Net zero and the anti-stupidity principle

How to benefit from folly and idiocracies

“One of the painful things about our time is that those who feel certainty are stupid, and those with any imagination and understanding are filled with doubt and indecision.”
—Bertrand Russell, The Triumph of Stupidity¹

In a world where foolishness spreads faster than reason, where bad ideas flourish while wisdom languishes in obscurity, we must introduce a term to combat this epidemic: anti-stupidity.

The term takes inspiration from Nassim Taleb’s antifragility, the idea that certain things benefit from stress and chaos. Anti-stupdity is to antifragility what stupidity is to fragility. A country, system or institution that benefits from the stupidity of others is anti-stupid.

This draws on the concept of Cipollo and his Law of Human Stupidity.

Carlo M. Cipolla, in his darkly humorous Basic Laws of Human Stupidity, laid out the terrifying truth that stupid people cause damage without gaining anything in return. His most chilling observation was that stupidity is far more dangerous than malice, because at least the malicious act is done with a purpose.

“The only way a society can avoid being crushed by the burden of its idiots is if the non-stupid work even harder to offset the losses of their stupid brethren.”
—Carlo M. Cipolla (1922-2000), Italian economic historian²

Smart is in the opposite quadrant from STUPID. But smart is a very generic term. It doesn’t imply benefitting from the folly of others. It might include it, but smart action is most often independent of the folly of others. Anti-stupidity isn’t independent from the folly of others; it stands in a cause-and-effect relationship to the folly.

“Stupidity is a more dangerous foe than malice itself.”
—Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906-45), German theologian³

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the theologian executed for resisting the Nazis, took a different but equally damning view. He argued that stupidity is not a lack of intelligence but a moral failure—a refusal to think, a surrender to dogma, an embrace of lazy certainties. In his eyes, stupidity was a kind of intellectual cowardice. Anti-stupidity, therefore, requires courage—the willingness to question, to doubt, and to endure the discomfort of uncertainty.

“The thing about bozos is that bozos don't know that they're bozos. Bozos think they're the shit, which makes them really annoying but also incredibly entertaining, depending on your point of view. Shrinks call this the Dunning-Kruger effect, named after two researchers from Cornell University whose studies found that incompetent people fail to recognize their own lack of skill, grossly overestimating their abilities, and are unable to recognize talent in other people who actually are competent.”
—Daniel Lyons (b. 1960), American journalist and writer⁴

The first rule of anti-stupidity is to assume you might be wrong. The Dunning-Kruger effect ensures that the least competent among us are the most confident, while the wise often second-guess themselves. Anti-stupidity demands a healthy scepticism of one’s own convictions. In the investment sphere, overconfidence is probably the worst character trait one can have.

“World’s Dumbest Energy Policy - After giving up nuclear power, Germany now wants to abandon coal.”
—Article title, WSJ, 29 January 2019

Next, anti-stupidity requires recognising unnecessary risks and avoiding them. History is littered with disasters that could have been averted if someone had paused and expressed doubt. From financial bubbles to ill-advised wars, the common thread is a collective failure of anti-stupidity.

“Germany has been beaten, eliminated, but it will be interesting to watch the development of the remaining great powers the stupidities they practice within their homelands, their internal strife, and their battles of wits abroad.
Will it be as it always has been that countries will not learn from the mistakes of others and will continue to make the mistakes of others all over again and again?”
—Hermann Goering in 1946⁵

Learning from others’ mistakes is another key principle. The wheel of human error keeps turning, but anti-stupidity means stepping off before it crushes you. Why repeat the follies of the past when they’ve been so thoroughly documented?

“Occam is best known for a maxim which is not to be found in his works, but has acquired the name of "Occam's razor." This maxim says: "Entities are not to be multiplied without necessity." Although he did not say this, he said something which has much the same effect, namely: "It is vain to do with more what can be done with fewer." That is to say, if everything in some science can be interpreted without assuming this or that hypothetical entity, there is no ground for assuming it. I have myself found this a most fruitful principle in logical analysis.”
—Bertrand Russell⁶

Finally, anti-stupidity often means embracing simplicity. Complexity is not always sophistication—sometimes, it’s just a convoluted path to disaster. The smartest solutions are often the most straightforward, yet we are seduced by needless intricacy.

“In character, in manners, in style, in all things, the supreme excellence is simplicity.”
—Attributed to Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807–1882), American poet⁷

In an age of viral misinformation, algorithmic outrage, and leaders who prize confidence over competence, and Davos over Westminster, stupidity is not just an annoyance—it’s an existential risk. Anti-stupidity is the antidote. It won’t make headlines, it won’t go viral, but it might just keep institutions from tripping over their own feet.

Nassim Taleb called Switzerland antifragile, but only up to a point. The same might apply to anti-stupidity. The country’s success is no accident—it’s the result of centuries of deliberate, collective resistance to recklessness. While other nations have swung between chaos and tyranny, Switzerland has remained stable, prosperous, and stubbornly sensible. How? By institutionalising anti-stupidity. Up to a point. Its political system is designed to slow down rash decisions, with direct democracy ensuring no radical policy passes without broad consensus. Its banking system, often mocked for secrecy, was built on the anti-stupid principle that money should be managed prudently rather than gambled away in speculative frenzies. Even its famed neutrality is a form of anti-stupidity—a refusal to be dragged into destructive conflicts for short-term glory. The Swiss don’t just avoid stupidity; they’ve engineered a society that makes it difficult to commit. The result? A country that hasn’t fought a war since 1815, maintains one of the highest standards of living, and watches from the Alps as less anti-stupid nations repeatedly implode. At one level, Switzerland is not only antifragile, but anti-stupid too. Switzerland, up to a point, benefits from the folly of others. Switzerland, similar to the US, Singapore, and the UAE, are on the benefiting end of other nations’ brain drain. Anti-stupidity means understanding the Five Bs.

“A hippie is someone who looks like Tarzan, walks like Jane and smells like Cheetah.”
—Ronald Reagan

Net zero policies are an example of stupid action whereby the anti-stupid can benefit. The crusade for net zero emissions, for a while amplified by ESG, isn’t just unrealistic—it’s actively stupid, a case of ideological fervour trampling basic economic sense. Renewable energy, far from being the cheap and easy solution its advocates claim, remains wildly expensive when accounting for its true costs—intermittency, storage, and the massive infrastructure overhaul required to prevent grid collapse. Wind and solar may look good on paper until you factor in the backup gas plants, the sprawling transmission lines, and the environmental toll of mining rare earth minerals at scale. Meanwhile, reliable, affordable fossil fuels—which still supply over 80% of global energy—are being demonised and phased out in a self-destructive rush to meet arbitrary climate targets. Furthermore, nuclear energy, which produces almost zero CO2, has also been demonised as a viable solution to the problem for more than 50 years.

“Activism is a way for useless people to feel important, even if the consequences of their activism are counterproductive for those they claim to be helping and damaging to the fabric of society as a whole.”
—Thomas Sowell (b. 1930), American economist⁸

The real stupidity lies in the fact that this green transition isn’t even global—it’s a Western luxury. Windmills and EVs are subsidised Veblen goods. While Europe and the US drive up energy prices and deindustrialise in the name of net zero, China and India are building hundreds of new coal plants, laughing as they undercut European economies with cheap power. Germany, once an industrial powerhouse, is now begging for LNG imports after betting its future on Russian gas and unreliable renewables. The UK, crippled by energy costs, watches its factories flee to places where politicians aren’t sabotaging their own energy security. Net zero isn’t saving the planet—it’s a wealth transfer from the West to its competitors, all while doing little to actually reduce global emissions.

“Politicians can’t override physics or economics, no matter how much they subsidise failure.”
—Maurice Cousins, Campaign Director at Net Zero Watch, 17 July 2025

The truly anti-stupid position? Be a magnet for the Five Bs, i.e., lower cost of capital and energy. Trimming net zero ideology and excess bureaucracy might be a start. The Sixth B might help.

Trivia:

1. Bertrand Russell, Mortals and Others: Bertrand Russell's American Essays, 1931-1935. Full context: “The fundamental cause of the trouble is that in the modern world the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt. Even those of the intelligent who believe that they have a nostrum are too individualistic to combine with other intelligent men from whom they differ on minor points. This was not always the case. A hundred years ago the philosophical radicals formed a school of intelligent men who were just as sure of themselves as the Hitlerites are; the result was that they dominated politics and that the world advanced rapidly both in intelligence and in material well-being.
It is quite true that the intelligence of the philosophical radicals was very limited. It is, I think, undeniable that the best men of the present day have a wider and truer outlook, but the best men of that day had influence, while the best men of this are impotent spectators. Perhaps we shall have to realise that scepticism and intellectual individualism are luxuries which in our tragic age must be forgone, and if intelligence is to be effective, it will have to be combined with a moral fervour which it usually possessed in the past but now usually lacks.
In this gloomy state of affairs, the brightest spot is America. In America democracy still appears well established, and the men in power deal with what is amiss by constructive measures, not by pogroms and wholesale imprisonment. After the defeat of the French Revolution, democracy; discredited by the reign of terror, reconquered the world from America. Perhaps America is destined once more to save Europe from the consequences of its excesses.” (10 May 1933)

2. "5 Universal Laws Of Human (Investment) Stupidity," by Lance Roberts, Real Investment Advice, 11 May 2017. "The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity" was first written by Cipolla in 1976 when he was a professor of economic history at the University of California, Berkeley.

3. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers from Prison, 1943-45.

4. Lyons, Dan (2016) "Disrupted – My Misadventure in the Start-Up Bubble," New York: Hachette Books. Chapter eight: "The Bozo Explosion." Emphasis in the original.

5. Hermann Goering, 1946, when interviewed in jail by an American commentator, Henry J. Taylor. Congressional Record: Proceedings and Debates of the 82^nd Congress, Second Session, Volume 98—Part 7, US Congress, 28 June to 7 July 1952. Written by F.A. Harper, the Foundation of Economic Education, Inc., Irvington-on-Hudson, N.Y.

6. Russell, Bertrand (1946, 2004) “History of Western Philosophy,” Oxon: Routledge Classics, p 435. First published 1946; London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd.

7. As quoted in Treasury of Thought: Forming an Encyclopædia of Quotations from Ancient and Modern Authors, by Maturin Murray Ballou, 1872, 475.

8. Thomas Sowell, Ever Wonder Why? and Other Controversial Essays (Stanford: Hoover Institution Press, 2006), 447.