egregious four-letter vocabularies". The leader of this little troop calls all such books "written pornography". When asked if we would call for the burning of such books, he said, "We're not going to burn books but we are going to cut them up." I fail to understand the distinction.
Less stupid, in 1930 the UK's government considered banning books about lesbianism but put such plans aside, noting that the attention brought to The Well of Loneliness attracted more attention and brought lesbianism to the attention of a public that would otherwise never have known about it. "And if the object of suppression is to prevent women getting to know that these practices exist and adopting them, then I think there is no doubt whatever that the object would be defeated by prosecution and its attendant publicity," noted the Home Office.
Apparently the subject of their debate was a book that said, basically, given the shortage of marriagable men after WWI maybe lesbianism, while certainly not being recommended or encouraged, was understandable and should not be condemned.
Golly.
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What you said is not what I heard
Date: 2005-10-05 05:25 am (UTC)1) Don't die - Stupid people seem to be immortal.
2) Breed like rabbits - Make more stupid people, except where it conflicts with the first law. (No actual starving for having too many children.)
3) Don't use your brain - do everything that you shouldn't, except where it conflicts with the first law (Juuust enough smarts to stay alive) or the second law (juuuust enough brains to keep the kids rather than have Child Protective Services called on them).
And the zeroth law - All other laws are void if any action is precedded by the phrase "Hey, watch this!"
no subject
Date: 2005-10-05 07:22 am (UTC)Anyway, I think they have the causality all wrong. The stuff they object to wouldn't be appearing if nobody bought it. Actually getting a book into a library is an expensive process. If you didn't get a lot of demand for the books, the writing they object to would be on a web site, or posted to alt.sex.stories, or lurking hidden in the author's sock drawer, unseen.
The chilling thought is that, assuming that there is something wrong, the problem needs a change in society, not the library shelves, and it's easy to imagine some vile and repugnant ways of making that change. With theur apparent tin ear for social mores, just what would these sort of people do if they had the chance?
And, Godwin notwithstanding, there is one obvious comparison which must feel rather uncomfortable in a country with a recent record that includes Camp X-Ray and Abu Graibh.
no subject
Date: 2005-10-06 07:32 am (UTC)A few years ago the BBC had it as a 'book of the week', including that bit, without complaint.