The scale of self-injurious and anti-social behavior
I don’t think anybody likes to be called “stupid”, even after they repeatedly make decisions that are demonstrably contrary to their own best interests. But there are some people who seem incapable of learning from their past mistakes.
More people make behavioral mistakes, injurious to themselves or to other people, out of ignorance — lacking information that would be useful for avoiding such mistakes. They could possibly improve by learning new things.
Many people do things that harm other people out of venality — for the love of money or other gain for themselves, or out of fear of loss.
And some people harm other people intentionally because it feels good to hurt others. They are malevolent.
Finally, many people combine more than one of those explanations for their behavior.
Apparently, many of us are not very good at understanding the reasons for our own or others’ harmful behavior. Otherwise we wouldn’t follow leaders who act out of malevolence, venality, or just plain stupidity. We would choose leaders who, like all of us, are ignorant of some things, but ones who are willing to learn to act less harmfully.
It’s sad to see so many people following malevolent, venal, and stupid leaders.
