Unclear on the concept

A couple of us at the table at Binion's last night were talking about the upcoming freeroll tournament. Another guy had seen the sign for it, but wasn't sure about the details. He asked me, "How much does it cost to buy into that freeroll tournament?"

I am not of the school of thought that claims there are no stupid questions. There are stupid questions, and this was one of them. In fact, it exceeded the amount of stupidity that I can address without sarcasm and/or condescension entering into my answer. This guy got the latter.

I told him, "It doesn't cost anything. That's why it's called a FREEroll."

He replied, without a trace of humor in his voice, "Oh, I guess that's why I couldn't find what the entry fee was."

Yeah, dude--that's probably the reason, all right.

Long ago (probably about 20 years ago, in fact), I read in a magazine (I think it was CoEvolution Quarterly, later renamed Whole Earth Review) a great article that explained the Laws of Stupidity. The First Law of Stupidity states that there is always more stupidity in the world than you think. The Second Law of Stupidity states that, even after you take the First Law of Stupidity into account, there is still always more stupidity in the world than you think.

This guy proved the point.


Addendum

Immediately after publishing the above post, it occurred to me that surely somebody has put that old article on the Laws of Stupidity up on the Internet. Sure enough, here it is. I see that it was published in 1987, so I was right about the time frame. (That's because I remember where I was living when I read it, which narrowed it down quite a bit.) I was way off in my memory of what the laws are, though. Apparently I thought a lot about his First Law, and over time its implications sort of morphed in my mind to being two separate laws, when really what I have written as two laws is just one. But to tell you the truth, I like my way of stating it better than the original.