Stupidity is an indiscriminate privilege of all human groups, irrespective of race, class, creed or level of education (including Nobel laureates). It is uniformly distributed according to a constant proportion.
Development of intellect is conditioned by development of senses that mediate information. Such knowledge reflects in imagination and leads to abstract thinking. This process is conditioned by sufficient amount of positive impulses from the environment.
According to a 2014 report released by the National Science Foundation, 26% —a quarter —of the U.S population believes that the Sun revolves around the Earth. In the same survey, 39% of Americans believe in the Big Bang Theory, and only 48% believe in Evolution. This deficiency in scientific knowledge might sound alarming, however Americans made out better on several of the questions than did the Chinese and European populations that took part in a similar, although slightly older, poll. In 2005, the European Union put out a survey where only 66% of Europeans answered the basic astronomy question correctly. Fortunately, both China and the EU managed considerably better (66% and 70%) on the question of human evolution.
Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former. (Albert Einstein).
The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity: (1) Always and inevitably everyone underestimates the number of stupid individuals in circulation. (2) The probability that a certain person be stupid is independent of any other characteristic of that person. (3) 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. (4) 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 infallibly turns out to be a costly mistake. (5) A stupid person is the most dangerous type of person. (Carlo M Cipolla).
Survival demands a revolution in the way we live, which in turn requires a revolution in the way we think. When there were only a few of us, we could afford to be stupid. Today, when our numbers and our ingenuity have made us a force of nature in our own right, our stupidity has lethal consequences.
How would the world function without "stupid people"? For without the problems they create, there would be nothing for the "non-stupid" people to do. Every action requires an equal and opposite reaction.