The French get people trying to summit Mont Blanc in jeans and the Swiss gets people skiing unroped on glaciers . Australians get people swimming in rip currents and Americans get people falling into acidic hot springs to name a few . Stupidity is universal and we just have to accept the fact that some a lot of them actually are just plain dumb . Unfortunately a side effect of being dumb is the inability to think twice and listen to warnings The warnings are there for smart people who will heed them . Dumb people are not able to properly judge risk . They don ' t know how little they know and they are fuelled by false confidence . After all one can often get away with being dumb , it is only when things turn shit that you have to be prepared so they have past positive reinforcement . I recently met some really unprepared hikers as I was coming down from a mountain . They asked me if I thought they could do it . I advised them not to continue as it was too late in the day , they were too unfit to take on what most people need 3 days and 2 nights to complete in a day , they also had far too little gear , they ignored it as they had come all this way and they were german so they knew all about walking in the mountains and was rather offended . Dumb people do dumb things and will not listen to advice or warnings , nothing will ever change that .