Are there stupid individuals around you?
If your answer is "yes", congratulations, it is not easy to stay sane among stupid people without becoming one, so please read on.
If your answer is "no", congratulations, please save your precious time and stop reading.
Nine years ago, I squeezed into a well-known company in Silicon Valley. At that time, I felt a bit guilty and nervous. I thought that the company's seniors, juniors, colleagues, bosses, executives who rarely show up, etc., were all top gifted people in the industry. How could a person who is not good, not talented, and not smart enough be hired by this company? Even if a person could pass several interviews by cheating and bluffing, it seemed impossible for a stupid individual to survive for any time in such a company. Why? Time reveals a man's heart!
Time has proved that I was wrong and must be stupid myself (otherwise, how did I get hired?) because only a stupid person could have such naïve and ignorant assumptions.
Over the past nine years, I have encountered many stupid people at work. The frequency is so high, and the proportion of stupid things are so many, it made me doubt my IQ. Are those people deliberately pretending to be stupid, trying to sabotage me? Or, are they just too stupid to be cured? Small movies like this play in my mind every day.
Carlo M. Cipolla (1922-2000) published The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity in 1976. This wonderful little book explained my confusion.
Professor Cippola opened the book with the first basic law of human stupidity:
Always and inevitably, everyone underestimates the number of stupid individuals in circulation.
The second basic law:
The probability that a certain person be stupid is independent of any other characteristic of that person.
The following sentence in the book, exploded into my head and woke me up.
No matter where you are, you always have to face the same percentage of stupid people - which percentage (in accordance with the First Law) will always surpass your expectations.
In other words, the proportion of stupid individuals in Silicon Valley is exactly the same as the proportion of stupid individuals in any small unknown company. More importantly, the number of stupid individuals in Silicon Valley exceeds my imagination.
Aha! That explains my nightmares, and why I've spent every single day battling with stupid people, and dealing with stupid things done by them.
Of course, Silicon Valley must have something to be distinguished from others, otherwise how can it be called Silicon Valley?
Although the proportion of stupid people is the same as elsewhere, in Silicon Valley, the proportion of people who believe they are talented but are actually stupid is definitely among the highest in the world.
Before I share my experience, let's first understand how Professor Cipolla defines a stupid person.
He used X-axis and Y-axis to divide human beings into four categories: the helpless, the intelligent, the bandit and the stupid (see the diagram below). The X-axis measures the benefits and losses caused by one’s actions to oneself; the Y-axis measures the benefits and losses caused by one’s actions to others.
So, what is a stupid person?
The third basic law:
A stupid person is a person who causes losses to another person or to a group of persons while himself deriving no gain and even possibly incurring losses.
My job is to calculate and predict ROI (Return On Investment) for marketing activities in various countries. The formula for ROI is simple, profit divided by investment cost.
In our case, profits come from complex statistical models - MMM (Marketing Mix Modeling), and investment costs come from the company's internal marketing departments.
This seemingly straightforward and simple calculation is, however, not as easy as it looks. All figures have to be "approved" by company's executives before they can be published. If an executive thinks that the ROI is too low, too high, too boring, too real, too fake, etc., we must "tweak" until the number looks “reasonable” (reasonable to those executives, not to me. But, who cares about what I think, right?)
The correct way to tweak, of course, is to examine the statistical model, refit the model, recalculate, and re-forecast all profits. But if you know statistical models, a small change affects everything. An analyst without knowing what she/he is doing is very likely to make things worse, and get farther and farther away from what the senior executives want to see. Therefore, adjusting the investment cost is the fastest way to achieve the goal and complete our work.
You may ask, didn’t you say the investment cost came from the internal marketing departments? They are documented somewhere, right? Moreover, aren’t those investment costs fixed, so how can it be “adjusted”?
This is Silicon Valley, my friends. Everything can be "tweaked" so that the model answer conforms to executive expectations. (It would require several articles to explain how this is done, so let's skip it for now.)
Next, I want to introduce a stupid individual around me. This lady has been working for the company and making ROI calculations for 7 years. Seven years. Let’s call her "Princess". Here is a typical conversation I have with her:
Princess: Upstairs said that ROI = 0.8 in country S is too low, what should I do? Help me!
L: They want break-even, is it?
Princess: Break- even… ? ?
L: An ROI greater than 1.
Princess: Yes! You are SO smart!
L: Check and see if the cost can be adjusted.
Princess: Cost? ? ? ?
L: The denominator, the investment cost.
Princess: Oh! ! That cost! ! !
(Which else?)
Princess: Where can I find the cost?
(After the nth time explaining it.)
L: Now you know where to locate the cost, please recalculate and deliver again.
Princess:. . . . . Okay… but, I still don't understand. . . help me. .
L: What else is not clear?
Princess: The ROI should be higher, right?
L: Isn’t that something we’ve been talking about for 30 minutes?
Princess: Yes…….but, should I adjust the cost up? or down?
Similar stupid conversations like this occurred countlessly over the past 7 years. Many words, questions, and requests she made are even stupider than this. Princess is constantly in anxiety (because she can't remember, and can't figure out the math or logic she's been doing for 7 years). She also made colleagues around her anxious every day. Why? Because we have to watch for her stupidity at any minute, so we don’t sink with her.
Professor Cipolla perfectly defined a stupid person.
But, is the only skill Princess has as an stupid person?
Of course not.
Out of the blue one day, Princess announced that she got an offer from another well-known company in Silicon Valley!
She is obviously a fool, so how did she do it? Professor Cippola explained it in the book:
The stupid members of the society are allowed by the other members to become more active and take more actions.
Princess used the time we spent helping her and her work to interview with other companies, and got accepted.
Now you know why I said there are many stupid people in Silicon Valley.
According to the Princess, in addition to a much higher salary, the offer she got had stock options that no one can match.
WHAT?
People can easily comfort themselves, especially those who are dealing with stupid people everyday. Although we are mad and puzzled at her offer, we were still happy to finally get rid of Princess. Silicon Valley folks remained in Silicon Valley. There has to be someone who will eventually expose Princess’s true colors. Let that stupid company take this stupid person over!
Do you, like me, underestimate the power of stupid people? If not, then wait to hear what my company did.
Our company matched the Princess’s offer.
According to Princess’s statement afterwards, the company did match a much higher salary, but did not give her the reward “she deserved” in terms of stock options. So she will keep interviewing other companies until she gets the respect she “deserves.” Did I mention that the percentage of people who think they're smart but are actually stupid is higher in Silicon Valley than in other places?
The fifth basic law:
A stupid person is more dangerous than a bandit.
Why would the company want to keep a stupid person who can't figure out a simple math that a third grader can do?
Did you guess it?
Bingo!
Yes, because there are a bunch of stupid people at the top too.
No matter where you are, you always have to face the same percentage of stupid people
More importantly, professionalism and work ethic do not exist in the dictionary of Princess, or those executives. If those executives told her to increase the ROI, she would increase it, and if she was told to decrease it, she would decrease it (she will manage to get other stupid individuals to do the work for her anyway).
No matter how stupid the request is, or how unethical it is, as long as the executives need it, she will do it with a big smile.
When an envoy of justice like me is fighting with the upper echelon (Boss, how can the numbers be adjusted like this? This is an act of deception. We are Company XXX, aren’t we supposed to be the role model in the industry?), Princess has become the company's rising star without anyone knowing it.
Who is the stupidest, can you see it?
(to be continued…)
An interesting discussion, but not really sure that your Princess case study is the best exemplar.
Princess achieved great benefits to herself--better job, better pay, better stock options.
But she caused losses to others.
According to your chart, Princess is a "bandit," not "stupid."
Stupid people can easily accrue benefits to themselves, in a broken system that rewards for attributes not related to merit.
It's very likely that Princess is an affirmative action hire. Which explains both why she was kept on for 7 years at your company, and why she was offered a job at a high salary.
So, yes, she is very likely "stupid" in the traditional sense of "having a low IQ," but she's playing in a stupid system, so your chart is not applicable.
Also, affirmative action hires are found everywhere in the USA, not just Silicon Valley.
I think you should amend "Intelligent People" to "wise people." The definition of "stupid" applies to many scientists and academics, yet they are, or would claim to be, "intelligent."