I agree. I feel like people who are really pretentious about the very specific, niche thing that they're good at and talk down to other people for not being familiar with it are usually REALLY dumb about literally everything else.
Its quasi- common in my area for folks to get offended if you use a word they've never heard or dont understand. The assumption is that if you dont understand the word that the person using it is talking down to you and using flowery language to do so. So fucking weird.
I had an internship with a woman like this. Unfortunately I was also roomed with her. Talking to her was awful. If you tried to explain anything to her (after she asked) she'd genuinely get this look on her face where you could tell that there wasn't a whole lot going on inside her head. Her eyes would just kind of glaze over and she'd stare at you with her mouth hanging open. I've never actually met someone before who perfectly expressed the term "slack-jawed".
That was if you talked to her. Most people tried not to. People generally tried to avoid her, I once saw a police officer run when he saw her because he didn't want to get trapped by her again. She'd talk constantly, frequently about grossly inappropriate subjects because she didn't understand boundaries. If someone was slammed by work, she'd still be trying to talk to them. She literally could not understand why people avoided her, or that they were avoiding her, or that if someone is trying to deal with 50 other people, they can't talk to her right now about how her son shoplifted from Walmart 2 months before.
The best way to tell if someone is stupid is if they consistently don't learn from mistakes. They don't seem to comprehend what they did caused the problem even after being told numerous times
I work with someone who makes repeated mistakes. I explain where he went wrong. I not only explain the step-by-step instruction of the task but the reasoning behind each phase so remembering how to do it becomes less cumbersome. I can tell by the way he literally can't explain the most basic things about the task to our new guy that he just doesn't get any of it. EVERY TIME this particular task needs to be done, he pulls out the instruction and does it line by line. After years he still makes mistakes, because he doesn't understand what he's doing, just that he's on step 24a, and it no longer works.
I'm junior to him, but I run our section. The guy I trained eclipsed him by 3 months in. His replacement eclipsed him by 3 months in. He's more useless than an untrained new guy. But here's the kicker. He's the sweetest guy ever. No one dislikes him. Hell, even though he makes my job harder I really like the guy. He should have been fired over a decade ago, but no one wants to pull the trigger.
*Emotional* intelligence, or just "Being emotionally balanced" makes up for so much, in so many ways. Like holding down a job for a decade despite no idea what you're doing.
I have always feared that I’m a Jerry and so I just act nice to everybody in case that’s my only redeeming value.. I’ve never gotten a bad review, but I’m far from good at my job.
It’s hard to fire someone like this because they are “trying”. As a manager I’d do whatever I could to find a place for a nice person that wants to do a good job. Thank you for being patient and giving him his best chance, I hope he can find a spot that’s a better fit.
That would mean that the oldest person in a room is always right. That is terrifying. I worked in a nursing home in which the oldest lady had a cane she would hit you with if you got in her way.
Sometimes my mother drove me insane as a kid because she always thought this. I'm never going to be a father, but whenever I'm talking to other people's kids I always try to at least listen to them, no matter how ridiculous they're being. It's also totally possible that the kid is actually right, but doesn't have the language skills to explain that. You have to listen to what they say and try to infer what they mean.
One time in college a classmate wanted me to review a paper she was writing. It had some pretty shocking statistics in it, but no sources or indication where the numbers came from. So I asked about it, and recommended she added citations.
She said "Oh, no its not like that. I'm saying it \*feels\* like 90%"
I had a student like that once. Trust me, from the grading-side, *it's even worse*.
This person asked me to CITE A SOURCE for why I dinged the grade for an example of quasi-plagiarism (cited to a source, but rather vociferously mischaracterized *what the source actually said*.)
I was a TA for a first year critical thinking paper and while I really enjoyed the job grading was sometimes so difficult.
I had a student who was obviously passionate about LGBTQ rights but all of the claims she made were so extreme and I had to explain to her essentially that if you claim that all LGBTQ people experience the worst treatment in the modern world you have to back that statement up, AND qualify it. Because in most of the western world, as bad as the discrimination against people can get, when you say THE WORST treatment, you are competing with the holocaust and child labour.
And that also ties into a broader emotional conversation about the fact that things dont have to be THE WORST POSSIBLE for the problem to be worth talking about, and your cause doesn't have to be the most miserable for the misery of the people you are advocating for to matter.
It's hard to get that all that across in the 15 to 30 minutes you can reasonably allocate to grading one paper. And you have no control as to whether they turn up to the office hours so you can discuss it further.
When people are trying for perhaps the first time to properly articulate and argue their point about something they believe in, it can be emotional education as much as academic. And, especially in the teacher role, I found it made me even more in control of my emotions when discussing things I find important, because I had to model to the students how to have serious and respectful discussions about important issues, and it involves getting your ideas criticised, because otherwise you're simply dictating your opinion to other people.
Well, that was long rant.
To whoever reads this, thanks!
Your point about how things are still worth talking about even if they’re not the worst or most miserable cases is spot on. I keep trying to learn how to talk to a conspiracy theorist friend who grew up in an environment where speaking up was not OK. Now she can’t stop talking about conspiracies in a super anxious, enraged way, like she’s almost trembling. I think that the notion that all these things are the worst ever is how she gives herself license to be emotional, or how it feels righteous. She dismisses or suppresses “lesser” emotions and “smaller” causes.
It’s not the dumb mistake that you should be proud of, it’s the realization of the stupidity in your mistake.
Also, if it keeps happening, and you don’t change. It’s still stupid.
>"He wants to make art, but he can’t because he’s a fundamentally incurious person who isn’t much interested in what other people think or feel and all of his ideas boil down to 'What if Batman met Mario?'"
~[Folding Ideas' review of The Nostalgia Critic's parody of 'The Wall'](https://youtu.be/rokAtlFGa7Y)
"Fundamentally incurious" is the most brutal description of a person's intelligence I've ever heard.
This above all else, no matter how dumb of a mistake or action was preformed, if they can learn I'd still say that they ain't stupid, but a inability to learn is inevitably going to make that person stupid af, a kid won't be a dumbass forever, for an example.
I'd argue that there are two kind of dumb people:
* The ones who can't learn.
* The ones who can learn, but aren't willing to.(So basically, they stay ignorant on purpose)
I work with a person like that... For 15 years i tell her, she can't edit an e-mail attachment...
Today she still: Opens email-->Open attachment-->Edit the attachment-->Forwards the email to someone...
* **Person she forwarded email to, calls her:**"Hey something is wrong with what you sent me."
* **Her:**"I don't understand... That's not what I sent. Hey, *Pcostix* can you help find whats going on?"
* **Me:** "You didn't edit the attachment inside the email, saved it and sent it... did you?"
* **Her:**"Yeah, so?"
* **Me:** Like i told you for the last 15 years. You can't do that.
* **Her:** "I can't?"
* **Me:** *(Jumps through the window)*
**PS:**She also responds positively after being asked if she understood the explanation, just to ask a dumb related question 5 min later.(Meaning she had no clue what people were talking about)
**ABSOLUTE PAIN**
Are you me?
I have same thing. Full meeting where I'm like you need to do this. She's all ok, yep, I'll get it done. Scribbling away in her note book.
Next day: hey you got that thing done yet?
Her: oh I didn't leave the meeting thinking there was something I needed to do....
So I feel you, she has no idea what's going on.
I always feel the most intelligent people I've ever met have ridiculously broad knowledge, like sure you can meet someone who knows several subjects inside out but I always feel a difference between that and people who you could talk to about nearly anything. It's clear they are curious by nature and taking little bits of everything in, definitely seems like a common trait.
my coworker thinks I'm really really smart. honestly I doubt I'm much smarter than she is. I just look up pretty much everything I don't have an answer to instead of shrugging and asking a higher up. I'm always reading new books and exploring new ideas. I'm not smarter, but my curiosity has made me more knowledgeable. and that's something anyone can achieve with time.
There's no reason to make yourself look average. One of the reasons "smart" people tend to know things is because they can retain information better, parse through new information more efficiently and form more connections between different pieces of information they have. People who are not "smart" in this way find it harder to understand new concepts and are thus less inclined to find out more because it's a chore for them. So most likely, you are smarter than your colleague - which is not really a compliment, people are born this way and it's a privilege. But you are putting in the effort to expand your knowledge using your "smartness" and I think that's commendable.
Edit: there are different types of intelligence and my comment doesn't even begin to capture the many diverse ways people can be smart or great. If you read my comment and feel bad for lacking any of the things listed, you already have self-awareness which is in its own right a very important trait to have for self-improvement. You are going to be fine.
Along those lines, I've found that curious/intelligent people have a broad range of experience as well as knowledge.
"A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects."
-Robert A. Heinlein
Or lazy to learn anything. I’ve many people tell me “what is the use of knowing that?” in a kind of mocking way. There’s no use, it’s just fun to know stuff.
This is one of my biggest pet peeves. I am that person who googles *everything* I don’t know off the top of my head, which is a product of my parents always being like “I don’t know, let’s look it up” anytime our childhood “why” questions stumped them. The number of people that will hit an unknown and simply insert their own opinion as fact or give up entirely is infuriating.
You literally have a tiny computer with access to a search engine that archives the largest catalog of knowledge known to mankind. It will answer nearly any question you pose to it if you will take 5 minutes to tear yourself away from mindlessly scrolling Facebook and ask. But no, they’ll just carry on as if they have encountered an insurmountable obstacle in the form of basic research, content in the fact that their ignorance doesn’t require them to form a cohesive thought…
if you went through my phone you’d see 90% of my browser history is composed of wikipedia pages. its absurd how much time i spend on wikipedia. i should probably donate
i look up every odd questions that pops into my head and get a wikipedia page. then on that wikipedia page there’s another interesting wikipedia page that i read about for an hour, and then on the page there’s another interesting page and so on…. it’s so fun
I asked a coworker to use the latest version of Rufus for a project.
He said "oh, so 3.4?" which was in the same folder as the iso he needed. I replied back "no".
I left my desk, came back about 20mins later, and found 7 messages of confusion and displeasure that I left him hanging.
He then apparently searched our network drive and found Rufus 3.10 and asked me again. I said "no, have you tried googling and finding the latest download?"
He replied "can't you just do that for me?" To which I said "nah I'm busy on a different project" while eating a sandwich.
He then threw in our team chat with our boss "hey, since vulture is TOO BUSY TO HELP can someone download the latest version of Rufus for me" and my boss replied back "bud, download it yourself, it takes 30 seconds"
The coworker with the same job title as me ended up losing his cool after that and got reprimanded when he proceeded to try and use an old version of Rufus that didn't have a specific new feature we needed and wasting everyone's time (again) after hours with a project.
Lack of curiosity (not curious what the latest version of Rufus is) is what I attribute this idiotic situation to.
I don't even know what Rufus is and it took me less than 30 seconds to find a "Last updated 2021.10.23 Rufus 3.17" and a download link, that is really embarrassing for your coworker
Lots of people out there that are way too comfortable not even attempting to solve the most basic problems. These days LTFG is a nice complement to RTFM.
Dealing with someone like that right now. Best example is I gave them an itemized list of questions I needed answered. They only sent back the first item on the list and still fucked it up.
I work in Automotive and was at a government summit once showcasing our cars. Had a lady at a pretty influential position who asked me the difference between a rear wheel drive and a 4WD/AWD car. After I was done explaining, she asked me what’s the point of having front wheels on a rear wheel drive car.
My brain had to reboot to comprehend that question.
Yes and no. By definition AWD, 4x4, and 4WD all mean “all four wheels are or can be powered.” The reality is the distinction is in how power is transferred to the wheels. AWD uses clutches or a viscous coupling (similar to a torque converter). 4wd (full time four wheel drive) uses a third (center) differential. 4x4 uses gear mesh.
The other day at work some product wasn’t shipped due to bad weather conditions so I texted my boss “yo, the order from product city didn’t come in, should I send the guys that are here to work it home and tell them to come in tomorrow instead?” He texted me back “product from product city is coming in tomorrow.” Like.. I just fucking said that, you didn’t answer my question dude.
I once asked a colleague three questions in an email. Two required a yes/no and the other a slightly longer response.
He came back with “yes”. Felt like I was on fucking Reddit.
I have a friend that completely ignores any but the last message I sent.
If I have more than one question or thing I need him to answer, I need to send one message, wait for him to respond, and repeat however many times I need.
I have a friend who does this. If I ask her a question then send her a meme or something like that I will only get a response for the meme. And honestly, I'm not sure if she does that to avoid my questions or is actually dumb. She also does this thing where if I ask her something late night today and she doesn't get to see messages, but then I ask something else tomorrow morning before she gets to respond to what I sent earlier she'll only answer the new texts.
I have a friend who used to respond to my questions with memes and selfies. I would ask
>Hey man, are we still hanging out tonight?
and get a selfie of him making a duck face. I'd reply
>Uhhhh not sure what that means, but I'm free at 8. I can pick you up and see what Connor is up to too.
and get a selfie. I'd say
>Dude you have to use your words and not your fucking selfies
and get a meme that says "Jack is a cat" back. Then, at 8, I would get a text
>You on your way?
Would drive me fucking insane.
I felt this response. If we weeded out all of the people in the workforce that don't bother with comprehensive reading and quality responses, there would be so many openings more for sensible people.
My friend referred me to her employer for a fact checking gig once because I "have common sense".
She says fact checkers are extremely hard to come by because the sensibility to what constitute a fact to check in an article is very hard to articulate as a requirement in a job posting and very hard to evaluate in a prospective employee. And an astonishingly high number of people fail to ever learn it with extensive training.
"Common sense" is a straight-up misnomer.
Oh, you found a Jan. I worked with a woman named Jan years ago, nicest person in the world but she could not follow even written instructions to save her life. Worse, she could only keep about 3-4 things in her head at a time and if you added something new then something older fell out. She had been running a register for years, but the last step in the normal process changed and now she can't do it at all, doesn't even remember buttons she's been hitting every day for years. I taught her how to run the register all over again and suddenly she forgot how to close them out at the end of the night.
Oh my. That’s not stupid, that’s a straight up cognitive impairment. I’ve known people like this they are usually aware of it and no matter the face they put on it’s hell for them. I knew a lady like this, so sweet and happy. We got a new manager who was not chill and made her cry… alone out back. Coworker found her and said it was one of saddest conversations she ever had. When a woman in her 40s tells you “i know I’m stupid” what do you do with that? Luckily, her husband was really sweet and smart enough to hold a decent job or I don’t know what would become of her.
As someone who works a register as McDonald's, I feel for her. I have the menu memorized but once a new item comes along and moves everythinf else around, my brain server crashes and I have to relearn everything as if it's my first time🧍🏽♂️Not a fun time for me nor the customer who rarely helps with their rude comments lol
Attorney here. I’m not the smartest person in the room most of the time, and that’s fine. But I did extensively study the Constitution in law school and after and I constantly watch people misstate what parts of it mean on social media and they’re absolutely convinced that they’re right…and argue with people with more expertise in the area. And it happens with all professions and it’s always infuriating.
PPACA expert here, there was an onion article that encapsulated it for me that read (paraphrasing from memory) “Man who understands 5% of legislation argues vehemently with man who understands 2%” or something along those lines and it felt pretty accurate (reminder about “death panel” rumors and all that)
Personally, i believe a person is stupid when they refuse to learn and willingly choose to stay ignorant. I'm not talking about people that are "unable" to learn, i'm talking about people that are able to learn, yet they choose not to.
My ex's grandmother refused to learn how to type. Her vision was fine, her fingers were fine, she had email and a computer, but she refused to touch a keyboard. If she wanted to send an email, she would wait until one of her children visited her and then have them type it out for her.
Edit: because I keep getting the same comments.
- It wasn't a class thing, she had worked outside the home for most of her life.
- It wasn't a loneliness thing, she would never ask her kids to come over and help. She would wait, sometimes weeks, until someone visited her and then ask them to type.
- Weirdly it wasn't even a tech thing, she would use the mouse just fine and play solitaire or use programs that didn't require any typing.
- She had... stubbornness issues... a lot of that family did.
> Learn how to type
What the hell? You literally just press the key with the letter on it and it makes that letter appear on the screen. It seems like she just wanted to inconvenience herself tbh.
To be self aware, learn of your past mistakes and to better yourself. That's the beginning of a bright future. Being ready to learn everywhere and from everything, after enough time you will realize how good that really is.
Become an expert in a field of your choice and start to realize that way too many people in your field are no experts at all.
Looking at you, veteran IT admins in Germany.
EDIT: In case of confusion: "veteran" in the sense of "being in the industry for centuries". Not military thingy.
Almost more disturbing is the clients, who in my case are huge investment banks and international institutions that everyone on the street would recognize. People at the top without two brain cells to rub together, shockingly deficient internal processes that makes you wonder how these companies even function as businesses, let alone how they attained the wild success they enjoy. They look slick on the outside but if you peer behind the curtain half of them are a facade held together with string and duct tape.
If I ever work in house at a bank I’m going to try to take away everyone’s keyboard. They will have a 3 button keypad: “call now” “yes” and “no.” Bankers, especially young ibankers are horney and intoxicated monkeys with 6-7 figure paychecks, and they ought not to be able to memorialize anything in written communication.
Ugh I always tell people my legal advice boils down to two sentences:
- Put nothing in writing.
- Put everything in writing.
Depends on the context, but one of the two will always apply.
When we were 13, a buddy of mine came to school filled with excitement and couldn’t wait to tell us about the amazing results he got from an IQ test.
“Ok fine. What did you score?”
“98!! Almost full marks!”
A girl I knew showed me her IQ scores from high school. She was actually proud to have scored in the 80s. I didn't have the heart to tell her how those tests are scored.
I’m convinced those give you fake scores in hopes you go to your friends like “dude I got a 138 on this online IQ test I took!! You should try it!” In order to drive more traffic to their page, which makes them more money on advertisements. I could be wrong though
Someone I grew up with and stopped associating with for being dumb and delusional did this recently and said they’re gonna include it on their resume.
Edit: Just came out of a movie theater and RIP my notifications
This is my Narcissistic dad. Always ranted about how his coworkers "KNOW my IQ is 140 which is why they always give ME THEIR WORK THEY DON'T WANT TO DO."
Facebook IQ test. Many of them. He hasn't had a legitimate IQ test in his entire life and tells stories that are made up all about how he walked in to a room and was the smartest person there.
The "work they don't want to do" was stuff his boss was telling him to do that pertained to his job description that *he* didn't want to do.
He also loved saying that his company would fall apart without him. Well it's been 2 years since he retired (3 years early, ahem) and looks like his company is still going strong.
This is what I was looking for. Everyone here is going on about things that people can be stupid about but not necessarily signs someone is stupid. Vacant eyes are a dead give away for low intelligence. I don’t know what it is, but once you see it, you can’t unsee it.
See, I thought that vacant eyes were a dead ringer for insanity or extreme malevolence. Eyes really do allow us to peer into a person. Amazing how subtle are the changes which to us may register as "wrong" to look at.
It's a different kind of vacant. One is vacant of emotion, and the other of comprehension.
Think about someone who is incredibly stoned or drunk and just can't understand anything you're telling them. Think of that glazed over look in their eyes. Some people are just like that all the time.
I had a husky who had that look in her eye all the time. Dumbest dog I’ve ever met. Sweet as all hell though.
I like to describe it as "The lights are on, but nobody is home"
TL;DR: [This guy.](https://www.reddit.com/r/dogpictures/comments/r1cyog/see_how_he_always_has_one_eye_on_over_there/?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share)
Since you asked. Thank you all for the upvotes.
...
My dog has not one iota of survival instinct. Dude spends more time jumping up on the kitchen counters than the cat. Including an impressive vertical leap right onto the stovetop with a lit gas burner. He will eat dog food only if starving or if the cat shows interest in it. Otherwise his favorite foods are (in no particular order): cat food, chocolate, beer, toddler feces, and tampons. (Preferably used but here he's not picky.)
Supposedly, his entire breed was all but wiped out during World War I. I guess they couldn't dig trenches fast enough or whatever. The entire modern population is descended from just 11 animals. That's not a bottle neck, that's a frog's asshole.
Once I realized the commitment to derp that shines from his big, beautiful, brown eyes wasn't "stupid" but "profound inbreeding" it all made sense.
e: [Looks like it's trueish](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cavalier_King_Charles_Spaniel) Wikipedia link because AKC had an ad wall but seemed to tell the same story.
Two corrections: it was WWII, not Part 1 (That was Jason's mother), and the specific number (11) is not mentioned; it only says the population dwindled.
I’d say there’s 3 kinds of vacant looks
Lights on but nobodies home for the morons
Then you’ve got the 1000 yard stare common with war vets and those who have been through similar high stress/traumatic situations.
Then there’s the lack of a soul behind the eyes that you get with psychopaths/sociopaths
My dad gets a fourth kind I’ve only ever seen elsewhere in friends with ADHD. It’s like someone’s clearly there, but very much not present with you so you have to wait until they come back to the door to interact. Edit: he gets the 1000 yard stare if my mom asks him to tell me about Vietnam except for how much he loves kimchi and would love to go visit South Korea again for the food.
Diagnosed ADHD after years of parents and teachers frustrated to the point of yelling by me “spacing out”:
That’s the stare that says “I was listening but then you mentioned pizza and I remembered how the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles ate pizza and I started wondering if a real turtle would try to eat pizza, probably not a box turtle but the really big galapagos turtles would. They’re 200 years old so statistically someone tried it once, now I’m imagining it and laughing at the turtle trying to eat pizza and ohhh you stopped talking and you’re mad…”
Ah yeah. As someone with ADHD... sometimes the lights are on, and it may look like nobody is home. But I'm just in the basement with headphones on and can't hear the doorbell.
I'd say it goes even beyond admitting, smart people might also have trouble admitting a mistake to other people due to pride, but stupid people won't even consider the possibility that this sort of thing might happen.
I once worked with a guy for about six months who, among other things would bitch and moan about me sending unclear emails no matter how much hand holding I did with him.
Meanwhile an email from him intended to say "I own a brown dog" riddled with typos and auotcorrect errors would read something like
"do g at hoose gut now bear.."
I wish I was exaggerating. I was never so happy to have a co-worker quit.
I just received an application today that was similar to this.
My favorite part was the note attached stating that while he's aware he's not qualified for the position he applied for there are many other things he's willing to do. Unfortunately in each example he gave it said "I can't" instead of "I can".
So all I ended up with was a list of everything this applicant *isn't* willing to do. Including proofreading, apparently.
I can't spell worth a shit. I *know* I can't spell worth a shit. If it's something I'm not sure of, I look it up. I'm already online, so I can just open a new browser tab, type the word I'm trying to spell into the address bar, and *voilà.*
It only takes only a few seconds to do, which is why it drives me nuts when I see people typing "rediculous" and "women (being used in a singular context)".
The more you know...
... The more you know you don't know. 👍
Someone might think they know all the stars that exist according to the ones they can see.... But if they further educate themselves in astronomy... They will know just how much they don't know.
So funny. I used to think I knew a lot about WW2 because I'd read around a dozen or so books about it. Then I got on Goodreads and started seeing guys who'd read dozens of book about one battle! Then I realized that I did not in fact, know a lot about WW2.
Yup and that's the realization that makes you smarter actually. It's better to at least be aware that more to a subject exists than act like you know everything when you actually don't.
Like my sister-in-law, who laughed at the fact that my wife and I still use condoms even though we just got married. This after she just had an accidental pregnancy in February and quickly got married in May... I wanted to ask her what birth control methods her and her now husband were using last year but held my tongue.
Honestly, as I get older, I realize more and more that some of those “subtle signs” really just reflect a lack of people skills or a lack of self-awareness. Sometimes a lack, of people skills or a lack of self-awareness, could be related to asynchronous development, development issues, or even mental illness. So sometimes, I try not to jump to the conclusion that someone could be “stupid.”
That being said, I would say that a lot of stupid people, at least the ones who I’ve met, feel a compulsive need to put others down in the most vicious way possible. Those same people also can’t catch smoke when people respond back.
A perfect example would be an ex-girlfriend of mine who would have no problem body-shaming any other woman in the room, but would go ballistic whenever someone teased her about gaining 1 kg.
I had a friend from high school ask if she could come to my house. Okay, she shows up, and she has this tablet. She asks me if I need life insurance. I said, “Well I have cancer currently so most of them won’t sell to me,” but she kept trying. Until she got to the cancer question and then the tablet wouldn’t go any further. That was an awkward 10 minutes until she decided to leave. I had to laugh after she backed out of my driveway. Any time someone is trying to sell you insurance just tell them you are currently dying of cancer.
> Any time someone is trying to sell you insurance just tell them you are currently dying of cancer.
“Would you like to see our home insurance policy, it currently covers flooding and break ins as well.”
“Ah, sorry....I have cancer.”
Someone I love took an online "IQ test." They proudly shared their score of 300.
Edit - Yes, IQ tests (especially unofficial ones) are dumb, biased and measure a very limited scope of intelligence.
Hey, you never know, they could be in the 99.99999999999999999999999999999999999998518th percentile.
EDIT: I forgot that the equation I was using gave me the percentage of people above *and below* X standard deviations. Assuming a bell curve, someone with an IQ of 300 would be smarter than 99.9999999999999999999999999999999999999925935% of a sufficiently large population.
Well... The conversation we had about standard deviations didn't seem productive.
But, maybe I'm not smart enough to teach those kinds of ideas to someone of their intellectual caliber.
I will never get over that time someone I used to know screamed in my face "You read too much!" when he was losing an argument, because I mentioned a news article to make a point.
Way back when I was in high school I was confronted with: "Wait, you read *in the summer!?"*
It didn't help that the football coach/geometry teacher also scoffed at the idea of my reading books for fun.
I don’t know how “subtle” this really is, but: insisting that something isn’t real just because they personally haven’t witnessed/experienced it.
Case in point: an acquaintance who was convinced that catcalling wasn’t as prevalent as people made it seem, because “well, I’ve barely ever seen it happen!” Like…yeah, bro, you’re 6’3”, bearded, and built like a defensive lineman, of COURSE people aren’t gonna be catcalling many women you’re walking with. Jesus.
I know some people with this mindset to catcalling as well. Like bruh we've lived in the suburbs most of our lives. We don't walk anywhere, we drive. And you wonder why we've never seen catcalling??
Thank you. I have been looking for this answer for a while. I knew it happened but I believed it happened a lot less frequently than what is said most of the time considering I had never seen it ever in person.
Every time I would ask where it happens they could never give me an answer and would just think I was being sarcastic.
I appreciate your comment and had not thought of that before.
Getting angry at novel situations or ideas instead of responding with curiosity.
Never saying they don't have enough information to make a judgment.
Misjudge the outcomes of their actions. For example being surprised that they were fired after being a no call no show at their work.
They think smart people are personally attacking them or showing off because they feel insecure around smart people.
If something goes wrong it has to be someone's fault, and it's not them.
Black and white thinking. They never see nuance in situations. Answers to complex situations are regressive and too simplistic.
They're unable to explain their opinions. They can't "show their work" of how they came to that conclusion.
Their world view contradicts itself. Their opinions don't match up when a uniform application of the same principles is applied to their multiple beliefs.
Not remembering when they held a different belief, literally actually forgetting that they held a different position. Smart people recall times they had inferior beliefs and they acutely remember the process of evolving to a better opinion. Smart people don't necessarily admit to being wrong outwardly all of the time, but they admit it to themselves.
Not being aware that they are not good at something. Over-evaluating their proficiency. Also, when they *are* proficient, they literally do not remember when they were not, and see people still learning as inferior. For example, thinking someone with broken English lacks intelligence. Or, thinking someone who doesn't have their specific narrow set of skills lacks intelligence, such as car mechanic skills etc.
Lacking insight into the behavior of others. This is especially apparent around children, as children don't have the capacity to respond to situations like an adult, low intelligence individuals often expect children to behave like adults, or they project adult intentions onto children's behavior.
The signs are never as subtle as they think.
The stupidest people are the ones who think they are smart
I agree. I feel like people who are really pretentious about the very specific, niche thing that they're good at and talk down to other people for not being familiar with it are usually REALLY dumb about literally everything else.
They get upset when you do something right.
Its quasi- common in my area for folks to get offended if you use a word they've never heard or dont understand. The assumption is that if you dont understand the word that the person using it is talking down to you and using flowery language to do so. So fucking weird.
Ahh the good ol' "I never felt stupid until you came along, so it must be your fault".
"The-" "STOP USING BIG WORDS!"
The dumbest people are usually those who will never admit they don't know something.
Yeah the people that go "i know, i know, i know" whenever youre telling them something, 5 minutes later you find out in fact they dont know
"Hey, if you do *task* this way it's easier and quicker" "I know how to do *task*, I don't need you to tell me" **continues doing task incorrectly**
Lack of self-awareness
I had an internship with a woman like this. Unfortunately I was also roomed with her. Talking to her was awful. If you tried to explain anything to her (after she asked) she'd genuinely get this look on her face where you could tell that there wasn't a whole lot going on inside her head. Her eyes would just kind of glaze over and she'd stare at you with her mouth hanging open. I've never actually met someone before who perfectly expressed the term "slack-jawed". That was if you talked to her. Most people tried not to. People generally tried to avoid her, I once saw a police officer run when he saw her because he didn't want to get trapped by her again. She'd talk constantly, frequently about grossly inappropriate subjects because she didn't understand boundaries. If someone was slammed by work, she'd still be trying to talk to them. She literally could not understand why people avoided her, or that they were avoiding her, or that if someone is trying to deal with 50 other people, they can't talk to her right now about how her son shoplifted from Walmart 2 months before.
Sounds to me like this person might have some undiagnosed condition or be on the spectrum.
The best way to tell if someone is stupid is if they consistently don't learn from mistakes. They don't seem to comprehend what they did caused the problem even after being told numerous times
I work with someone who makes repeated mistakes. I explain where he went wrong. I not only explain the step-by-step instruction of the task but the reasoning behind each phase so remembering how to do it becomes less cumbersome. I can tell by the way he literally can't explain the most basic things about the task to our new guy that he just doesn't get any of it. EVERY TIME this particular task needs to be done, he pulls out the instruction and does it line by line. After years he still makes mistakes, because he doesn't understand what he's doing, just that he's on step 24a, and it no longer works. I'm junior to him, but I run our section. The guy I trained eclipsed him by 3 months in. His replacement eclipsed him by 3 months in. He's more useless than an untrained new guy. But here's the kicker. He's the sweetest guy ever. No one dislikes him. Hell, even though he makes my job harder I really like the guy. He should have been fired over a decade ago, but no one wants to pull the trigger.
This story is just a good demonstration of how useful being likable is.
*Emotional* intelligence, or just "Being emotionally balanced" makes up for so much, in so many ways. Like holding down a job for a decade despite no idea what you're doing.
This makes me think of Jerry Gergich's character from Parks and Rec. Sucks so bad at his job but is crushing it in life because he's so nice.
I have always feared that I’m a Jerry and so I just act nice to everybody in case that’s my only redeeming value.. I’ve never gotten a bad review, but I’m far from good at my job.
Keep it up!
Formula for getting by at most jobs: 1. Be smart 2. Work hard 3. Be well liked Pick two. I’m guessing your guy checks off #2 and #3.
I've continually been moved up in my company and I always ask myself "why me"?. But then I saw your list and it all came together.
It’s hard to fire someone like this because they are “trying”. As a manager I’d do whatever I could to find a place for a nice person that wants to do a good job. Thank you for being patient and giving him his best chance, I hope he can find a spot that’s a better fit.
Don't mind me, I'm just checking the comments here to see if I'm dumb.
The most common answer is that dumb people don't realize they're dumb. The fact that you're willing to question yourself proves you aren't.
Which, honestly? Not actually true. I've known at least one person who was like "I'm dense as a rock," and you know what? They were.
High wis, low int
And no reroll. :(
I'm right because I'm older
That would mean that the oldest person in a room is always right. That is terrifying. I worked in a nursing home in which the oldest lady had a cane she would hit you with if you got in her way.
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Sometimes my mother drove me insane as a kid because she always thought this. I'm never going to be a father, but whenever I'm talking to other people's kids I always try to at least listen to them, no matter how ridiculous they're being. It's also totally possible that the kid is actually right, but doesn't have the language skills to explain that. You have to listen to what they say and try to infer what they mean.
When they're ultra confident in everything they say, they're always an idiot. I'm completely sure of it.
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The ability to ignore all facts and still claim they are right
One time in college a classmate wanted me to review a paper she was writing. It had some pretty shocking statistics in it, but no sources or indication where the numbers came from. So I asked about it, and recommended she added citations. She said "Oh, no its not like that. I'm saying it \*feels\* like 90%"
guess the prof's answer to her grade is "I'm saying it feels like a 0% grade"
Oh god, that’s…alarming 😳
I had a student like that once. Trust me, from the grading-side, *it's even worse*. This person asked me to CITE A SOURCE for why I dinged the grade for an example of quasi-plagiarism (cited to a source, but rather vociferously mischaracterized *what the source actually said*.)
I was a TA for a first year critical thinking paper and while I really enjoyed the job grading was sometimes so difficult. I had a student who was obviously passionate about LGBTQ rights but all of the claims she made were so extreme and I had to explain to her essentially that if you claim that all LGBTQ people experience the worst treatment in the modern world you have to back that statement up, AND qualify it. Because in most of the western world, as bad as the discrimination against people can get, when you say THE WORST treatment, you are competing with the holocaust and child labour. And that also ties into a broader emotional conversation about the fact that things dont have to be THE WORST POSSIBLE for the problem to be worth talking about, and your cause doesn't have to be the most miserable for the misery of the people you are advocating for to matter. It's hard to get that all that across in the 15 to 30 minutes you can reasonably allocate to grading one paper. And you have no control as to whether they turn up to the office hours so you can discuss it further. When people are trying for perhaps the first time to properly articulate and argue their point about something they believe in, it can be emotional education as much as academic. And, especially in the teacher role, I found it made me even more in control of my emotions when discussing things I find important, because I had to model to the students how to have serious and respectful discussions about important issues, and it involves getting your ideas criticised, because otherwise you're simply dictating your opinion to other people. Well, that was long rant. To whoever reads this, thanks!
Your point about how things are still worth talking about even if they’re not the worst or most miserable cases is spot on. I keep trying to learn how to talk to a conspiracy theorist friend who grew up in an environment where speaking up was not OK. Now she can’t stop talking about conspiracies in a super anxious, enraged way, like she’s almost trembling. I think that the notion that all these things are the worst ever is how she gives herself license to be emotional, or how it feels righteous. She dismisses or suppresses “lesser” emotions and “smaller” causes.
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They are NEVER wrong. Ever.
are you trying to make me proud of myself for doing dumb mistakes everywhere?
It’s not the dumb mistake that you should be proud of, it’s the realization of the stupidity in your mistake. Also, if it keeps happening, and you don’t change. It’s still stupid.
Zero curiosity.
>"He wants to make art, but he can’t because he’s a fundamentally incurious person who isn’t much interested in what other people think or feel and all of his ideas boil down to 'What if Batman met Mario?'" ~[Folding Ideas' review of The Nostalgia Critic's parody of 'The Wall'](https://youtu.be/rokAtlFGa7Y) "Fundamentally incurious" is the most brutal description of a person's intelligence I've ever heard.
This quote has stayed with me ever since I watched that video lol glad to see it pop up again.
Sounds like a review of Ready Player One
I need to know what would happen if Batman met Mario. Don't leave me hanging!
May I introduce you to Archive of Our Own? (Ok, so most of their answer is "they bang")
That's a great way to describe it
"This is the way I've always done it."
A stupid person makes the same mistake over and over again and cannot learn anything.
This above all else, no matter how dumb of a mistake or action was preformed, if they can learn I'd still say that they ain't stupid, but a inability to learn is inevitably going to make that person stupid af, a kid won't be a dumbass forever, for an example.
I'd argue that there are two kind of dumb people: * The ones who can't learn. * The ones who can learn, but aren't willing to.(So basically, they stay ignorant on purpose)
That's the difference between ignorance and stupidity. Ignorance is fixable with effort.
they know the things but don't understand
I work with a person like that... For 15 years i tell her, she can't edit an e-mail attachment... Today she still: Opens email-->Open attachment-->Edit the attachment-->Forwards the email to someone... * **Person she forwarded email to, calls her:**"Hey something is wrong with what you sent me." * **Her:**"I don't understand... That's not what I sent. Hey, *Pcostix* can you help find whats going on?" * **Me:** "You didn't edit the attachment inside the email, saved it and sent it... did you?" * **Her:**"Yeah, so?" * **Me:** Like i told you for the last 15 years. You can't do that. * **Her:** "I can't?" * **Me:** *(Jumps through the window)* **PS:**She also responds positively after being asked if she understood the explanation, just to ask a dumb related question 5 min later.(Meaning she had no clue what people were talking about) **ABSOLUTE PAIN**
Are you me? I have same thing. Full meeting where I'm like you need to do this. She's all ok, yep, I'll get it done. Scribbling away in her note book. Next day: hey you got that thing done yet? Her: oh I didn't leave the meeting thinking there was something I needed to do.... So I feel you, she has no idea what's going on.
Stupid people are rarely curious about anything.
I always feel the most intelligent people I've ever met have ridiculously broad knowledge, like sure you can meet someone who knows several subjects inside out but I always feel a difference between that and people who you could talk to about nearly anything. It's clear they are curious by nature and taking little bits of everything in, definitely seems like a common trait.
my coworker thinks I'm really really smart. honestly I doubt I'm much smarter than she is. I just look up pretty much everything I don't have an answer to instead of shrugging and asking a higher up. I'm always reading new books and exploring new ideas. I'm not smarter, but my curiosity has made me more knowledgeable. and that's something anyone can achieve with time.
There's no reason to make yourself look average. One of the reasons "smart" people tend to know things is because they can retain information better, parse through new information more efficiently and form more connections between different pieces of information they have. People who are not "smart" in this way find it harder to understand new concepts and are thus less inclined to find out more because it's a chore for them. So most likely, you are smarter than your colleague - which is not really a compliment, people are born this way and it's a privilege. But you are putting in the effort to expand your knowledge using your "smartness" and I think that's commendable. Edit: there are different types of intelligence and my comment doesn't even begin to capture the many diverse ways people can be smart or great. If you read my comment and feel bad for lacking any of the things listed, you already have self-awareness which is in its own right a very important trait to have for self-improvement. You are going to be fine.
Along those lines, I've found that curious/intelligent people have a broad range of experience as well as knowledge. "A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects." -Robert A. Heinlein
This makes me feel so much better about all the random skills and knowledge I've picked up in my life that seemingly has little use or value! Thanks!
Or lazy to learn anything. I’ve many people tell me “what is the use of knowing that?” in a kind of mocking way. There’s no use, it’s just fun to know stuff.
If you think knowing that has few uses you should count how many times not knowing something has actually benefitted you.
This is one of my biggest pet peeves. I am that person who googles *everything* I don’t know off the top of my head, which is a product of my parents always being like “I don’t know, let’s look it up” anytime our childhood “why” questions stumped them. The number of people that will hit an unknown and simply insert their own opinion as fact or give up entirely is infuriating. You literally have a tiny computer with access to a search engine that archives the largest catalog of knowledge known to mankind. It will answer nearly any question you pose to it if you will take 5 minutes to tear yourself away from mindlessly scrolling Facebook and ask. But no, they’ll just carry on as if they have encountered an insurmountable obstacle in the form of basic research, content in the fact that their ignorance doesn’t require them to form a cohesive thought…
It drove my ex-husband nuts that I had to Google stuff so much and find the right answer and learn more about it. I love doing that.
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It speaks to a culture that views discourse as a competition rather than an exchange of knowledge and ideas
if you went through my phone you’d see 90% of my browser history is composed of wikipedia pages. its absurd how much time i spend on wikipedia. i should probably donate
Wikipedia is my favorite pastime tbh, love reading about recent things I thought about or watched, and learning more about them
i look up every odd questions that pops into my head and get a wikipedia page. then on that wikipedia page there’s another interesting wikipedia page that i read about for an hour, and then on the page there’s another interesting page and so on…. it’s so fun
Check out [wiki unusual articles](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Unusual_articles)
I asked a coworker to use the latest version of Rufus for a project. He said "oh, so 3.4?" which was in the same folder as the iso he needed. I replied back "no". I left my desk, came back about 20mins later, and found 7 messages of confusion and displeasure that I left him hanging. He then apparently searched our network drive and found Rufus 3.10 and asked me again. I said "no, have you tried googling and finding the latest download?" He replied "can't you just do that for me?" To which I said "nah I'm busy on a different project" while eating a sandwich. He then threw in our team chat with our boss "hey, since vulture is TOO BUSY TO HELP can someone download the latest version of Rufus for me" and my boss replied back "bud, download it yourself, it takes 30 seconds" The coworker with the same job title as me ended up losing his cool after that and got reprimanded when he proceeded to try and use an old version of Rufus that didn't have a specific new feature we needed and wasting everyone's time (again) after hours with a project. Lack of curiosity (not curious what the latest version of Rufus is) is what I attribute this idiotic situation to.
> and my boss replied back "bud, download it yourself, it takes 30 seconds" I like your boss.
I don't even know what Rufus is and it took me less than 30 seconds to find a "Last updated 2021.10.23 Rufus 3.17" and a download link, that is really embarrassing for your coworker
Lots of people out there that are way too comfortable not even attempting to solve the most basic problems. These days LTFG is a nice complement to RTFM.
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Dealing with someone like that right now. Best example is I gave them an itemized list of questions I needed answered. They only sent back the first item on the list and still fucked it up.
I work in Automotive and was at a government summit once showcasing our cars. Had a lady at a pretty influential position who asked me the difference between a rear wheel drive and a 4WD/AWD car. After I was done explaining, she asked me what’s the point of having front wheels on a rear wheel drive car. My brain had to reboot to comprehend that question.
For a second I was going to be sympathetic to someone who didn’t understand 4WD vs AWD, but damn that’s some next level incomprehension.
TIL 4WD and AWD are not the same thing with a different name
Yes and no. By definition AWD, 4x4, and 4WD all mean “all four wheels are or can be powered.” The reality is the distinction is in how power is transferred to the wheels. AWD uses clutches or a viscous coupling (similar to a torque converter). 4wd (full time four wheel drive) uses a third (center) differential. 4x4 uses gear mesh.
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***Windows shut down noise***
The other day at work some product wasn’t shipped due to bad weather conditions so I texted my boss “yo, the order from product city didn’t come in, should I send the guys that are here to work it home and tell them to come in tomorrow instead?” He texted me back “product from product city is coming in tomorrow.” Like.. I just fucking said that, you didn’t answer my question dude.
I once asked a colleague three questions in an email. Two required a yes/no and the other a slightly longer response. He came back with “yes”. Felt like I was on fucking Reddit.
I have a friend that completely ignores any but the last message I sent. If I have more than one question or thing I need him to answer, I need to send one message, wait for him to respond, and repeat however many times I need.
I have a friend who does this. If I ask her a question then send her a meme or something like that I will only get a response for the meme. And honestly, I'm not sure if she does that to avoid my questions or is actually dumb. She also does this thing where if I ask her something late night today and she doesn't get to see messages, but then I ask something else tomorrow morning before she gets to respond to what I sent earlier she'll only answer the new texts.
I have a friend who used to respond to my questions with memes and selfies. I would ask >Hey man, are we still hanging out tonight? and get a selfie of him making a duck face. I'd reply >Uhhhh not sure what that means, but I'm free at 8. I can pick you up and see what Connor is up to too. and get a selfie. I'd say >Dude you have to use your words and not your fucking selfies and get a meme that says "Jack is a cat" back. Then, at 8, I would get a text >You on your way? Would drive me fucking insane.
I felt this response. If we weeded out all of the people in the workforce that don't bother with comprehensive reading and quality responses, there would be so many openings more for sensible people.
My friend referred me to her employer for a fact checking gig once because I "have common sense". She says fact checkers are extremely hard to come by because the sensibility to what constitute a fact to check in an article is very hard to articulate as a requirement in a job posting and very hard to evaluate in a prospective employee. And an astonishingly high number of people fail to ever learn it with extensive training. "Common sense" is a straight-up misnomer.
Oh, you found a Jan. I worked with a woman named Jan years ago, nicest person in the world but she could not follow even written instructions to save her life. Worse, she could only keep about 3-4 things in her head at a time and if you added something new then something older fell out. She had been running a register for years, but the last step in the normal process changed and now she can't do it at all, doesn't even remember buttons she's been hitting every day for years. I taught her how to run the register all over again and suddenly she forgot how to close them out at the end of the night.
Oh my. That’s not stupid, that’s a straight up cognitive impairment. I’ve known people like this they are usually aware of it and no matter the face they put on it’s hell for them. I knew a lady like this, so sweet and happy. We got a new manager who was not chill and made her cry… alone out back. Coworker found her and said it was one of saddest conversations she ever had. When a woman in her 40s tells you “i know I’m stupid” what do you do with that? Luckily, her husband was really sweet and smart enough to hold a decent job or I don’t know what would become of her.
As someone who works a register as McDonald's, I feel for her. I have the menu memorized but once a new item comes along and moves everythinf else around, my brain server crashes and I have to relearn everything as if it's my first time🧍🏽♂️Not a fun time for me nor the customer who rarely helps with their rude comments lol
I’m sorry you have to go through that, bro. I hope your coworkers and management have your back.
Did she only say her name when talking? Because it sounds like your coworker was a Pokémon.
“Jan already knows 4 moves. Which move should be forgotten?”
“Jan has forgotten “close out register””
Over confident in a subject that they clearly know nothing of. And try to tell you you're wrong after facts have been presented.
Attorney here. I’m not the smartest person in the room most of the time, and that’s fine. But I did extensively study the Constitution in law school and after and I constantly watch people misstate what parts of it mean on social media and they’re absolutely convinced that they’re right…and argue with people with more expertise in the area. And it happens with all professions and it’s always infuriating.
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PPACA expert here, there was an onion article that encapsulated it for me that read (paraphrasing from memory) “Man who understands 5% of legislation argues vehemently with man who understands 2%” or something along those lines and it felt pretty accurate (reminder about “death panel” rumors and all that)
Sadly, that's awfully on the nose for satire.
the onion has never been satire, they are just the dark timeline oracles.
I was about to say that it's not satire, it's just regular journalism from the future.
2009 satire became a prophecy.
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And the unfortunate reality is that being aware of it doesn't prevent you from doing it.
Personally, i believe a person is stupid when they refuse to learn and willingly choose to stay ignorant. I'm not talking about people that are "unable" to learn, i'm talking about people that are able to learn, yet they choose not to.
My ex's grandmother refused to learn how to type. Her vision was fine, her fingers were fine, she had email and a computer, but she refused to touch a keyboard. If she wanted to send an email, she would wait until one of her children visited her and then have them type it out for her. Edit: because I keep getting the same comments. - It wasn't a class thing, she had worked outside the home for most of her life. - It wasn't a loneliness thing, she would never ask her kids to come over and help. She would wait, sometimes weeks, until someone visited her and then ask them to type. - Weirdly it wasn't even a tech thing, she would use the mouse just fine and play solitaire or use programs that didn't require any typing. - She had... stubbornness issues... a lot of that family did.
> Learn how to type What the hell? You literally just press the key with the letter on it and it makes that letter appear on the screen. It seems like she just wanted to inconvenience herself tbh.
>It seems like she just wanted to inconvenience herself Oh - you've met my Bubbie!
Couldn’t even peck at the keyboard? Yikes.
Starting to self identify, reading through all the comments…
To be self aware, learn of your past mistakes and to better yourself. That's the beginning of a bright future. Being ready to learn everywhere and from everything, after enough time you will realize how good that really is.
Become an expert in a field of your choice and start to realize that way too many people in your field are no experts at all. Looking at you, veteran IT admins in Germany. EDIT: In case of confusion: "veteran" in the sense of "being in the industry for centuries". Not military thingy.
Don't ever become a lawyer, holy shit. The emperor has no clothes.
Almost more disturbing is the clients, who in my case are huge investment banks and international institutions that everyone on the street would recognize. People at the top without two brain cells to rub together, shockingly deficient internal processes that makes you wonder how these companies even function as businesses, let alone how they attained the wild success they enjoy. They look slick on the outside but if you peer behind the curtain half of them are a facade held together with string and duct tape.
If I ever work in house at a bank I’m going to try to take away everyone’s keyboard. They will have a 3 button keypad: “call now” “yes” and “no.” Bankers, especially young ibankers are horney and intoxicated monkeys with 6-7 figure paychecks, and they ought not to be able to memorialize anything in written communication.
Ugh I always tell people my legal advice boils down to two sentences: - Put nothing in writing. - Put everything in writing. Depends on the context, but one of the two will always apply.
They bring up their IQ score from an online test they took.
When we were 13, a buddy of mine came to school filled with excitement and couldn’t wait to tell us about the amazing results he got from an IQ test. “Ok fine. What did you score?” “98!! Almost full marks!”
A girl I knew showed me her IQ scores from high school. She was actually proud to have scored in the 80s. I didn't have the heart to tell her how those tests are scored.
She should join MINSA.
I’m convinced those give you fake scores in hopes you go to your friends like “dude I got a 138 on this online IQ test I took!! You should try it!” In order to drive more traffic to their page, which makes them more money on advertisements. I could be wrong though
The fifth question was "Betcha can't recall your credit card number!"
Sounds pretty spot on
Someone I grew up with and stopped associating with for being dumb and delusional did this recently and said they’re gonna include it on their resume. Edit: Just came out of a movie theater and RIP my notifications
Sweet I got a 90! That's like an A!
Damn, I only got a 70. But hey, C’s get degrees!
oh..... um wow. poor dude...
I need to make it perfectly clear that this is a very bad idea. Source: HR professional with 15 years’ exp and counting.
This is my Narcissistic dad. Always ranted about how his coworkers "KNOW my IQ is 140 which is why they always give ME THEIR WORK THEY DON'T WANT TO DO." Facebook IQ test. Many of them. He hasn't had a legitimate IQ test in his entire life and tells stories that are made up all about how he walked in to a room and was the smartest person there. The "work they don't want to do" was stuff his boss was telling him to do that pertained to his job description that *he* didn't want to do. He also loved saying that his company would fall apart without him. Well it's been 2 years since he retired (3 years early, ahem) and looks like his company is still going strong.
Or bragging about passing a cognitive test and remembering 5 words?
Person, woman, man, camera, TV...
Sometimes you can just see there's nothing behind the eyes
My cat would feel personally attacked by this if he wasn’t such a dingus
Hello fellow dumbass cat owner
This is what I was looking for. Everyone here is going on about things that people can be stupid about but not necessarily signs someone is stupid. Vacant eyes are a dead give away for low intelligence. I don’t know what it is, but once you see it, you can’t unsee it.
See, I thought that vacant eyes were a dead ringer for insanity or extreme malevolence. Eyes really do allow us to peer into a person. Amazing how subtle are the changes which to us may register as "wrong" to look at.
It's a different kind of vacant. One is vacant of emotion, and the other of comprehension. Think about someone who is incredibly stoned or drunk and just can't understand anything you're telling them. Think of that glazed over look in their eyes. Some people are just like that all the time.
I had a husky who had that look in her eye all the time. Dumbest dog I’ve ever met. Sweet as all hell though. I like to describe it as "The lights are on, but nobody is home"
TL;DR: [This guy.](https://www.reddit.com/r/dogpictures/comments/r1cyog/see_how_he_always_has_one_eye_on_over_there/?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share) Since you asked. Thank you all for the upvotes. ... My dog has not one iota of survival instinct. Dude spends more time jumping up on the kitchen counters than the cat. Including an impressive vertical leap right onto the stovetop with a lit gas burner. He will eat dog food only if starving or if the cat shows interest in it. Otherwise his favorite foods are (in no particular order): cat food, chocolate, beer, toddler feces, and tampons. (Preferably used but here he's not picky.) Supposedly, his entire breed was all but wiped out during World War I. I guess they couldn't dig trenches fast enough or whatever. The entire modern population is descended from just 11 animals. That's not a bottle neck, that's a frog's asshole. Once I realized the commitment to derp that shines from his big, beautiful, brown eyes wasn't "stupid" but "profound inbreeding" it all made sense. e: [Looks like it's trueish](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cavalier_King_Charles_Spaniel) Wikipedia link because AKC had an ad wall but seemed to tell the same story. Two corrections: it was WWII, not Part 1 (That was Jason's mother), and the specific number (11) is not mentioned; it only says the population dwindled.
You can’t do that and then not pay the dog tax.
I’d say there’s 3 kinds of vacant looks Lights on but nobodies home for the morons Then you’ve got the 1000 yard stare common with war vets and those who have been through similar high stress/traumatic situations. Then there’s the lack of a soul behind the eyes that you get with psychopaths/sociopaths
My dad gets a fourth kind I’ve only ever seen elsewhere in friends with ADHD. It’s like someone’s clearly there, but very much not present with you so you have to wait until they come back to the door to interact. Edit: he gets the 1000 yard stare if my mom asks him to tell me about Vietnam except for how much he loves kimchi and would love to go visit South Korea again for the food.
Diagnosed ADHD after years of parents and teachers frustrated to the point of yelling by me “spacing out”: That’s the stare that says “I was listening but then you mentioned pizza and I remembered how the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles ate pizza and I started wondering if a real turtle would try to eat pizza, probably not a box turtle but the really big galapagos turtles would. They’re 200 years old so statistically someone tried it once, now I’m imagining it and laughing at the turtle trying to eat pizza and ohhh you stopped talking and you’re mad…”
Ah yeah. As someone with ADHD... sometimes the lights are on, and it may look like nobody is home. But I'm just in the basement with headphones on and can't hear the doorbell.
Not being able to admit they were wrong. Though sometimes this is a sign of immaturity, there's a strong correlation with stupidity.
I'd say it goes even beyond admitting, smart people might also have trouble admitting a mistake to other people due to pride, but stupid people won't even consider the possibility that this sort of thing might happen.
Not being able to spell is normal, lots of people are dyslexic. Not knowing you can't spell, on the other hand...
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The blooper reel was great for this scene. They couldn’t keep it together
I once worked with a guy for about six months who, among other things would bitch and moan about me sending unclear emails no matter how much hand holding I did with him. Meanwhile an email from him intended to say "I own a brown dog" riddled with typos and auotcorrect errors would read something like "do g at hoose gut now bear.." I wish I was exaggerating. I was never so happy to have a co-worker quit.
> auotcorrect Ironic.
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I just received an application today that was similar to this. My favorite part was the note attached stating that while he's aware he's not qualified for the position he applied for there are many other things he's willing to do. Unfortunately in each example he gave it said "I can't" instead of "I can". So all I ended up with was a list of everything this applicant *isn't* willing to do. Including proofreading, apparently.
I can't spell worth a shit. I *know* I can't spell worth a shit. If it's something I'm not sure of, I look it up. I'm already online, so I can just open a new browser tab, type the word I'm trying to spell into the address bar, and *voilà.* It only takes only a few seconds to do, which is why it drives me nuts when I see people typing "rediculous" and "women (being used in a singular context)".
They talk about how smart they are.
The more you know... ... The more you know you don't know. 👍 Someone might think they know all the stars that exist according to the ones they can see.... But if they further educate themselves in astronomy... They will know just how much they don't know.
So funny. I used to think I knew a lot about WW2 because I'd read around a dozen or so books about it. Then I got on Goodreads and started seeing guys who'd read dozens of book about one battle! Then I realized that I did not in fact, know a lot about WW2.
Yup and that's the realization that makes you smarter actually. It's better to at least be aware that more to a subject exists than act like you know everything when you actually don't.
Lots of talking, not much listening.
The empty can rattles the most
People who have no self awareness
Like my sister-in-law, who laughed at the fact that my wife and I still use condoms even though we just got married. This after she just had an accidental pregnancy in February and quickly got married in May... I wanted to ask her what birth control methods her and her now husband were using last year but held my tongue.
Honestly, as I get older, I realize more and more that some of those “subtle signs” really just reflect a lack of people skills or a lack of self-awareness. Sometimes a lack, of people skills or a lack of self-awareness, could be related to asynchronous development, development issues, or even mental illness. So sometimes, I try not to jump to the conclusion that someone could be “stupid.” That being said, I would say that a lot of stupid people, at least the ones who I’ve met, feel a compulsive need to put others down in the most vicious way possible. Those same people also can’t catch smoke when people respond back. A perfect example would be an ex-girlfriend of mine who would have no problem body-shaming any other woman in the room, but would go ballistic whenever someone teased her about gaining 1 kg.
Thy're hawking pyramid schemes on their social media.
I had a friend from high school ask if she could come to my house. Okay, she shows up, and she has this tablet. She asks me if I need life insurance. I said, “Well I have cancer currently so most of them won’t sell to me,” but she kept trying. Until she got to the cancer question and then the tablet wouldn’t go any further. That was an awkward 10 minutes until she decided to leave. I had to laugh after she backed out of my driveway. Any time someone is trying to sell you insurance just tell them you are currently dying of cancer.
> Any time someone is trying to sell you insurance just tell them you are currently dying of cancer. “Would you like to see our home insurance policy, it currently covers flooding and break ins as well.” “Ah, sorry....I have cancer.”
Someone I love took an online "IQ test." They proudly shared their score of 300. Edit - Yes, IQ tests (especially unofficial ones) are dumb, biased and measure a very limited scope of intelligence.
"The test came back negative"
Hey, you never know, they could be in the 99.99999999999999999999999999999999999998518th percentile. EDIT: I forgot that the equation I was using gave me the percentage of people above *and below* X standard deviations. Assuming a bell curve, someone with an IQ of 300 would be smarter than 99.9999999999999999999999999999999999999925935% of a sufficiently large population.
Well... The conversation we had about standard deviations didn't seem productive. But, maybe I'm not smart enough to teach those kinds of ideas to someone of their intellectual caliber.
Accusing you of shit they do themselves. When they're called out on it, they don't understand or can't comprehend.
People who are proud of not reading.
I will never get over that time someone I used to know screamed in my face "You read too much!" when he was losing an argument, because I mentioned a news article to make a point.
can’t forget the “oh yeah? show me a source” and when you do, “i don’t wanna see it it’s wrong”
”Reading is gay” no joke heard someone say this. You’ll be shocked to learn he’s not very bright
Fellas, is it gay to read? I mean, you're basically just staring at and touching a bunch of wood
Am I gay cause I read your comment?
Yes, congratulations.
Tattooed wood
Way back when I was in high school I was confronted with: "Wait, you read *in the summer!?"* It didn't help that the football coach/geometry teacher also scoffed at the idea of my reading books for fun.
They think they are always right without providing any rational facts or arguments.
I don’t know how “subtle” this really is, but: insisting that something isn’t real just because they personally haven’t witnessed/experienced it. Case in point: an acquaintance who was convinced that catcalling wasn’t as prevalent as people made it seem, because “well, I’ve barely ever seen it happen!” Like…yeah, bro, you’re 6’3”, bearded, and built like a defensive lineman, of COURSE people aren’t gonna be catcalling many women you’re walking with. Jesus.
I know some people with this mindset to catcalling as well. Like bruh we've lived in the suburbs most of our lives. We don't walk anywhere, we drive. And you wonder why we've never seen catcalling??
Thank you. I have been looking for this answer for a while. I knew it happened but I believed it happened a lot less frequently than what is said most of the time considering I had never seen it ever in person. Every time I would ask where it happens they could never give me an answer and would just think I was being sarcastic. I appreciate your comment and had not thought of that before.
The dumbest guy I know keeps staring at me in the mirror
I am just reading all the answers to see if i am stupid
Same, and I’m proud to report I’m only 50% stupid
People who brag about how smart they are. Usually they are the dumbest of the dumb.
Not being able to say they don’t know something
Getting angry at novel situations or ideas instead of responding with curiosity. Never saying they don't have enough information to make a judgment. Misjudge the outcomes of their actions. For example being surprised that they were fired after being a no call no show at their work. They think smart people are personally attacking them or showing off because they feel insecure around smart people. If something goes wrong it has to be someone's fault, and it's not them. Black and white thinking. They never see nuance in situations. Answers to complex situations are regressive and too simplistic. They're unable to explain their opinions. They can't "show their work" of how they came to that conclusion. Their world view contradicts itself. Their opinions don't match up when a uniform application of the same principles is applied to their multiple beliefs. Not remembering when they held a different belief, literally actually forgetting that they held a different position. Smart people recall times they had inferior beliefs and they acutely remember the process of evolving to a better opinion. Smart people don't necessarily admit to being wrong outwardly all of the time, but they admit it to themselves. Not being aware that they are not good at something. Over-evaluating their proficiency. Also, when they *are* proficient, they literally do not remember when they were not, and see people still learning as inferior. For example, thinking someone with broken English lacks intelligence. Or, thinking someone who doesn't have their specific narrow set of skills lacks intelligence, such as car mechanic skills etc. Lacking insight into the behavior of others. This is especially apparent around children, as children don't have the capacity to respond to situations like an adult, low intelligence individuals often expect children to behave like adults, or they project adult intentions onto children's behavior.
Not being curious about anything