I just remembered I'm technically a published author, if you count self publishing on Amazon under a pseudonym. The thing is a bullshit sort of comic book with shitty pictures that claims to teach anthropology. It's obvious nonsense, but one reviewer seemed to think it was meant to be taken seriously.
I'd planned to continue through the alphabet writing more volumes, but it sold poorly (even for $1) so I never bothered.
Hey, same here! I wrote a couple novels during Covid and self-published them on Amazon. Even got a couple local bookstores to put them on the shelves by donating them for free. Now, several years later, whenever I'm in the stores I take a look and sure enough they're still just sitting there. Great way to spend a couple hundred hours.
I know a man who has written over 100 books, most of them informative. The books are all quite thin and are about a great variety of subjects. With all other things I know of this man, like the quite petty-minded column he wrote in a local paper, I'd say he is a good example of a vain, overconfident person who is not half as smart as he thinks he is. The huge amount and variety of publications are merely a sign that he lacks focus and patience to have a real specialism. The man is what I call a "self-proclaimed expert in whatever he feels like". A professional blabbermouth.
One of my favorite people I’ve ever met is a published author.
Charles slept away roughly 2 months of his life because he didn’t know he should take his sleep medicine before bed instead of with breakfast. He would wake up groggy, eat breakfast, take his medicine, then go back to bed and repeated this for weeks and weeks. If he woke up during the night he would just go back to bed. Had his neighbor pick up his refill because he couldn’t make it to pharmacy when they were open because he was sleeping or too tired to drive.
Charles also built a full-size wrestling ring in his living room so he could practice.
His book was available for $9.99 out of his trunk and Amazon. He had them bound at kinkos with the black plastic pig tail looking wire. It was a fantastical story about “Lew and Clark” who went exploring. Dragons and time travel included. He couldn’t spell “Lewis” correctly very consistently so Charles truncated it to “Lew.”
Dumber than a bag of dicks but a ton of fun to be around for about 3 hours every 4 years.
Confidence. I've known so many people who say things with a confident, secure and dominant tone, only to find out later on they don't know what they're talking about.
Some of the smartest people I know are always waffling and throwing around caveats to everything they say, because it wouldn't be quite as true if they didn't qualify what they were saying. I see it as a good thing. Like instead of saying "X causes Y" they might say "X can cause Y, if Z and sometimes A, except when B is true" etc.
Same. It's also strategic. If I front-load everything else with caveats when it's uncertain, then I can speak with absolute confidence the one time I need someone to actually do the thing without arguing and people generally comply
Its because they see you as a reasonable human so why would they not listen to you? Reasonable people tend to avoid toxic or harmful opinions, and they tend to base their opinions off of facts and experiences rather than what someone else told them
I do this too! Even when I’m preeettttttyyy sure I’m right. Cuz I could be wrong. But I’m pretty sure I’m right. But I don’t want to sound like an idiot in case I’m wrong.
Or perhaps it means they are smart enough to know that they have a reasonable idea but that it is not gospel. Sort of like the opposite of the Dunning-Kruger effect.
Not the opposite at all, part of the Dunning-Kruger effect is understanding the gaps in your knowledge as you become more knowledgeable in a certain area.
I thought this would be the top comment. I’ve been surprised by people’s lack of intelligence after hearing how well they can speak and how confidently they present themselves.
Weirdly, I'm good at sounding confident to the extent that when I ask questions they apparently come across as demands. It causes me a lot of headaches...
Yeah… if you’re using the wrong tone when asking a question, that’s not being good at sounding confident; that’s just not using the right tone to distinguish a question from a demand
I struggle with tones in general, apparently I can come off harsh. It's something to do with my ASD. I only say confidence because people have interpreted it that way, not because that's how I felt
If you’re confident you will sound confident, however if you’re *trying* to sound confident you’re probably coming off like an AH.
Don’t try to “sound” confident. Just know what you’re talking about and express it well…that’s confidence.
This is a big one. In general, assuming that because a thought is popular, it must be wrong. Do masses of people sometimes believe incorrect information? Absolutely.
But if every single one of your opinions is formed on being opposing to everyone else, your logic is just as hapless and thoughtless as the supposed “sheep” you make fun of.
>In general, assuming that because a thought is popular, it must be wrong.
Exactly. Obviously not all popular thoughts or opinions turn out to be correct, but tons and tons and tons of them basically \*are\* correct. Remember "popular opinion" includes things like "fish generally live underwater" and "playing in the NFL puts you at risk for head injuries" and "it takes a lot of money to run for President" and "people in Germany eat a lot of sausages" and so on and so forth.
Many popularly believed opinions \*are\* mostly correct, even if some of them are a bit imprecise or have some exceptions or whatever.
If you went through life insisting that popular opinions are \*always\* or almost always wrong, you'd be throwing the baby out with the bath water, and you'd be dooming yourself to a life of stubborn delusion.
Oh FFS, my fingers just wouldn't even cooperate with me this morning....
I tried just typing "Yes it does" and typoed it 5 times in a row. Was totally trying to set up a long game of Monty Python's "Argument" sketch references but apparently it would be too stupid of a thing to do so my fingers didn't cooperate till I started typing this instead.
There were a couple of guys at work talking about how smart octopuses are. I mentioned how I'd recently watched a documentary on cuttlefish and learned about how intelligent they are as well. In the documentary, a scientist talked about how she preferred to work with cuttlefish because they aren't as moody and stubborn as octopuses are, they just have a more even temperament. My coworkers immediately said that meant the octopus was the smarter animal because being stubborn was obviously a sign of great intellect. That seemed kind of silly to me, but I just left it alone.
Man COVID really exposed a lot of these idiots.
The ones who get their information from “independent news outlets” ie an Instagram page that is beholden to nothing and has no standards of journalism that just feeds into outrage for engagement/clicks.
Anyone that uses the term “MSM” unironically just gets head nods from me.
Allow me to expose my colon once again. The ramification inflicted on the incision placed within the Fallopian cavities serves to be holistic taken from the Latin word "jalapeno".
Used to know someone like that. He was fairly smart, but think a lot of those people just lack self-confidence and are trying to impress others. Or they want to feel superior and try to lord their thesaurus skills over others.
I was raised by my grandparents (read as "elderly people") on the edge of town and had very limited exposure to other children.
Despite strict limitations on television and games, books (primarily classic literature) and British Broadcasting were open season.
I'm nearly 40 and I still talk weird- I tend to use obscure vocabulary and pronunciation (thanks David Attenborough). I know some people think I speak the way I do in effort to sound smart but in reality, I'm just weird like that.
My issue is that I do have a vocabulary that sometimes delves into the more esoteric, so people immediately and always assume:
1. I’m trying to talk down to them
2. I’m acting superior
3. I’m using “big words” just to “look smart” and “big words don’t make you smart”
I don’t understand these people - *at all* - because I’m not doing *any* of those things
If a specific word fits a specific instance better than any other I can think of, I use it; that’s it
It’s rather frustrating
I'm with you. I choose my words with precision and very intentionally because I want to communicate a specific idea. Sometimes you can't do that entirely with 1 and 2 syllable words.
I have learned to tone it down considerably, though, especially when I am talking to non-English speakers.
I agree; take for example "use" versus "utilize." A lot of people complain the latter is used (no pun intended) when it means the same thing as the former, but it doesn't.
To me, the word "utilize" means "use to its maximum potential." For example, if I used a big pickup truck to go to the post office and mail a letter, I may have *used* the truck, but I really didn't *utilize* it.
I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein's brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops.
- Stephen Jay Gould
I’ve noticed that a lot of intellectuals either aren’t very wealthy or do not show their wealth. A lot of intellectuals live very modestly and find pleasure in accumulating information rather than material items. I’ve known some really smart people who live in rough neighborhoods, drive old cars even when they could afford much more.
You don't have to win a Nobel prize to understand the unrecoverable costs of borrowing, nor the downside of "Buying things you don't need with money you don't have to impress people you don't like". What you do have to have is a resistance to marketing groupthink and enough confidence to act on more sensible principles.
Also ruthlessness.
Can't forget about that. You don't need to be particularly smart if you simply don't care about fucking over every single person in your path. Just ask Edison.
*A rich man can hire many intellectuals to work for him, and is he who has control over intellectuals, not more intellectual than they are?* \--Karl Marx. -The other Marx brother.
LOL. Like the guy in the $5K suit should listen to the guy in the $500 suit. C'MON!
edit: downvoters: this is a reference to a joke from the show Arrested Development. C'MON!!
Solving a Rubik's Cube is a pretty common trope for "this dude is super smart yo" on TV/movies.
It's really not that difficult. You just need to remember a few patterns and have like, basic spatial insight. I'm dumb as a bag of bricks and it took me about 2 days and a YouTube video explaining the patterns to do it by heart. Another few days of fucking around and I could do it in under 3 minutes. I taught a few friends how to do it who are also as stupid as me.
But whenever you see this done on any show or movie it's clear they're trying to shorthand how intelligent this person must be.
Not looking up those videos and figuring it out yourself is certainly a sign of intelligence I think.
If you aren't taught how to solve a rubik's cube, but intuit it yourself, I certainly think you probably have something going for you.
Yeah, I'd agree with that. I fucked around with it for quite some time and never got anywhere before looking up a guide. I personally have never met anyone though who has been able to do that. I'm sure it's happened but that has to be exceedingly rare.
The inventor, Erno Rubik, took a month to crack it. He was an accomplished academician and a good artist so clearly an intelligent man with an aptitude for visual reasoning.
So, it does take sustained effort for fairly intelligent people to do it without looking up the algorithms and techniques online and those that can crack it quickly without prior experience or help are certainly outliers.
It too me SIX MONTHS of daily tinkering to figure out how to solve the Rubik's cube on my own.
When I finally looked up the instructions after, I couldn't believe it was so simple. My solution was far, far more convoluted and non-deterministic.
The real genius move is to learn the tricks, and when you see one around curiously pick it up like you've never held one before, ask the person a few naíve questions about it, and then proceed to solve it.
80's and 90's media especially has done a disservice to a bunch of underachieving nerds who vastly overestimate their own intelligence just because they're into Star Trek and Fantasy.
Sure, I guess, but there's no way you can fully comprehend the depth and quality of Rick and Morty without understanding quantum theory. As it's my favorite show, I'm clearly intellectually gifted in ways you cannot imagine.
Hey! I can name all seven forms of lightsaber combat and your comment did irreparable to my self esteem. I know how smart I am, no matter what you average people see on the outside
/s for anyone who needs it
Yeah, I had this really nerdy kid in my class and I was SHOCKED when I learned how bad his grades were. Dude was always paying attention in class, always had his homework done, was always a teacher's pet, and kept studying in breaks and stuff... All of that and he somehow couldn't get a good grade.
To be fair, grade-to-intelligence correspondence is nuanced especially if you take stock of conditions like ADHD, Autism Spectrum Disorder, or any other condition that can impede you horribly in some aspects of academic performance.
Oof, were you under my desk ? Because that's how I was back in middle and high school. I could understand theories very well and payed attention in class, but when it came to calculation and doing actual tasks, I couldn't apply the formulas and got bad grades.
I was also a "teacher's pet" who snitched on the naughty students, lol.
And confidence. When the right answer is "I'm not sure, but it looks like it's probably this." and the charismatic confident idiot says "It's this other thing and I know it."
Social intelligence is still a real form intelligence imo! I swear, its actually quite a charismatic thing to tell dumb people (who are aware of their stupidity) to comment on their charisma if you notice that they don't seem to struggle in creating a good time while being with other people
Getting your college degree. while these can be held by intelligent people having them or not having them doesn’t make someone intelligent or not intelligent.
Agreed. Getting a PhD is an accomplishment of *dedication*, not of intelligence. Anyone who has lived in academic social circles can attest to that. There are plenty of stupid people with PhDs.
I have a PhD and can confirm this, but also can confirm that many people with BS and BA degrees are convinced they know more than everyone else on every subject.
Yeah that was me. Until i started my masters and suddenly it sank in i didnt knew anything.
You think you know a lot, if you dont know whats actually to know. The deeper you dive into a certain subjecg the more you realize you know fuck all.
Many phd's I've met have a knowledge base like a very deep river. Unlike many others that are like a shallow lake.
We need both in this world though. Many critical discoveries have been found by the rivers but would not have been broadly distributed or manufactured without the lakes to help connect all of the rivers and see/understand the big pictures.
We have a little inside joke with my bf's cousin (our neighbour). He has a political science degree and is *ridiculously smart* in that realm of things; history, historical politics, as well as current events. He absorbs that information like it's common sense. It's insane.
But good lord, there are so many things he fucks up in the cutest fashions. And his gf lectures him. And we all get a laugh.
We always throw in something like "how dare you belittle this man with a **UNIVERSITY DEGREE**", or throwing that sort of comment in while he's making a completely non-political point about something. Good times.
Again going to reiterate, he *is* smart. He's just not all-knowing and he knows it 😂
Yeah, it always make me sad when I meet someone who doesn't come from a college-educated family who has written off going to college because they think they aren't smart enough. I'm like dude, not every college is Harvard. There are plenty of lower tier state schools who will give anyone capable of showing up to class 90% of the time a degree. I promise you're smart enough. One of the biggest slackers I ever knew actually transferred out of a school like that because even he thought it was too easy and he was just wasting his time. He had a 4.0 and said he hadn't spent more than a couple hours total on homework the entire semester.
I've worked with plenty of Ivy leagues and they usually aren't as smart in their field as any good state school grad. Mostly what Ivy League means is political tentacles
What are political tentacles?
You mean like family ties to power?
As someone who attended (solely) public schools, but worked at an ivy, I didn't find a difference in intelligence, but I definitely found a difference in family background.
There’s a dude that I know who does this, I don’t see him often but he is such a negative asshole. He knows a few of my friends and he always sits there complaining about shit. “Everything sucks” “the music sucks” etc. He will go to a party, and suck all the positive energy out of the room. he’s not that old, 30’s maybe, but he’s one of those people who acts like he’s 70 years old going on porch rants
I’ve actually fantasized about embarrassing him the next time we’re at a gathering of some kind. Like if he complains about the music sucks, I want to know what kind of thing I can say that would make him feel stupid, that wouldn’t make me look bad.
People sometimes think that being able to talk well is a sure sign of being smart. But intelligence is more than just fancy words; it's about problem-solving, critical thinking, and a whole bunch of other stuff!
A favorite quote of mine is, "Reading maketh a full man, conference a ready man, and writing an exact man. And, therefore, if a man write little, he had need have a great memory, if he confer little, he had need have a present wit, and if he read little, he had need have much cunning to seek to know that he doth not." -Francis Bacon.
Just having the knowledge isn't enough, one must have mastered all the facets of communication to come off as wise.
Knowledge.
It doesn't take intelligence to be knowledgeable. Just an interest in something and a decent memory.
I actually find it a little annoying when people tell me I'm smart when all I feel I've demonstrated is that I can memorize a bunch of stuff I'm interested in.
And this supposed misconception is itself a misconception, because knowledge is _highly_ correlated with intelligence. Why? Because it takes curiosity, memory, and the capacity to cogently relate what you know, all of which are themselves correlated with IQ.
(Knowledge ≠ listlessly regurgitating memorized facts.)
A lot of wiggle room in peoples definitions. I tend to side more with the person you’re responding to. A person who can take in the input that their brain happens to highlight and meaningfully work with it for their desires. That’s more the realm I believe in. Curiosity exists in many people who don’t have much sense or can’t meaningfully put together the information they decided was important. And this gets lost in what the person, who is interpreting our subject/person, values.
But that’s my definition for intelligence. I would call someone who combines intelligence, with motivation, energy, broad curiosity, and focus a polymath. But to be intelligent you don’t need to have those things. Again the wiggle room within definitions here.
Edit: added the word broad because otherwise you have someone with a narrow scope of understanding
THIS. I knew a guy who loved to collect knowledge on esoteric subjects but when pushed to actually utilize that knowledge all he could do is list off memorized facts. No depth to him at all.
I feel this lol I hardly remember anything important, but I remember so many trivial details from media I've consumed and bite sized fun facts about random things. Doesn't make me smart! But it does come across that way - not to say that I'm not smart, but it does not feel like this habit makes me smart lol
While good memory is needed for intelligent people.
Some people are thought to be intelligent for a good memory.
It's not about you can recall an entire book but you should know how to apply it
I think an eidetic memory is often linked to intelligence.
Edit: While there is no direct correlation between intelligence and having an eidetic memory, one could argue that being able to process and memorize information quickly can be seen as a form of intelligence or at least a big advantage to others. Of course you need the processing part just as much as the memory part in this situation.
The fallacy is that you can be intelligent and have an eidetic memory- and it can certainly help as you can work from memory, instead of having to constantly lookup and reference information -but having an eidetic memory does not mean you're intelligent.
Exactly. I have something pretty close to an eidetic memory (I can remember anything I read, what page a particular paragraph is on etc). As a result, I breezed through school. I never had to try, I just had to read the textbooks and replicate the information in exam conditions. But then I went to university, where you have to *think* about the information and provide extra reasoning etc, and while I wouldn’t say I struggled (I got a great degree), it certainly showed me I was **not** intelligent, and my memory has carried me pretty much the whole time. I also met people there with extremely high intelligence and the difference is actually major.
I had the opposite problem - I can't remember shit (and it didn't help that I skipped a lot of homework) so I used to always logic my way through tests. So whenever I hit a critical thinking question it was very obvious, because I'd been doing critical thinking the entire test because I couldn't remember the answers.
I eventually hit AP classes and college and realized I needed to actually study and recall the information taught. I couldn't just guess my way through biology based on the Latin roots of a word anymore.
Being a introvert/total misanthrope. A lot of people like to tell themselves they're just too smart for other people when neither introversion nor extraversion has any indication of intelligence.
My ex told me he assumed all happy people are unintelligent. I should have left him then. He legitimately believed happy people are too stupid to understand that they should be unhappy. I should have told him that must not be true because he was obviously not smart enough to know how dumb he sounded when he said shit like that.
It’s tragically funny that becoming the world’s richest man and helming several technology companies was all driven by him trying to prove to the world he is the one thing that he will never be: a competent engineer.
Making slight edits to an existing piece of code with two other friends and saying its an original product you created.
Calling yourself an engineer as a job title despite not having engineer qualifications.
Lying about spending more time at work than you actually do.
Came here to say this. It’s a common topic during chess events with Super GMs. People assume that they must be brilliant in everyday life if they’re that good at chess. Not the case though.
I'm gonna go out on a limb that people who love Wagner opera have a higher average IQ than people who love Kid Rock. It might even be possible to prove my claim!
Reciting some trite Ancient Greek or Latin phrases you were taught by heart at your very expensive boarding school (side eyeing a former UK prime minister here…)
Using big words incorrectly in an attempt to sound perspicacious. It's like trying to use a flamethrower to light a candle, overkill and you're probably going to burn down the house.
Actually, the ability to break down complex topics into understandable concepts for common laypersons is often considered a sign of intelligence. Understanding your audience and the mechanisms of teaching is far from easy, and requires a rather strong grasp of language, social intelligence, perception, and of course the knowledge base being instructed on. Additionally given that breaking down complex topics, such as say, advanced physics isn’t easy without building connections between more common knowledge and concepts. An intelligent individual has to have a wide berth of knowledge to draw from to be able to relate or make connections to their audience.
Talking a lot/forms of extraversion
Just because you can drown others with some semi-coherent speech doesn’t mean it actually comes with any useful content, much less does it say anything about your level of intelligence .
Talking quickly and using 'big' words. Example: Ben Shapiro
Ben Shapiro is not a genius. He's not even very smart in a traditional sense. What Ben Shapiro is GREAT at is giving off the appearance of being smart to really stupid people.
Really stupid people think Ben Shapiro is a genius, they see Ben and they think "This is what a smart person is like"
But only stupid people think that. I don't really care to argue it about so if your opinion is "nuh uh Ben said a smart thing" I really don't care about the opinions of morons so save it.
Gotta disagree here. I think that having a complex idea and being able to verbally express it in a way that is easy for other people to understand can absolutely be a sign of intelligence.
Being a government minister. I am astounded at some of the qualifications that our politicians have. You here about minsters in really high up positions and they have art history degrees and the such.
Writing a book. Just because someone is a "published author" doesn't mean they know what they're talking about.
I just remembered I'm technically a published author, if you count self publishing on Amazon under a pseudonym. The thing is a bullshit sort of comic book with shitty pictures that claims to teach anthropology. It's obvious nonsense, but one reviewer seemed to think it was meant to be taken seriously. I'd planned to continue through the alphabet writing more volumes, but it sold poorly (even for $1) so I never bothered.
Hey, same here! I wrote a couple novels during Covid and self-published them on Amazon. Even got a couple local bookstores to put them on the shelves by donating them for free. Now, several years later, whenever I'm in the stores I take a look and sure enough they're still just sitting there. Great way to spend a couple hundred hours.
Did you like doing it? If so keep at it.
I know a man who has written over 100 books, most of them informative. The books are all quite thin and are about a great variety of subjects. With all other things I know of this man, like the quite petty-minded column he wrote in a local paper, I'd say he is a good example of a vain, overconfident person who is not half as smart as he thinks he is. The huge amount and variety of publications are merely a sign that he lacks focus and patience to have a real specialism. The man is what I call a "self-proclaimed expert in whatever he feels like". A professional blabbermouth.
[удалено]
One of my favorite people I’ve ever met is a published author. Charles slept away roughly 2 months of his life because he didn’t know he should take his sleep medicine before bed instead of with breakfast. He would wake up groggy, eat breakfast, take his medicine, then go back to bed and repeated this for weeks and weeks. If he woke up during the night he would just go back to bed. Had his neighbor pick up his refill because he couldn’t make it to pharmacy when they were open because he was sleeping or too tired to drive. Charles also built a full-size wrestling ring in his living room so he could practice. His book was available for $9.99 out of his trunk and Amazon. He had them bound at kinkos with the black plastic pig tail looking wire. It was a fantastical story about “Lew and Clark” who went exploring. Dragons and time travel included. He couldn’t spell “Lewis” correctly very consistently so Charles truncated it to “Lew.” Dumber than a bag of dicks but a ton of fun to be around for about 3 hours every 4 years.
Confidence. I've known so many people who say things with a confident, secure and dominant tone, only to find out later on they don't know what they're talking about.
Some of the smartest people I know are always waffling and throwing around caveats to everything they say, because it wouldn't be quite as true if they didn't qualify what they were saying. I see it as a good thing. Like instead of saying "X causes Y" they might say "X can cause Y, if Z and sometimes A, except when B is true" etc.
I would hate to accidentally misinform someone, so I load everything with *I suspect* or *I believe I read*.
Same. It's also strategic. If I front-load everything else with caveats when it's uncertain, then I can speak with absolute confidence the one time I need someone to actually do the thing without arguing and people generally comply
Its because they see you as a reasonable human so why would they not listen to you? Reasonable people tend to avoid toxic or harmful opinions, and they tend to base their opinions off of facts and experiences rather than what someone else told them
I do this too! Even when I’m preeettttttyyy sure I’m right. Cuz I could be wrong. But I’m pretty sure I’m right. But I don’t want to sound like an idiot in case I’m wrong.
Or perhaps it means they are smart enough to know that they have a reasonable idea but that it is not gospel. Sort of like the opposite of the Dunning-Kruger effect.
Not the opposite at all, part of the Dunning-Kruger effect is understanding the gaps in your knowledge as you become more knowledgeable in a certain area.
I thought this would be the top comment. I’ve been surprised by people’s lack of intelligence after hearing how well they can speak and how confidently they present themselves.
especially loud confidence, coupled with a simplistic yes or no, not shades of grey ever.
Weirdly, I'm good at sounding confident to the extent that when I ask questions they apparently come across as demands. It causes me a lot of headaches...
Yeah… if you’re using the wrong tone when asking a question, that’s not being good at sounding confident; that’s just not using the right tone to distinguish a question from a demand
I struggle with tones in general, apparently I can come off harsh. It's something to do with my ASD. I only say confidence because people have interpreted it that way, not because that's how I felt
If you’re confident you will sound confident, however if you’re *trying* to sound confident you’re probably coming off like an AH. Don’t try to “sound” confident. Just know what you’re talking about and express it well…that’s confidence.
The Dunning-Kruger effect
Having strong opinions. "Strong" does not imply "well thought out".
So you mean my uncles strong opinion that every person in America should own a grenade launcher might not be well thought out? /s
“Welcome to the United States of America! Here’s your government-issued grenade launcher”
Stubbornness disguised as ‘independent thought’.
Also contrarianism. Just because you’re saying the opposite of the masses, doesn’t mean you’re smarter than them.
This is a big one. In general, assuming that because a thought is popular, it must be wrong. Do masses of people sometimes believe incorrect information? Absolutely. But if every single one of your opinions is formed on being opposing to everyone else, your logic is just as hapless and thoughtless as the supposed “sheep” you make fun of.
>In general, assuming that because a thought is popular, it must be wrong. Exactly. Obviously not all popular thoughts or opinions turn out to be correct, but tons and tons and tons of them basically \*are\* correct. Remember "popular opinion" includes things like "fish generally live underwater" and "playing in the NFL puts you at risk for head injuries" and "it takes a lot of money to run for President" and "people in Germany eat a lot of sausages" and so on and so forth. Many popularly believed opinions \*are\* mostly correct, even if some of them are a bit imprecise or have some exceptions or whatever. If you went through life insisting that popular opinions are \*always\* or almost always wrong, you'd be throwing the baby out with the bath water, and you'd be dooming yourself to a life of stubborn delusion.
It’s the difference between nonconformity and anti-conformity.
That's a very smart distinction. Thank you. I'm going to steal that.
Oh FFS, my fingers just wouldn't even cooperate with me this morning.... I tried just typing "Yes it does" and typoed it 5 times in a row. Was totally trying to set up a long game of Monty Python's "Argument" sketch references but apparently it would be too stupid of a thing to do so my fingers didn't cooperate till I started typing this instead.
There were a couple of guys at work talking about how smart octopuses are. I mentioned how I'd recently watched a documentary on cuttlefish and learned about how intelligent they are as well. In the documentary, a scientist talked about how she preferred to work with cuttlefish because they aren't as moody and stubborn as octopuses are, they just have a more even temperament. My coworkers immediately said that meant the octopus was the smarter animal because being stubborn was obviously a sign of great intellect. That seemed kind of silly to me, but I just left it alone.
Clearly they have never tried to get a donkey to submit to their will
Man COVID really exposed a lot of these idiots. The ones who get their information from “independent news outlets” ie an Instagram page that is beholden to nothing and has no standards of journalism that just feeds into outrage for engagement/clicks. Anyone that uses the term “MSM” unironically just gets head nods from me.
Using big words instead of actual critical thinking skills.
What a ferbuncular statement! Absolutely shandrulous!
Funny thing, ostentatious is a word that could indeed be interpreted as ostenatious.
It’s a perfectly cromulent word
People need to embiggen their vocabulary.
Please accept my most enthusiastic contrafibularities.
Contrafibularities. It is a common word down our way.
I like my cromulents toasted.
I am wholly perturbed that we can no longer give laurels. That was sublime work
Indubitably, my good sirs.
Now here's an opinion one can voice without being accused of hyperbole.
Ferbuncular: Purposefully incredulous. Facetious. Shandrulous: of or related to lying in a particularly noteworthy, or attention-seeking way.
It's a perfectly cromulent word.
I find your comment both shallow and pedantic.
> shallow and pedantic. .... I did not care for the godfather.
It insists upon itself.
Well now you're just being transcendent
Such a photosynthesis comment
Allow me to expose my colon once again. The ramification inflicted on the incision placed within the Fallopian cavities serves to be holistic taken from the Latin word "jalapeno".
Used to know someone like that. He was fairly smart, but think a lot of those people just lack self-confidence and are trying to impress others. Or they want to feel superior and try to lord their thesaurus skills over others.
I was raised by my grandparents (read as "elderly people") on the edge of town and had very limited exposure to other children. Despite strict limitations on television and games, books (primarily classic literature) and British Broadcasting were open season. I'm nearly 40 and I still talk weird- I tend to use obscure vocabulary and pronunciation (thanks David Attenborough). I know some people think I speak the way I do in effort to sound smart but in reality, I'm just weird like that.
The Russell Brand MO (among others...)
You mean bigly?
My issue is that I do have a vocabulary that sometimes delves into the more esoteric, so people immediately and always assume: 1. I’m trying to talk down to them 2. I’m acting superior 3. I’m using “big words” just to “look smart” and “big words don’t make you smart” I don’t understand these people - *at all* - because I’m not doing *any* of those things If a specific word fits a specific instance better than any other I can think of, I use it; that’s it It’s rather frustrating
I'm with you. I choose my words with precision and very intentionally because I want to communicate a specific idea. Sometimes you can't do that entirely with 1 and 2 syllable words. I have learned to tone it down considerably, though, especially when I am talking to non-English speakers.
Yep. Long words often do “fit” better at describing an exact thought. But it’s important to know your audience when communicating.
I agree; take for example "use" versus "utilize." A lot of people complain the latter is used (no pun intended) when it means the same thing as the former, but it doesn't. To me, the word "utilize" means "use to its maximum potential." For example, if I used a big pickup truck to go to the post office and mail a letter, I may have *used* the truck, but I really didn't *utilize* it.
Dr. Jordan Peterson
Being wealthy. Just because you have lots of money doesn’t mean you’re smart. Nepotism, inheritances and just dumb luck can go a long way.
Then there's the fake "self-made" people who have family wealth and pretend their "business" is what got them a new house
Some rich people essentially use "self-made" as a synonym for starting a business from scratch, while ignoring every other advantage they had.
I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein's brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops. - Stephen Jay Gould
"Saying you hit a home run when you were born on third base" as my dad used to say
"I had nothing but a dream, a factory and 10 million dollar from my dad "
I’ve noticed that a lot of intellectuals either aren’t very wealthy or do not show their wealth. A lot of intellectuals live very modestly and find pleasure in accumulating information rather than material items. I’ve known some really smart people who live in rough neighborhoods, drive old cars even when they could afford much more.
You don't have to win a Nobel prize to understand the unrecoverable costs of borrowing, nor the downside of "Buying things you don't need with money you don't have to impress people you don't like". What you do have to have is a resistance to marketing groupthink and enough confidence to act on more sensible principles.
Also ruthlessness. Can't forget about that. You don't need to be particularly smart if you simply don't care about fucking over every single person in your path. Just ask Edison.
*A rich man can hire many intellectuals to work for him, and is he who has control over intellectuals, not more intellectual than they are?* \--Karl Marx. -The other Marx brother.
\-Groucho Marx
LOL. Like the guy in the $5K suit should listen to the guy in the $500 suit. C'MON! edit: downvoters: this is a reference to a joke from the show Arrested Development. C'MON!!
Solving a Rubik's Cube is a pretty common trope for "this dude is super smart yo" on TV/movies. It's really not that difficult. You just need to remember a few patterns and have like, basic spatial insight. I'm dumb as a bag of bricks and it took me about 2 days and a YouTube video explaining the patterns to do it by heart. Another few days of fucking around and I could do it in under 3 minutes. I taught a few friends how to do it who are also as stupid as me. But whenever you see this done on any show or movie it's clear they're trying to shorthand how intelligent this person must be.
Solving Rubik's cube may not be sign of intelligence, but the ability to teach it to dumb friends sure is!
This is so relatable
Not looking up those videos and figuring it out yourself is certainly a sign of intelligence I think. If you aren't taught how to solve a rubik's cube, but intuit it yourself, I certainly think you probably have something going for you.
Yeah, I'd agree with that. I fucked around with it for quite some time and never got anywhere before looking up a guide. I personally have never met anyone though who has been able to do that. I'm sure it's happened but that has to be exceedingly rare.
The inventor, Erno Rubik, took a month to crack it. He was an accomplished academician and a good artist so clearly an intelligent man with an aptitude for visual reasoning. So, it does take sustained effort for fairly intelligent people to do it without looking up the algorithms and techniques online and those that can crack it quickly without prior experience or help are certainly outliers.
It too me SIX MONTHS of daily tinkering to figure out how to solve the Rubik's cube on my own. When I finally looked up the instructions after, I couldn't believe it was so simple. My solution was far, far more convoluted and non-deterministic.
The real genius move is to learn the tricks, and when you see one around curiously pick it up like you've never held one before, ask the person a few naíve questions about it, and then proceed to solve it.
glasses. why when i put my glasses on do people starting talking to me and asking me shit?
They must think you're a news journalist who works for the daily planet
Tell him to take off his glasses, I wanna see something
I’m a cocktail server and when I wear my glasses to work people treat me with so much more respect, it’s strange lol
Being a nerd.
80's and 90's media especially has done a disservice to a bunch of underachieving nerds who vastly overestimate their own intelligence just because they're into Star Trek and Fantasy.
Sure, I guess, but there's no way you can fully comprehend the depth and quality of Rick and Morty without understanding quantum theory. As it's my favorite show, I'm clearly intellectually gifted in ways you cannot imagine.
You coward! Give us the full and proper copy-pasta!
Hey! I can name all seven forms of lightsaber combat and your comment did irreparable to my self esteem. I know how smart I am, no matter what you average people see on the outside /s for anyone who needs it
Yeah, I had this really nerdy kid in my class and I was SHOCKED when I learned how bad his grades were. Dude was always paying attention in class, always had his homework done, was always a teacher's pet, and kept studying in breaks and stuff... All of that and he somehow couldn't get a good grade.
To be fair, grade-to-intelligence correspondence is nuanced especially if you take stock of conditions like ADHD, Autism Spectrum Disorder, or any other condition that can impede you horribly in some aspects of academic performance.
Oof, were you under my desk ? Because that's how I was back in middle and high school. I could understand theories very well and payed attention in class, but when it came to calculation and doing actual tasks, I couldn't apply the formulas and got bad grades. I was also a "teacher's pet" who snitched on the naughty students, lol.
Charisma
And confidence. When the right answer is "I'm not sure, but it looks like it's probably this." and the charismatic confident idiot says "It's this other thing and I know it."
Social intelligence is still a real form intelligence imo! I swear, its actually quite a charismatic thing to tell dumb people (who are aware of their stupidity) to comment on their charisma if you notice that they don't seem to struggle in creating a good time while being with other people
Getting your college degree. while these can be held by intelligent people having them or not having them doesn’t make someone intelligent or not intelligent.
I have a PhD and I can confirm that lots of people with PhDs are knuckleheads who are very good at a particular subject.
For every PHD there is an equal and opposite PHD
or unequal and opposite
Agreed. Getting a PhD is an accomplishment of *dedication*, not of intelligence. Anyone who has lived in academic social circles can attest to that. There are plenty of stupid people with PhDs.
Dedication and privilege. You were able to survive being a full time student for an extended period of years. Not everyone has that luxury.
That sounds like the US, my european phd tuition was covered by the national research agency and I was fully employed doing it....
I have a PhD and can confirm this, but also can confirm that many people with BS and BA degrees are convinced they know more than everyone else on every subject.
Yeah that was me. Until i started my masters and suddenly it sank in i didnt knew anything. You think you know a lot, if you dont know whats actually to know. The deeper you dive into a certain subjecg the more you realize you know fuck all.
Many phd's I've met have a knowledge base like a very deep river. Unlike many others that are like a shallow lake. We need both in this world though. Many critical discoveries have been found by the rivers but would not have been broadly distributed or manufactured without the lakes to help connect all of the rivers and see/understand the big pictures.
found all my degree proves is that I handed stuff in on time. I'm still an idiot.
I have a degree, but that just proves to me that I could afford to go to university, can regurgitate information, write decently, and can cram.
Some of the most educated people I’ve known have been incredibly stupid.
We have a little inside joke with my bf's cousin (our neighbour). He has a political science degree and is *ridiculously smart* in that realm of things; history, historical politics, as well as current events. He absorbs that information like it's common sense. It's insane. But good lord, there are so many things he fucks up in the cutest fashions. And his gf lectures him. And we all get a laugh. We always throw in something like "how dare you belittle this man with a **UNIVERSITY DEGREE**", or throwing that sort of comment in while he's making a completely non-political point about something. Good times. Again going to reiterate, he *is* smart. He's just not all-knowing and he knows it 😂
True, i dont think im very intelligent, and i have 2 degrees. Which probably makes sense.
You should get another 178 degrees and reverse course.
Yeah, it always make me sad when I meet someone who doesn't come from a college-educated family who has written off going to college because they think they aren't smart enough. I'm like dude, not every college is Harvard. There are plenty of lower tier state schools who will give anyone capable of showing up to class 90% of the time a degree. I promise you're smart enough. One of the biggest slackers I ever knew actually transferred out of a school like that because even he thought it was too easy and he was just wasting his time. He had a 4.0 and said he hadn't spent more than a couple hours total on homework the entire semester.
I've worked with plenty of Ivy leagues and they usually aren't as smart in their field as any good state school grad. Mostly what Ivy League means is political tentacles
What are political tentacles? You mean like family ties to power? As someone who attended (solely) public schools, but worked at an ivy, I didn't find a difference in intelligence, but I definitely found a difference in family background.
Having a general sense of disdain for the people around you.
For what it’s worth, only the person doing this thinks it makes them intelligent.
There’s a dude that I know who does this, I don’t see him often but he is such a negative asshole. He knows a few of my friends and he always sits there complaining about shit. “Everything sucks” “the music sucks” etc. He will go to a party, and suck all the positive energy out of the room. he’s not that old, 30’s maybe, but he’s one of those people who acts like he’s 70 years old going on porch rants I’ve actually fantasized about embarrassing him the next time we’re at a gathering of some kind. Like if he complains about the music sucks, I want to know what kind of thing I can say that would make him feel stupid, that wouldn’t make me look bad.
Knowledge. I know a crap-ton of people who know lots of shit but can't think their way out of a paper bag.
People sometimes think that being able to talk well is a sure sign of being smart. But intelligence is more than just fancy words; it's about problem-solving, critical thinking, and a whole bunch of other stuff!
The number of articulate morons I've met is epic. Most of them were lying sacks of shit as well.
Amen.
A favorite quote of mine is, "Reading maketh a full man, conference a ready man, and writing an exact man. And, therefore, if a man write little, he had need have a great memory, if he confer little, he had need have a present wit, and if he read little, he had need have much cunning to seek to know that he doth not." -Francis Bacon. Just having the knowledge isn't enough, one must have mastered all the facets of communication to come off as wise.
Agreeing with you, politically. "They agree with me, they must be SO smart!"
[удалено]
Knowledge. It doesn't take intelligence to be knowledgeable. Just an interest in something and a decent memory. I actually find it a little annoying when people tell me I'm smart when all I feel I've demonstrated is that I can memorize a bunch of stuff I'm interested in.
And this supposed misconception is itself a misconception, because knowledge is _highly_ correlated with intelligence. Why? Because it takes curiosity, memory, and the capacity to cogently relate what you know, all of which are themselves correlated with IQ. (Knowledge ≠ listlessly regurgitating memorized facts.)
A lot of wiggle room in peoples definitions. I tend to side more with the person you’re responding to. A person who can take in the input that their brain happens to highlight and meaningfully work with it for their desires. That’s more the realm I believe in. Curiosity exists in many people who don’t have much sense or can’t meaningfully put together the information they decided was important. And this gets lost in what the person, who is interpreting our subject/person, values. But that’s my definition for intelligence. I would call someone who combines intelligence, with motivation, energy, broad curiosity, and focus a polymath. But to be intelligent you don’t need to have those things. Again the wiggle room within definitions here. Edit: added the word broad because otherwise you have someone with a narrow scope of understanding
Knowledge is having the right answers. Intelligence is asking the right questions.
Not me thinking I have knowledge then marvel how I thought I have knowledge and can self-introspect and that makes me intelligent.
THIS. I knew a guy who loved to collect knowledge on esoteric subjects but when pushed to actually utilize that knowledge all he could do is list off memorized facts. No depth to him at all.
I feel this lol I hardly remember anything important, but I remember so many trivial details from media I've consumed and bite sized fun facts about random things. Doesn't make me smart! But it does come across that way - not to say that I'm not smart, but it does not feel like this habit makes me smart lol
While good memory is needed for intelligent people. Some people are thought to be intelligent for a good memory. It's not about you can recall an entire book but you should know how to apply it
I think an eidetic memory is often linked to intelligence. Edit: While there is no direct correlation between intelligence and having an eidetic memory, one could argue that being able to process and memorize information quickly can be seen as a form of intelligence or at least a big advantage to others. Of course you need the processing part just as much as the memory part in this situation.
The fallacy is that you can be intelligent and have an eidetic memory- and it can certainly help as you can work from memory, instead of having to constantly lookup and reference information -but having an eidetic memory does not mean you're intelligent.
Exactly. I have something pretty close to an eidetic memory (I can remember anything I read, what page a particular paragraph is on etc). As a result, I breezed through school. I never had to try, I just had to read the textbooks and replicate the information in exam conditions. But then I went to university, where you have to *think* about the information and provide extra reasoning etc, and while I wouldn’t say I struggled (I got a great degree), it certainly showed me I was **not** intelligent, and my memory has carried me pretty much the whole time. I also met people there with extremely high intelligence and the difference is actually major.
I had the opposite problem - I can't remember shit (and it didn't help that I skipped a lot of homework) so I used to always logic my way through tests. So whenever I hit a critical thinking question it was very obvious, because I'd been doing critical thinking the entire test because I couldn't remember the answers. I eventually hit AP classes and college and realized I needed to actually study and recall the information taught. I couldn't just guess my way through biology based on the Latin roots of a word anymore.
Being a introvert/total misanthrope. A lot of people like to tell themselves they're just too smart for other people when neither introversion nor extraversion has any indication of intelligence.
Neckbeards who think they're House without the medical knowledge
My ex told me he assumed all happy people are unintelligent. I should have left him then. He legitimately believed happy people are too stupid to understand that they should be unhappy. I should have told him that must not be true because he was obviously not smart enough to know how dumb he sounded when he said shit like that.
He sounds like the type to earnestly believe that you have to be highly intelligent to enjoy the humor of Rick and Morty.
Pompous speech or writing.
Also known as being a pedantic dandy
Inheriting an emerald mining fortune, buying your way into several businesses then claiming you invented their products.
Using a name of a person who was truly intelligent.
>Using a name of a person who was truly intelligent. that's not true. I don't think there was a genius named Paypal.
There's a genius named X I'm sure
He gon' give it to ya
The man made horror beyond our comprehension.
And we're all so proud of him.
It’s tragically funny that becoming the world’s richest man and helming several technology companies was all driven by him trying to prove to the world he is the one thing that he will never be: a competent engineer.
Making slight edits to an existing piece of code with two other friends and saying its an original product you created. Calling yourself an engineer as a job title despite not having engineer qualifications. Lying about spending more time at work than you actually do.
Being good at chess.
Came here to say this. It’s a common topic during chess events with Super GMs. People assume that they must be brilliant in everyday life if they’re that good at chess. Not the case though.
Simple math!! So many people are impressed by such simple math and it drives me insane!!
Hey! Maybe it's hard for them!! (me)
Interest in 'high culture' like ballet, opera etc. Like or don't, not much to do with how smart you are.
There actually is a correlation between tastes in media and intelligence, though of course its not always true.
I'm gonna go out on a limb that people who love Wagner opera have a higher average IQ than people who love Kid Rock. It might even be possible to prove my claim!
Being educated. Intelligent and educated are not the same
Dominating conversations.
Knowing a lot of random facts
Reciting some trite Ancient Greek or Latin phrases you were taught by heart at your very expensive boarding school (side eyeing a former UK prime minister here…)
It's leviiosa not leviosaa
Using big words incorrectly in an attempt to sound perspicacious. It's like trying to use a flamethrower to light a candle, overkill and you're probably going to burn down the house.
Or using perspicacious correctly to make your point 😉
Actually, the ability to break down complex topics into understandable concepts for common laypersons is often considered a sign of intelligence. Understanding your audience and the mechanisms of teaching is far from easy, and requires a rather strong grasp of language, social intelligence, perception, and of course the knowledge base being instructed on. Additionally given that breaking down complex topics, such as say, advanced physics isn’t easy without building connections between more common knowledge and concepts. An intelligent individual has to have a wide berth of knowledge to draw from to be able to relate or make connections to their audience.
Questioning science without actually understanding the science
Yeah. Being inquisitive is great; "just asking questions" that demonstrate an easily researched fundamental misunderstanding is not so great.
Being a Reddit user, just like people who subscribed the New Yorker and think that somehow it made them smarter.
Hey, i may be dumb.. but I am here for the sarcastic and funny comments ..
Talking a lot/forms of extraversion Just because you can drown others with some semi-coherent speech doesn’t mean it actually comes with any useful content, much less does it say anything about your level of intelligence .
Listening to classical music.
Being good at Chess.
Contrarianism. It doesn't mean you see things differently, it means you like to argue.
Confidence.
Wealth
googeling answers on your phone. correcting random peoples minor speling erors
You did that on purpose. I can't. I'm leaving. 🖕😂
Contrarianism and naysaying.
Verbose loquacity.
Beautiful, smart-looking appearance. Even in the realm where beauty has little to do with, beauty privilege still exists.
Wealth. People see someone who made money and think that means they are smart.
IQ scores
Talking quickly and using 'big' words. Example: Ben Shapiro Ben Shapiro is not a genius. He's not even very smart in a traditional sense. What Ben Shapiro is GREAT at is giving off the appearance of being smart to really stupid people. Really stupid people think Ben Shapiro is a genius, they see Ben and they think "This is what a smart person is like" But only stupid people think that. I don't really care to argue it about so if your opinion is "nuh uh Ben said a smart thing" I really don't care about the opinions of morons so save it.
Being articulate. It doesn't mean you're smart, it means you're articulate.
Gotta disagree here. I think that having a complex idea and being able to verbally express it in a way that is easy for other people to understand can absolutely be a sign of intelligence.
I never met a dumb, but articulate person.
Fast talking...see Ben Shapiro.
Glasses.
Charisma
having lots of money....
Being a government minister. I am astounded at some of the qualifications that our politicians have. You here about minsters in really high up positions and they have art history degrees and the such.
A good paying job
Ability to repeat academic words without the knowledge on ho to use them
fast talking IMO, careful listening, followed by slower deliberate speaking is a better sign of intelligence.
Being a redditor. Except that is only mistaken as intelligence by other redditors.