How I Stopped Being Stupid

And why avoiding stupid decisions might save more than your pride.

I once spent a couple of days in intensive care because I thought going harder and faster was the answer to a problem.

It wasn’t.

And it took a ruptured spleen to teach me that.

But I’m getting ahead of myself.

There’s a little book by Carlo M. Cipolla called The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity.

It’s funny. Sarcastic. Written with the kind of mock academic seriousness that makes you laugh until you recognize somebody you know.

Possibly yourself.

I wouldn’t treat it as a scientific system for sorting humanity into neat little categories. But as a mental model, a way to look at decisions and their consequences, it’s been damn useful to me.

Especially if you’re interested in making better decisions.

Four Ways a Decision Can Go

Cipolla divides human behavior into four categories, based on who benefits and who gets hurt.

Intelligent people take actions that help themselves and help other people at the same time. Everyone walks away better off.

Bandits benefit themselves at somebody else’s expense. They win, you lose. We generally understand these people, because there’s a visible reason for what they’re doing.

Helpless people lose something while somebody else benefits. The world takes from them.

And then there are the stupid.

They cause harm to somebody else without gaining anything themselves. Sometimes they even hurt themselves in the process.

That last category is the one Cipolla considers especially dangerous. Because there’s no obvious payoff to explain it.

A bandit might hurt you because he wants your money. That’s terrible, but at least you can see what he’s after.

Stupid behavior is different. Sometimes everybody loses, and nobody can tell you what they were trying to accomplish.

Here’s the part worth slowing down on, because it’s where the model stops being a joke and starts being useful.

I find it more useful to examine decisions than to label people.

You make an intelligent decision one minute and a stupid one the next. The same person can be generous in one room and reckless in another, on the same day.

I’ll come back to that, because it’s the difference between using this book to feel superior and using it to get better.

I’ve Seen What It Can Cost

I spent about 35 years in construction. Industrial plants. Big commercial jobs. The kind of places where one bad decision doesn’t just mess up your afternoon.

Construction is dangerous even when everybody knows what they’re doing. Heavy equipment. Live electricity. People working above and below one another. Half a dozen trades moving through the same space.

There were people on those jobsites I learned to keep my distance from. Not because they were bad people. Because their behavior made them dangerous to be around.

Carelessness doesn’t stop at the person being careless. Somebody makes a stupid decision, and somebody else catches the shrapnel. You can do everything right, show up sharp, follow every rule, and still be standing too close to somebody else’s mistake.

I’ve seen projects where people got severely injured. I’ve known of fatal accidents. And I’ve been hurt myself.

Almost twenty years after the injury I’m going to tell you about, I got hooked up on a 277-volt electrical circuit and ended up in the hospital.

That was a hard reminder of something I already knew: understanding a hazard doesn’t make you immune to it.

I knew better than to underestimate electricity. Knowledge, though, doesn’t automatically prevent a bad decision or an unsafe situation.

And sometimes the consequences are immediate.

The Lesson I First Learned on the Mat

Back in 1992, only about six years into my construction career, as an orange belt I was training with a blue belt.

And I was going harder. Faster. More aggressively.

I thought increasing my effort was how I’d solve the problem in front of me.

He matched my energy.

From what I remember, he answered with a simple palm deflection and a reverse punch. Nothing elaborate. Nothing magical. Just a direct, clean response to what I was giving him.

I ended up with a ruptured spleen.

Emergency room. A couple of days in intensive care. A long stretch away from training.

Later, I learned that two other people had taken rib injuries that same night.

Now, here’s something I want to be careful with, because it matters.

Even after everything, I don’t believe that blue belt was trying to hurt me.

I can’t know what was going on in his head. Maybe he was having a rough night. Maybe there were things happening I didn’t see. I don’t remember feeling any malice from him.

What I remember is him matching the intensity I brought first.

And I have to take responsibility for my part in that.

I went into that exchange thinking the answer was to go harder.

I should have been thinking about how to go smarter.

When Everybody Loses

Think about what actually happened that night.

I got seriously hurt, and I lost time on the mat I’ll never get back.

The school lost a student for a period.

There may have been other concerns for the school too, though I can’t speak to what they actually discussed.

Nobody benefited.

That’s what Cipolla’s model keeps pointing my attention toward. It isn’t just a tool for spotting dangerous behavior in other people. It’s a way to examine the consequences of my own decisions.

So when I look back at that training session, I can ask myself straight questions.

• What was I trying to accomplish?
• Was increasing the intensity actually working?
• Was I adapting, or was I just making a dangerous situation more dangerous?

I don’t have to call the other martial artist stupid to recognize the stupidity in my own approach. And I don’t have to assume he meant harm to acknowledge that real damage happened.

Those two things can both be true.

How You Know Escalation Has Turned Against You

This is a question I wish somebody had asked me before that night in 1992.

How do you know when “try harder” has stopped being effort and started being its own kind of mistake?

There are a few warning signs, and they’re easy to spot once you’re looking.

You’re putting in more and getting the same result. If twice the effort moves nothing, the effort isn’t the problem. The approach is.

The people around you are having to compensate for you. When your escalation makes everyone else back up, brace, or clean up after you, the energy’s going somewhere unhelpful.

You can’t say what the next step would get you. Not what you hope it gets you. Something concrete. If you can’t name a specific, realistic result, you’re just running harder in place.

The cost is rising faster than the possible upside. When what you could gain is small and what you’re risking keeps growing, the smart move is usually to stop and think, not push.

None of that means you shouldn’t work hard or push through difficulty. It means effort is for when the plan is sound and the direction is right. When the direction’s wrong, harder just gets you lost faster.

Looking back, I can recognize at least one of those warning signs that night. I was increasing my effort without making better decisions.

It Doesn’t Take Malice to Do Damage

There’s another thing I want to separate, because most of us tangle them up.

Being dangerous and meaning harm are not the same thing.

I don’t believe the blue belt intended to hurt me. I don’t know what was in his head, and I’m not going to pretend to.

But here’s what I’ve learned from years of working around risk: you don’t need ill intent for a bad decision to cost somebody.

The person who doesn’t check before energizing a circuit probably isn’t trying to electrocute anyone. The driver who doesn’t look twice isn’t setting out to hit anybody. The guy who escalates a training round isn’t usually trying to hurt his partner.

They’re not malicious. They’re just not careful, or not aware, or not thinking about who else is in the radius.

Which means I can’t afford to wait for intent before I respond to risk.

I don’t have to decide someone is a bad person to protect myself from their decisions. And I don’t have to convince them they were wrong to quietly remove myself from their blast radius.

The behavior tells me enough. I don’t need a motive on top of it.

That cuts both ways, by the way. It’s the same grace I want applied to my own mistakes. Nobody needs to prove I meant badly before they’re allowed to protect themselves from my bad calls. The consequences were real regardless.

The Most Dangerous Stupid Person Might Be You

Here’s the uncomfortable part.

Most of us can rattle off the people we’d rather avoid. The reckless coworker. The guy who never takes responsibility. The person who turns every small thing into a conflict. The training partner who treats every round like a title fight.

But how often do we recognize those same patterns in ourselves?

I’ve been the guy who thought more force would fix it. I’ve made decisions that benefited nobody. I’ve confused intensity with effectiveness.

And I’m almost certainly not finished making mistakes.

The useful question isn’t whether you’ve ever done something stupid.

Of course you have. I have. We all have.

The question is whether you can catch it before it becomes a habit. Or before somebody gets hurt.

Harder Isn’t Always Smarter

There’s a lesson from the mat that carries into almost everything else in life.

When something isn’t working, your first instinct is usually to apply more of what you’re already doing.

Try harder. Push faster. Double down.

Sometimes that’s the right call. But sometimes it’s exactly what makes the problem worse.

You’re struggling in a relationship, so you argue louder. You’re behind financially, so you chase a bigger risk. You’re losing control on the mat, so you get more aggressive. You’re stuck at work, so you do more of what wasn’t working.

And afterward?

You’re exhausted. Somebody else is frustrated. The problem is still there, or it’s worse.

What did anybody gain?

That’s a question worth sitting with.

Stop Standing Where Stupidity Can Hit You

So what have I actually learned?

First, pay attention to the people around you, especially when the stakes are high.

You can’t always choose your coworkers. You can’t remove every careless person from the world. But you can recognize patterns. You can speak up. You can set boundaries. And when you need to, you can take yourself out of a situation where you’re exposed to risk you didn’t sign up for.

In martial arts, that might mean being more careful about who you train with. At work, it might mean declining to work with people who keep creating problems without owning them. In life, it might mean putting some distance between yourself and people whose decisions repeatedly leave everyone worse off.

But there’s a second part, and it’s the one that stings.

Stop putting other people in your own blast radius.

Before you react, escalate, or double down, ask what your next move is likely to accomplish. Who benefits? Who might get hurt? What happens if you’re wrong?

Sometimes the intelligent move is to push forward. Sometimes it’s to change your approach. And sometimes it’s to walk away.

Figuring out which one this is, before you act, is the whole game.

⚔️ The Dojo Drill

Think about one situation in your life that keeps getting worse no matter how hard you push.

Maybe it’s at work. Maybe it’s a relationship. Maybe it’s something you’re struggling with on your own.

Ask yourself three questions.

1. What am I actually trying to accomplish? Not what you’re doing. The result you’re after.

2. Who benefits from the way I’m handling it right now? Count yourself, and count the people affected by what you do.

3. What would a smarter response look like? Not easier. Not more comfortable. Just more likely to produce a good result without unnecessary harm.

Then change one behavior, and watch what happens.

The Real Way to Become Less Stupid

I’m not going to pretend a funny little book and four categories of behavior turned me into a wise old sage.

I made plenty of mistakes after that night on the mat. I’ll make plenty more.

But I’ve become more interested in the consequences of my actions than in proving how hard I can push.

And I’ve become more careful about the behavior I’ll tolerate around me.

Because being around stupidity is expensive. Sometimes financially. Sometimes emotionally. Sometimes physically. And sometimes it costs you years of something you love.

At the center of all of it is one question, and it’s smaller and less glamorous than you’d think.

Who actually benefits from what I’m about to do? And who might pay for it?

Ask that before you escalate, and a lot of decisions start sorting themselves out.

You don’t have to hate someone to recognize that their behavior is dangerous. And you don’t have to hate yourself to admit that you made a stupid decision.

You just have to be willing to learn.

Stay away from unnecessary stupidity.

Especially your own.

The goal isn’t to prove you’re the smartest person in the room. It’s to make decisions that leave you, and the people around you, better off.

📚 From the Leader’s Library

​Turn the Ship Around! A True Story of Turning Followers into Leaders — L. David Marquet​

Why?

Most people spend their lives waiting for instructions, following expectations, or repeating habits they’ve never questioned. But Marquet challenges us to think differently: stop being a passive follower and start taking responsibility for the direction of our own lives.

Turn the Ship Around! tells the remarkable story of how a Navy captain transformed the culture of a struggling submarine by replacing blind obedience with initiative, competence, and shared responsibility. Through the simple but powerful phrase “I intend to…”, Marquet shows how leadership can develop at every level.

It’s a reminder that personal leadership isn’t about having all the answers or holding a position of authority. It’s about learning to think for yourself, making deliberate decisions, and developing the courage and competence to steer your own course.