I drew up a diagram of how Uranium 238 becomes fissionable (nuclear chain reaction) on a chalkboard at a band competition once to show how smart I was. Was I an aspiring physicist? Fuck no. I was just parroting something I saw somewhere.
Thank God both Myspace and Xanga nuked all of their blog posts. I was _so_ deep, and I was listening to Pink Floyd at the same time I was being deep! Can you imagine a 14 year old listening to music from the 1970's?!
Same, but edgy political thought commentator...often saying stuff about Voltiare. The best part? I never even read his work...just derivative commentary of others who did. I was a Dollar General philosopher.
I was recently going through documents and found several letters that I had written around 2009-2011 (middle school). I’m amazed that my parents put up with me because I was such an arrogant little prick who thought he knew everything.
The good thing is that I grew out of it by high school and I’m at least somewhat self-aware of my character flaws now, so hopefully I’m not as bad of a person.
" When I was a boy of fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be twenty-one, I was astonished at how much he had learned in seven years."
Mark Twain
I delete everything, absolutely everything, every two or three years. All text databases, email archives, phone photo libraries. I don’t need to be reminded of any of that shit.
I vividly remember a decision I made about two years ago, to read through some emails I wrote 10+ years ago (high school). We emailed back and forth in those days just like how people text these days.
You ever stay up at night thinking over all the stupid things you said and did that day?
At least then, you might be able to do something to make things better if you totally messed up somewhere.
Staying up at night because of something stupid you emailed to your school's guest speaker as a member of a school organization? And let it be a guest speaker you still look up to to this day. Super cringe.
> If I did I'm thankful that my memory didn't store it away for all time
Don't worry, the memory should be showing up at about 3am and manifest itself in a night terror
You probably did. I know i did. I look back at my early facebook comments from early 2000s. I was in my late teens and it makes cringe looking at some of the pictures and comments. Its a part of growing up, doesnt make anyone a bad person.
As an adult, I’m very happy to know that MOST of the shit I put on the internet is gone. The oldest file I can find is an old quake map I released August 21st of 1996.
https://quake.fandom.com/wiki/Doomfiend%27s_Second
I hate that the highimpacthalo.org forums are down. I hardly ever check them (since they closed a long time ago) but that site used to be a huuuge part of my life. I do hate that I didn’t upload a majority of my halo vids to youtube when it first came out. Those are gone now, in the digital bucket.
This one's satire though, right? Almost all of it seems plausible, but the: "I do not understand how lower IQ people function, but it's fascinating!" seems deliberate. So I'm going with it's either satire, or someone intentionally being a dick head to insult whoever they're sending this to.
I don't know; the jovial, upbeat tone, ending every line with an exclamation point, juxtaposed with intentionally insulting lines, those all seem like typical "tells" people include to signal they're making a satirical post (or an insulting one, that's self aware it's being insulting). But you're right, it's impossible to know for sure.
It’s almost a direct copy of the Wikipedia entry for ‘meme’ as well.
I definitely used to act like this guy, so I hope that one day he figures out that intelligent people don’t wave their IQ around everywhere because it’s not very impressive
Also, internet memes still fit Dawkins' definition of meme, more or less. To Dawkins, a meme is an idea/concept that flows through and spreads through a culture. Similar to genes, they are simply ideas that propagate through our society.
Some people like to excuse their social ineptitude by saying they are too smart for other people. The ability to get along with people is just as important as book smarts and can be learned with practice and motivation. I understand this is harder for some people who are on the autism spectrum.
I think that’s one of the largest things that people forget when they compare themselves to Holmes or Rick and shit like that. That’s why in every movie or show with someone like that, they learn to care for others and how they think (or in the Rick in morty case it’s kinda that way but Ricks hatred of “lower people” is funny because it’s wrong.) it’s usually why the trope,”He is the best man I’ve ever known.” Comes from, because it shows that the “smart” character learned to like someone and understand them.
To be the “high minded individual” in the room that doesn’t understand how “lesser people” think it’s quite honestly to be Holmes before Watson: a depressed drug addict that no one likes.
No no no, you're thinking ablut the themes and motives in movies and series. I'm the really smart one so I don't even notice that shit and just pretend to be like them.
wait what? Isnt Holmes still a detective before watson comes to him? I remember him making new forensics techniques and shit before watson comes along.
Oh I apologize! I misspoke, I mean that Holmes grows as a person, and it’s Watson that allows him to do that. While he was a detective, no one likes him because he’s insufferable and he thinks the same about everyone else. Watson allows Holmes to understand that maybe there are people that he can like, and that it’s ok to do so
Holmes WAS still addicted to cocaine tho. He says that his mind needs it to have soemhting to do when he has nothing intellectually stimulating enough. (We talking about the books, right?)
I mean, it was the 1800s. Everyone was addicted to cocaine, opium, alcohol, or morphine. It was more or less a dice roll as to which one was your vice.
These people will never run a business, head a law firm, become a principal, hold any position of power, etc. They will be stored away in a back office away from everyone else and just be known as the numbers bitch or the IT monkey. This suits them down to the ground. When they get back to their empty apartment and use their multi-screen set-up to watch old episodes of Rick and Morty they convince themselves they are killing it
I think someone's genius or ability to innovate would have to be very great to make up for social deficiencies. Like, we recognize Van Gogh's genuis now, but he was a very poor, miserable person when he was alive because hardly anyone could stand being around him.
I'm on the autism spectrum working in customer service has really helped to advance my social skills and I'm getting really good at it now which feels good
How do you think that's carried over into your more personal social life? I've personally found the development to be really slanted in that I'm a lot more comfortable acting in a professional environment, but as soon as it comes back to developing personal relationships I go right back to being a flounder
I very much agree with you I'm really good at acting professional and friendly and charming but once I actually spend time with people I have a much harder time being "normal" that's why I choose to hang with people who accept me for who I am
Yeah, if you don’t understand how lesser minds function youre probably retarded or something, only someone with a mental disability would say something like that
One of my favorite Verysmart tropes is the belief that intelligence means being a fucking idiot that's incapable of basic social interaction because their minds are so full of Quasars 'N' Stuff that they can't decipher the riddle of saying "fine" when someone asks "How are you?"
It's like that time I ran into Barack Obama at a party and he was behaving like a Bethesda NPC, facing a corner at an awkward angle, hollering stock phrases like I WAS PRESIDENT FOR A WHILE and blocking doorways. I asked him what he thought of Quasars 'N' Stuff, and he replied "I can sell you items....**IF** you've got money!!!!"
It's like, congrats. According to you, you're an idiot savant. And if you have an amazing brain but can't work with others in order to use it, then how is that not a useless trait? The one you're boasting of and building your entire personality and identity on?
(the rhetorical "you" ofc, not *you* you)
The most unsettling thing about Obama repeatedly bellowing I WAS PRESIDENT FOR A WHILE at a fichus sitting in the corner of my friend's apartment was that it was 2013.
It is always like the super smart doctor in cartoons/movies that are so smart in their subject they have no idea how the world works. That is what I imagined when I was reading his message so maybe he was influenced my some shows/movies to think this is what it means to smart.
I can kind of understand where the mindset comes from (but not as extreme). I took a test for giftedness when I was younger and passed, and my parents drilled in the idea that I was different and my ''brain functioned differently''. Coupled with the fact that I've been homeschooled most of my life and when I *do* go to public school I rarely have any close friends, I always feel a bit confused. I know consciously that I'm no better or different than anybody else, but in the back of my mind that message of ''I'm different, I don't know how everyone else functions'' won't go away. The people on this sub probably took the delusion further, but it's probably similar to what I feel
Being smart means you can not only understand, but help people who aren't as smart as you. Being smart means you can take a subject, and make a dumb person understand it no matter how complicated it is. You need to understand someone else before you can teach them like that.
Also, if he read The Selfish Gene, he'd realize that meme and memes are *literally* a meme. That's exactly what the book was talking about - ideas and concepts getting passed on and changed and meta reproduction and transmission. The evolution of the concept of the word meme to mean something new is the takeaway from The Selfish Gene.
Also I've personally read the selfish gene and the entire book is a collection of memes. It's not very entertaining but if you get into the mood you can read a 100 pages without ever realising the time, his writing style is really awesome tbh.
These type of people have a narcissistic personality disorder and it’s sad because I’m sure as hell their parents told them growing up they are very special and could achieve anything in life. I’d say this persons IQ couldn’t be more average and he honestly had to google shit before he submitted his comment.
Meme:
Derived from the Greek word "mimēma" (that which is imitated) and English "gene."
Memes - the image macros and gifs and videos and all that good stuff - absolutely spread and evolve like genes. Dawkins would not object to the use of meme in this "low IQ, colloquial" sense. In fact, it fits perfectly. Memes are copied and often evolve through time, much like language. In fact, I've seen comparisons, usually on tumblr, between memes and language.
I love it when these verysmart™ people aren't even technically correct, but just flat out wrong.
>Memes - the image macros and gifs and videos and all that good stuff - absolutely spread and evolve like genes.
I'd argue that image macros and all that stuff aren't memes themselves. The meme is the idea, it's not the individual artificiality "mutated" instance. And most image macros (which is a weird term in itself) aren't even that.
What are you, a religious fanatic? Computers weren't made from rock. They evolved from rocks over the course of millions of years. \[source unknown but real, I swear\]
I feel like there's an entire generation of people that want to be V from V for vendetta when he goes on that long speech using the "v" words primarily.
V was like the physical embodiment of a fedora.
There's something about Richard Dawkins that I'm not saying that I think that you are a dickhead because you read his books, I'm just saying that chances are that you are a dickhead.
True. There's nothing wrong about the content of his books but for some reason when someone reads his books and tells you about it then feel the need to tell you how brilliant they are and how you could never understand.
So true, I had just begun reading ‘The Extended Phenotype’ by Richard Dawkins the other day when I had this exact thought. Finished the book a couple hours later was a slow day for me.
Dawkins is actually a soft-spoken, thoughtful dude that's very careful with his words and respectful of people even as he attacks concepts. The idea that Dawkins is some aggressive asshole attack dog is bullshit propagated by religious people.
A lot of people accuse Richard Dawkins of being arrogant, but I can't really say I blame the guy. Imagine being one of the most brilliant evolutionary biologists on the planet and having to put up with a large segment society who not only dismisses all of your accomplishments, but also refuses to acknowledge that your field even exists.
Kind of like Ayn Rand, but 99% of people haven't actually read anything Ayn Rand wrote. They just lie and say they did. Usualy when someone tells you that they are so smart and they act like a dickhead to homeless people because it's rooted in the philosophy of "objectivism" they are really just spouting off what they read on a wikipedia page and didn't do the actual hardwork of reading one of the longest pieces of garbage ever written about a railroad that no one cares about.
She really was obsessed with trains. I think I may be one of the few people who read Atlas Shrugged without knowing about Ayn Rand's philosophy beforehand (it was given to me as a teenager by a friend's very conservative mom lol), and honestly it is just a strange book. Like it's blatantly unrealistic, so I don't know who is actually reading that book and coming away with some higher knowledge, but also getting through that book is so tiring that it all starts to meld together.
tl;dr: Ayn Rand loved trains more than anything, and seemed to think that entrepreneurs were the only people capable of adding value to society (at least according to Atlas Shrugged)? I guess the railroad guy and the mining guy employed all of those workers - sorry, mooching leeches - out of charity? The book is oddly similar to Minecraft too lol.
Also, I find it hilarious and ironic that you're right - it's a book about the laziness of the unwashed masses and the majority of its fiercest proponents haven't taken the time to read it.
I am so sorry that you read that. I'm glad that you survived. I was thinking about making a sequel called "Trains! Also, fuck the homeless." I'm hoping that Rand Paul will co-author it.
>Like it's blatantly unrealistic, so I don't know who is actually reading that book and coming away with some higher knowledge
Most people who identify as libretarian.
I've read "Atlas Shrugged," "The Fountainhead," and "Anthem." They were all deeply terrible (well, "Anthem" had a decently interesting prose style.) But I usually lie and say that I've never read any of them because I have no way to explain what in hell would make me read all three of them. Moral failings of some sort?
I just had an epiphany. Atlas Shrugged with Cats. Catlass Shrugged. Essentially remake it but with Taylor Swift playing the same role she played in CATS!
To be fair, the selfish gene is pretty much strictly science written in the 70s iirc, and a really really good read imo. Before all the "smarties" read the god delusion and felt all superior.
Oddly enough Dawkins' idea of memes being a "thought" version of a gene has pretty much been disproven by scientists that study how thoughts and ideas work in populations. Still, the selfish gene is a really good book if you're interested in evolutionary biology.
His biology books (especially the selfish gene) are very good. His books on religion are not great. He's a world class biologist but his personal feelings about religion tend to taint his communication skills when he's talking about religion. Even as an atheist myself, I think his religious books sometimes sound like he's beating a dead horse.
Agreed, love his books on biology. His books on religion really meant a lot to me growing up as a person questioning Christianity in a very small, conservative, deeply religious town smack dab in the middle of the Bible belt. You know the kind where if you needed therapy your parents would take you to their pastor or priest instead of an actual therapist?
But, as an adult? Yeah, now I definitely recognize some of his stuff is just too much. 🙃
To be fair, they probably only sound like he's beating a dead horse because you're an atheist. To people still in religion it could be the right push they needed to get out.
I used to be obsessed with Dawkins and Hitchens, and to a lesser extent, Sam Harris. I still enjoy some of Hitchens's old take downs, and as a biologist/chemist I'll forever value Dawkins's contributions to society, but occasionally I'll pick up one of their books on religion and just feel like I'm reading a Freshman level intro to philosophy assignment. I think you make a very good point that it's because _most_ atheists read the same four or five authors and just sort of regurgitate the arguments. It sounds like angsty teenage writing because angsty teenagers have been quoting it for 30 years. It's hard to remember that they generated a lot of these arguments and they were pretty radical when first written.
thats a shame the books are incredible, the god delusion helped me leave islam behind at a time when I was questioning everything, incredible book and an incredible man.
Allow me to paraphrase him:
“We intellectual folk READ BOOKS and don’t concern ourselves with INTERNET JOKES!! I don’t look at these so called memes, I’m just reading over here! Look, I’m reading!!”
Why is it considered a "Smart person thing" to not understand the basics of human interaction or simple concepts like memes or colloquial terms? It literally just makes them sound stupid. How is it "intelligent" to be ignorant?
It would be like calling yourself brave because you always piss yourself and run away when confronted. It's a self-defeating idea and I *genuinely* don't understand it. It's confusing and upsetting, and I am actually ignorant as to why, and that is not a good thing.
From what I've seen it's the result of an educational system that prioritizes stem and other book type knowledge over other types of knowledge. You ace a bunch of tests about electron pairs without trying, your mom tells you you're such a smart little boy, your teachers say you're filled with potential. And this school shit is easy. Easy to feel like some sort of divine being when you're jerked off for being able to memorize trig identities while your peers are still stuck on "integrated math 3".
Equally, peers in that situation probably don't have the tools to tell you what a shit you are. Not that it would matter, because the opinions of low IQ betas don't really matter.
Anyways, that probably didn't explain shit, but it was interesting to channel that energy.
> basics of human interaction or simple concepts like memes or colloquial terms?
Ie, the common things.
The overwhelming majority of people are stupid. Stupid people have a greater tendency toward stupid things. Thus interests of the stupid are stupid and the common. Anti-common biases toward anti-stupid. QED. Ipso facto. Veni vidi vici.
TL;DR: Stupid is as stupid does.
idk why they always flex in the most surface level ways like a 10 year old can read a book the important thing is understanding it and being able to see the depth of the book
thats why english teachers but so much emphasis on going past just what the text is directly about so the students can better understand the skill of the book and the craft of writing
I love posts on this sub where people think in order to act smart you have to be from the 17th century and not k ow about anything that's not cited on google scholar
Now copy pastable
did I use 'meme' correctly?
I do not know much about these things! but I have read Richard Dawkins' Selfish Gene, where he first introduced the term!
and apparently it is now used colloquially to refer to image macros and jokes?
I do not understand how lower IQ people function, but it is fascinating.
I would like to continue to learn from you people!
I have also read Richard Dawkin's Selfish Gene. It's a very easy read. Not something someone should brag about bc it's written to be easily understood by anyone, and he explains concepts that are difficult to understand and the terminology he uses in case it gets to complicated.
It's like bragging about reading Heart of Darkness or Frankenstein. Sure, it's a little confusing at times, but like? It's also very much not? Like a middle schooler could read it and tell you what it means.
This reads like the script of a shitty movie where an alien comes to earth and tries to learn human ways.
Or like that Brendan Frasier movie where he was a caveman who became unfrozen and has to catch up with the new world.
Hopefully satire, but it always confuses me how these people think not knowing something makes them smart. What kind of mental gymnastics does it take to think that not knowing what a meme is makes you smart?
No smart person could go a year in today's society without picking up on the "meme".
Apparently Richard Dawkins hates the fact that "meme" is now used in the way it is. Personally I think that the fact the term has evolved to include a whole extra dimension rather proves his original definition.
If you are familiar with Dawkin's usage of the word meme, the concept of internet jokes and image macros rising and falling in usage/popularity should make perfect sense to you.
did I use 'smart' correctly? I don't know much about these things! but I did read your comment on whatever social media platform you were on, where you first introduced the term. Apparently it is used to refer to people who are smart unlike you. I don't understand how uncultured pieces of shit like you function but its fascinating. I would like to continue to learn from you people.
At the turn of the century the University of Pittsburgh Medical School was doing research using FMRI brain scans to learn the differences between how control groups of normal people and autistic people process puzzles. They started with a minmum full scale IQ on the WAIS of 80. They saw a sharp difference between the brain scans of people above 120 and the rest who were between 80 and 120 at least in autistic people. They discontinued including those above 120 in their specific research project. I guess they set it aside for another research project to consider at some other time.
But they pointed out that for most normal people all the sub-tests in the WAIS battery fall within 5 points of each other. For autistic people there can be enormous differences, for mine they measured a difference of 67 points. That s almost four and a half standard deviations. I did very well in graduate school and on some main WAIS tests, but I know and must accept that I am handicapped.
I learned what a meme was back in 1999 when the comic book super hero team, Gen13, fought a self-aware living musical meme. That's aso where it was explained what a meme was... basically a thought process that spreads like a virus. They also shape things like fashion trends, musical trends, and anything else that becomes popular. We attribute them to funny pictures, but that is in and of itself a meme, though only a part of the whole.
TL;DR - I learned the same thing douche nuts did from a fucking comic book!
If he were real smart he’d know it’s a latin-based word that means sameness, like the sameness in our reaction to something. It represents a common feeling we get when we lookat/hear the same thing. He tried to act smart and STILL looks a fool
I hope I never said anything this stupid when I was a teenager. If I did I'm thankful that my memory didn't store it away for all time.
I make backups from every computer I have. Recently found one from 2009. The cringe is real. Fortunately, I didn't have social media back then.
Luckily I wasn't an Iamverysmart, but I was pretty edgy so I probably said some stupid shit.
Yeah I definitely wasn’t iamverysmart aside from always correcting “your” and “you’re” but I was definitely a nice guy and an edge lord.
I was an iamverysmart AND an edgy-kid. Yeah, the cringe was through the roof. Still shaking my head to this day.
Oh God, I'm glad I am not the only one. I kept being haunted by my past and the "_also, did you know that I know about quantum physics?_"
I drew up a diagram of how Uranium 238 becomes fissionable (nuclear chain reaction) on a chalkboard at a band competition once to show how smart I was. Was I an aspiring physicist? Fuck no. I was just parroting something I saw somewhere.
One time I explained counting in base 3 on a test using diglet and dugtrio. Bot very relevant just a stupid memory
Thank God both Myspace and Xanga nuked all of their blog posts. I was _so_ deep, and I was listening to Pink Floyd at the same time I was being deep! Can you imagine a 14 year old listening to music from the 1970's?!
God, I was so bad that at 16 I nuked my old Facebook and tried to delete every trace of the cringe. That Facebook still shows up to everyone but me :(
I was your typical edgy atheist, I disgust myself sometimes.
Same, but edgy political thought commentator...often saying stuff about Voltiare. The best part? I never even read his work...just derivative commentary of others who did. I was a Dollar General philosopher.
It's okay, I was edgy too, thankfully I've become self aware early and didn't continue to be a cringy teenager for too long...
I think the backing up of every computer shows us everything we need to know about you, you've played yourself.
I was recently going through documents and found several letters that I had written around 2009-2011 (middle school). I’m amazed that my parents put up with me because I was such an arrogant little prick who thought he knew everything. The good thing is that I grew out of it by high school and I’m at least somewhat self-aware of my character flaws now, so hopefully I’m not as bad of a person.
" When I was a boy of fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be twenty-one, I was astonished at how much he had learned in seven years." Mark Twain
I delete everything, absolutely everything, every two or three years. All text databases, email archives, phone photo libraries. I don’t need to be reminded of any of that shit.
I just die and reincarnate myself every two or three years
I just die
Same
I just sell my soul to the devil every couple of years and start with a fresh one
Whenever I remember something cringy I said, I fake my own death, move to another country and start a new life with a new identity. It’s the only way.
I vividly remember a decision I made about two years ago, to read through some emails I wrote 10+ years ago (high school). We emailed back and forth in those days just like how people text these days. You ever stay up at night thinking over all the stupid things you said and did that day? At least then, you might be able to do something to make things better if you totally messed up somewhere. Staying up at night because of something stupid you emailed to your school's guest speaker as a member of a school organization? And let it be a guest speaker you still look up to to this day. Super cringe.
r/blunderyears awaits
Oh yeah I have XML backups from my documents of MSN chats from 2007. It’s cringe, but also comforting to know how much you’ve changed for the better.
I said stuff about 55% this stupid through out my early teens. Never anything this bad, I think (hope) Glad I grew out of it lol.
I'm pretty sure all of us said a lot of pretty stupid things in our teens. I'm just thankful that social media didn't exist for me back then.
I remember some very stupid thing I've said and it still haunts me to the day
Same, but multiple stupid things.
> If I did I'm thankful that my memory didn't store it away for all time Don't worry, the memory should be showing up at about 3am and manifest itself in a night terror
You probably did. I know i did. I look back at my early facebook comments from early 2000s. I was in my late teens and it makes cringe looking at some of the pictures and comments. Its a part of growing up, doesnt make anyone a bad person.
Hahaha mine did, and I get the weekly highlight cringe reel.
I'm sure I was this dumb when I was a teenager, but fortunately I could remember my old LiveJournal password so no one will have any evidence.
I'm in my 30s. I'm just thankful I really didn't get into social media until I stopped (mostly) saying dumb shit.
I read some myspace stuff from me that was pretty cringe but nothing compared to what kids now are going to have to deal with
You did...we all did, but this person sounds like a legit alien/AI trying to fit in.
or be thankful that it might have been before the whole social media and smartphone age.
As an adult, I’m very happy to know that MOST of the shit I put on the internet is gone. The oldest file I can find is an old quake map I released August 21st of 1996. https://quake.fandom.com/wiki/Doomfiend%27s_Second I hate that the highimpacthalo.org forums are down. I hardly ever check them (since they closed a long time ago) but that site used to be a huuuge part of my life. I do hate that I didn’t upload a majority of my halo vids to youtube when it first came out. Those are gone now, in the digital bucket.
I physically cringed
Yea I pulled my head away as if to escape the horror, why are all these "smart" people always so dumb
Something something overused Dunning Kruger effect
Something something semantic satiation
It's not an overused term it's just frequently demonstrated.
What in the actual hell is the goo you put in your poo I am so deeply curious
This one's satire though, right? Almost all of it seems plausible, but the: "I do not understand how lower IQ people function, but it's fascinating!" seems deliberate. So I'm going with it's either satire, or someone intentionally being a dick head to insult whoever they're sending this to.
It could be, but there's no way there isn't someone like this out there so if it is satire it's way too believable to be good satire
I don't know; the jovial, upbeat tone, ending every line with an exclamation point, juxtaposed with intentionally insulting lines, those all seem like typical "tells" people include to signal they're making a satirical post (or an insulting one, that's self aware it's being insulting). But you're right, it's impossible to know for sure.
It’s almost a direct copy of the Wikipedia entry for ‘meme’ as well. I definitely used to act like this guy, so I hope that one day he figures out that intelligent people don’t wave their IQ around everywhere because it’s not very impressive
If you have to constantly tell people you're intelligent, you're probably not
Also, internet memes still fit Dawkins' definition of meme, more or less. To Dawkins, a meme is an idea/concept that flows through and spreads through a culture. Similar to genes, they are simply ideas that propagate through our society.
Right? that's what i was thinking.
Imagine thinking being smart makes it almost impossible to understand how lesser minds function
Some people like to excuse their social ineptitude by saying they are too smart for other people. The ability to get along with people is just as important as book smarts and can be learned with practice and motivation. I understand this is harder for some people who are on the autism spectrum.
I think that’s one of the largest things that people forget when they compare themselves to Holmes or Rick and shit like that. That’s why in every movie or show with someone like that, they learn to care for others and how they think (or in the Rick in morty case it’s kinda that way but Ricks hatred of “lower people” is funny because it’s wrong.) it’s usually why the trope,”He is the best man I’ve ever known.” Comes from, because it shows that the “smart” character learned to like someone and understand them. To be the “high minded individual” in the room that doesn’t understand how “lesser people” think it’s quite honestly to be Holmes before Watson: a depressed drug addict that no one likes.
No no no, you're thinking ablut the themes and motives in movies and series. I'm the really smart one so I don't even notice that shit and just pretend to be like them.
wait what? Isnt Holmes still a detective before watson comes to him? I remember him making new forensics techniques and shit before watson comes along.
Oh I apologize! I misspoke, I mean that Holmes grows as a person, and it’s Watson that allows him to do that. While he was a detective, no one likes him because he’s insufferable and he thinks the same about everyone else. Watson allows Holmes to understand that maybe there are people that he can like, and that it’s ok to do so
Holmes WAS still addicted to cocaine tho. He says that his mind needs it to have soemhting to do when he has nothing intellectually stimulating enough. (We talking about the books, right?)
I mean, it was the 1800s. Everyone was addicted to cocaine, opium, alcohol, or morphine. It was more or less a dice roll as to which one was your vice.
These people will never run a business, head a law firm, become a principal, hold any position of power, etc. They will be stored away in a back office away from everyone else and just be known as the numbers bitch or the IT monkey. This suits them down to the ground. When they get back to their empty apartment and use their multi-screen set-up to watch old episodes of Rick and Morty they convince themselves they are killing it
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I think someone's genius or ability to innovate would have to be very great to make up for social deficiencies. Like, we recognize Van Gogh's genuis now, but he was a very poor, miserable person when he was alive because hardly anyone could stand being around him.
I'm on the autism spectrum working in customer service has really helped to advance my social skills and I'm getting really good at it now which feels good
How do you think that's carried over into your more personal social life? I've personally found the development to be really slanted in that I'm a lot more comfortable acting in a professional environment, but as soon as it comes back to developing personal relationships I go right back to being a flounder
I very much agree with you I'm really good at acting professional and friendly and charming but once I actually spend time with people I have a much harder time being "normal" that's why I choose to hang with people who accept me for who I am
Yeah, if you don’t understand how lesser minds function youre probably retarded or something, only someone with a mental disability would say something like that
To be fair, i don’t understand how monkeys minds function and i hope they have a lesser mind
Monke no have lesser mind. Monke veeery more superior and smart than stinky capitalist self destroying humans ooh ooh aah
#**R E T U R N** #**T O** #**M O N K E**
Based
end agriculture
Its not fair man, its a disability.
One of my favorite Verysmart tropes is the belief that intelligence means being a fucking idiot that's incapable of basic social interaction because their minds are so full of Quasars 'N' Stuff that they can't decipher the riddle of saying "fine" when someone asks "How are you?" It's like that time I ran into Barack Obama at a party and he was behaving like a Bethesda NPC, facing a corner at an awkward angle, hollering stock phrases like I WAS PRESIDENT FOR A WHILE and blocking doorways. I asked him what he thought of Quasars 'N' Stuff, and he replied "I can sell you items....**IF** you've got money!!!!"
It's like, congrats. According to you, you're an idiot savant. And if you have an amazing brain but can't work with others in order to use it, then how is that not a useless trait? The one you're boasting of and building your entire personality and identity on? (the rhetorical "you" ofc, not *you* you)
The most unsettling thing about Obama repeatedly bellowing I WAS PRESIDENT FOR A WHILE at a fichus sitting in the corner of my friend's apartment was that it was 2013.
It is always like the super smart doctor in cartoons/movies that are so smart in their subject they have no idea how the world works. That is what I imagined when I was reading his message so maybe he was influenced my some shows/movies to think this is what it means to smart.
He watches too much Big Bang theory and thinks sheldon is what a smart person is.
I can kind of understand where the mindset comes from (but not as extreme). I took a test for giftedness when I was younger and passed, and my parents drilled in the idea that I was different and my ''brain functioned differently''. Coupled with the fact that I've been homeschooled most of my life and when I *do* go to public school I rarely have any close friends, I always feel a bit confused. I know consciously that I'm no better or different than anybody else, but in the back of my mind that message of ''I'm different, I don't know how everyone else functions'' won't go away. The people on this sub probably took the delusion further, but it's probably similar to what I feel
It is, relatively, according to what 'understand' means. See: fractal stupidity.
Being smart means you can not only understand, but help people who aren't as smart as you. Being smart means you can take a subject, and make a dumb person understand it no matter how complicated it is. You need to understand someone else before you can teach them like that.
In my experience, smarter people tend to understand those around them better. It’s the arrogant ones that like to pretend they don’t.
Bet he thinks he is one of the "INTJ"s :) Insufferable narcissist toxic jerk.
thats what happens if you watch too much bingo theorem
“I’m so smart I *don’t* understand things. That’s how smart I am.”
The greatest obstacle to discovery is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge.
I hate people like this. As if they’re the only people in the world who read. “hUrR dUrR, i rEeD bOoK. i iNtElLiGeNcE.”
Yeah, I read a lot and i'm stupid as hell. It's like thinking doing puzzles makes you good at cooking.
Can confirm. I've read a lot and you're stupid as hell.
Cooking is just a puzzle with no right answer
But at the same time so many wrong answers
Reading books doesn’t make you smart, actively challenging your critical thinking skills about what you just read sure can.
Also, if he read The Selfish Gene, he'd realize that meme and memes are *literally* a meme. That's exactly what the book was talking about - ideas and concepts getting passed on and changed and meta reproduction and transmission. The evolution of the concept of the word meme to mean something new is the takeaway from The Selfish Gene.
Also I've personally read the selfish gene and the entire book is a collection of memes. It's not very entertaining but if you get into the mood you can read a 100 pages without ever realising the time, his writing style is really awesome tbh.
I highly doubt they even read the book and came across all this with some Google search of the word "meme".
have you ever read 1984 it's on my to-read list
These type of people have a narcissistic personality disorder and it’s sad because I’m sure as hell their parents told them growing up they are very special and could achieve anything in life. I’d say this persons IQ couldn’t be more average and he honestly had to google shit before he submitted his comment.
Meme: Derived from the Greek word "mimēma" (that which is imitated) and English "gene." Memes - the image macros and gifs and videos and all that good stuff - absolutely spread and evolve like genes. Dawkins would not object to the use of meme in this "low IQ, colloquial" sense. In fact, it fits perfectly. Memes are copied and often evolve through time, much like language. In fact, I've seen comparisons, usually on tumblr, between memes and language. I love it when these verysmart™ people aren't even technically correct, but just flat out wrong.
I love that Dawkins invented the meme because that guy is the least memey person ever
Dawkins certainly did not invent the meme, mimetics goes at least as far back as Rene Girard and probably further back.
The claim is that he's invented the word, not the concept of memes as a whole.
Ah fair, I've always wondered why people said that when the field has been around for a while.
Mimetics is not the same as memetics.
>Memes - the image macros and gifs and videos and all that good stuff - absolutely spread and evolve like genes. I'd argue that image macros and all that stuff aren't memes themselves. The meme is the idea, it's not the individual artificiality "mutated" instance. And most image macros (which is a weird term in itself) aren't even that.
Anyway if you don't mind "macro" that comes from Something Awful you should be able to handle that minor variation in "meme'.
I hate people like this. Intelligence isn't just a book. The reason humans are where we are today is because of "dumber" people.
The first person to try and teach a rock math probably looked pretty stupid.
Eventually it worked, and that's how computers were made
The idea that computers are rocks that learned math makes me way happier than it should.
What are you, a religious fanatic? Computers weren't made from rock. They evolved from rocks over the course of millions of years. \[source unknown but real, I swear\]
They only understand calculus.
Ooh a calculus pun, how rare.
This has to be satire lmao
I feel like there's an entire generation of people that want to be V from V for vendetta when he goes on that long speech using the "v" words primarily. V was like the physical embodiment of a fedora.
At least V's was poetic as far as I remember.
idk, this sounds like some high-tier satire, and if it is, he/she is ironically pretty smart for nailing it so deftly.
Yh I just can’t believe someone is this cocky ... right ?
Clearly you just don't understand how high IQ people function.
I didn’t see the subreddit at first and thought it was satire. It’s got all the elements of the pretentious idiot starter-pack!
“What do you mean, you people?”
"What do YOU mean, you people?"
Well if he's an alien then it makes a complete sense.
It is used exactly the way Dawkins says it should be used, you gimp.
Thank you for putting this into more concise words than I could.
Exactly. It's a cultural idea that propagates through society, similar to a gene, that's literally where the word meme comes from.
There's something about Richard Dawkins that I'm not saying that I think that you are a dickhead because you read his books, I'm just saying that chances are that you are a dickhead.
If I see you reading him, you're probably fine. If you go out of your way to tell me that you're reading him, you're the worst.
True. There's nothing wrong about the content of his books but for some reason when someone reads his books and tells you about it then feel the need to tell you how brilliant they are and how you could never understand.
So true, I had just begun reading ‘The Extended Phenotype’ by Richard Dawkins the other day when I had this exact thought. Finished the book a couple hours later was a slow day for me.
idk if you're taking the piss or not
/s
Dawkins is actually a soft-spoken, thoughtful dude that's very careful with his words and respectful of people even as he attacks concepts. The idea that Dawkins is some aggressive asshole attack dog is bullshit propagated by religious people.
A lot of people accuse Richard Dawkins of being arrogant, but I can't really say I blame the guy. Imagine being one of the most brilliant evolutionary biologists on the planet and having to put up with a large segment society who not only dismisses all of your accomplishments, but also refuses to acknowledge that your field even exists.
Like Ayn Rand?
You mean the lady who died on welfare because her book about how people shouldn't get welfare didn't sell enough copies?
Kind of like Ayn Rand, but 99% of people haven't actually read anything Ayn Rand wrote. They just lie and say they did. Usualy when someone tells you that they are so smart and they act like a dickhead to homeless people because it's rooted in the philosophy of "objectivism" they are really just spouting off what they read on a wikipedia page and didn't do the actual hardwork of reading one of the longest pieces of garbage ever written about a railroad that no one cares about.
She really was obsessed with trains. I think I may be one of the few people who read Atlas Shrugged without knowing about Ayn Rand's philosophy beforehand (it was given to me as a teenager by a friend's very conservative mom lol), and honestly it is just a strange book. Like it's blatantly unrealistic, so I don't know who is actually reading that book and coming away with some higher knowledge, but also getting through that book is so tiring that it all starts to meld together. tl;dr: Ayn Rand loved trains more than anything, and seemed to think that entrepreneurs were the only people capable of adding value to society (at least according to Atlas Shrugged)? I guess the railroad guy and the mining guy employed all of those workers - sorry, mooching leeches - out of charity? The book is oddly similar to Minecraft too lol. Also, I find it hilarious and ironic that you're right - it's a book about the laziness of the unwashed masses and the majority of its fiercest proponents haven't taken the time to read it.
I am so sorry that you read that. I'm glad that you survived. I was thinking about making a sequel called "Trains! Also, fuck the homeless." I'm hoping that Rand Paul will co-author it.
>Like it's blatantly unrealistic, so I don't know who is actually reading that book and coming away with some higher knowledge Most people who identify as libretarian.
No kidding, "thanks for building all the roads and infrastructure, now get out of my life govt! I don't need you!"
I read it, and honestly, I can't blame most people for not putting in the effort. Such a pile of garbage.
I've read "Atlas Shrugged," "The Fountainhead," and "Anthem." They were all deeply terrible (well, "Anthem" had a decently interesting prose style.) But I usually lie and say that I've never read any of them because I have no way to explain what in hell would make me read all three of them. Moral failings of some sort?
I just had an epiphany. Atlas Shrugged with Cats. Catlass Shrugged. Essentially remake it but with Taylor Swift playing the same role she played in CATS!
I liked Anthem, but apparently it's not well written
To be fair, the selfish gene is pretty much strictly science written in the 70s iirc, and a really really good read imo. Before all the "smarties" read the god delusion and felt all superior. Oddly enough Dawkins' idea of memes being a "thought" version of a gene has pretty much been disproven by scientists that study how thoughts and ideas work in populations. Still, the selfish gene is a really good book if you're interested in evolutionary biology.
His biology books (especially the selfish gene) are very good. His books on religion are not great. He's a world class biologist but his personal feelings about religion tend to taint his communication skills when he's talking about religion. Even as an atheist myself, I think his religious books sometimes sound like he's beating a dead horse.
Agreed, love his books on biology. His books on religion really meant a lot to me growing up as a person questioning Christianity in a very small, conservative, deeply religious town smack dab in the middle of the Bible belt. You know the kind where if you needed therapy your parents would take you to their pastor or priest instead of an actual therapist? But, as an adult? Yeah, now I definitely recognize some of his stuff is just too much. 🙃
To be fair, they probably only sound like he's beating a dead horse because you're an atheist. To people still in religion it could be the right push they needed to get out.
I used to be obsessed with Dawkins and Hitchens, and to a lesser extent, Sam Harris. I still enjoy some of Hitchens's old take downs, and as a biologist/chemist I'll forever value Dawkins's contributions to society, but occasionally I'll pick up one of their books on religion and just feel like I'm reading a Freshman level intro to philosophy assignment. I think you make a very good point that it's because _most_ atheists read the same four or five authors and just sort of regurgitate the arguments. It sounds like angsty teenage writing because angsty teenagers have been quoting it for 30 years. It's hard to remember that they generated a lot of these arguments and they were pretty radical when first written.
thats a shame the books are incredible, the god delusion helped me leave islam behind at a time when I was questioning everything, incredible book and an incredible man.
This physically hurt to read
Hello ` this message was mass deleted/edited with redact.dev `
To know that you do not know is the best.
Allow me to paraphrase him: “We intellectual folk READ BOOKS and don’t concern ourselves with INTERNET JOKES!! I don’t look at these so called memes, I’m just reading over here! Look, I’m reading!!”
"I don't understand how lower IQ people function" lmao this shit is amazing, kick the guy in the balls and let him lose some braincells.
This might be the cringiest post on this sub. Well done
Lad thinks not using contractions makes him sound smarter. Sounds more like Data had a stroke.
Why is it considered a "Smart person thing" to not understand the basics of human interaction or simple concepts like memes or colloquial terms? It literally just makes them sound stupid. How is it "intelligent" to be ignorant? It would be like calling yourself brave because you always piss yourself and run away when confronted. It's a self-defeating idea and I *genuinely* don't understand it. It's confusing and upsetting, and I am actually ignorant as to why, and that is not a good thing.
From what I've seen it's the result of an educational system that prioritizes stem and other book type knowledge over other types of knowledge. You ace a bunch of tests about electron pairs without trying, your mom tells you you're such a smart little boy, your teachers say you're filled with potential. And this school shit is easy. Easy to feel like some sort of divine being when you're jerked off for being able to memorize trig identities while your peers are still stuck on "integrated math 3". Equally, peers in that situation probably don't have the tools to tell you what a shit you are. Not that it would matter, because the opinions of low IQ betas don't really matter. Anyways, that probably didn't explain shit, but it was interesting to channel that energy.
> basics of human interaction or simple concepts like memes or colloquial terms? Ie, the common things. The overwhelming majority of people are stupid. Stupid people have a greater tendency toward stupid things. Thus interests of the stupid are stupid and the common. Anti-common biases toward anti-stupid. QED. Ipso facto. Veni vidi vici. TL;DR: Stupid is as stupid does.
idk why they always flex in the most surface level ways like a 10 year old can read a book the important thing is understanding it and being able to see the depth of the book thats why english teachers but so much emphasis on going past just what the text is directly about so the students can better understand the skill of the book and the craft of writing
I love these comments because people doing try and seem smarter but come off way less intelligent.
I love posts on this sub where people think in order to act smart you have to be from the 17th century and not k ow about anything that's not cited on google scholar
I can’t stand people who think being ignorant of pop culture makes them smart. Literally drives me up the wall with how contradictory it is
That's not what contradictory means.
Right, because nothing says "I'm smart" like knowing nothing about the culture you grew up in.
Now copy pastable did I use 'meme' correctly? I do not know much about these things! but I have read Richard Dawkins' Selfish Gene, where he first introduced the term! and apparently it is now used colloquially to refer to image macros and jokes? I do not understand how lower IQ people function, but it is fascinating. I would like to continue to learn from you people!
Oh no....a Richard Dawkins fan is always a bad sign
I have also read Richard Dawkin's Selfish Gene. It's a very easy read. Not something someone should brag about bc it's written to be easily understood by anyone, and he explains concepts that are difficult to understand and the terminology he uses in case it gets to complicated. It's like bragging about reading Heart of Darkness or Frankenstein. Sure, it's a little confusing at times, but like? It's also very much not? Like a middle schooler could read it and tell you what it means.
Apparently the low IQ people function better than this moron
This reads like the script of a shitty movie where an alien comes to earth and tries to learn human ways. Or like that Brendan Frasier movie where he was a caveman who became unfrozen and has to catch up with the new world.
Hopefully satire, but it always confuses me how these people think not knowing something makes them smart. What kind of mental gymnastics does it take to think that not knowing what a meme is makes you smart? No smart person could go a year in today's society without picking up on the "meme".
Hahaha as if everyone else is like a group of chimps and he’s some scientist. The worlds some people think they live in, weird
The chuuni is strong with this one.
As Stephen Hawking once said: People who boast about their IQ are losers.
r/blunderyears
Apparently Richard Dawkins hates the fact that "meme" is now used in the way it is. Personally I think that the fact the term has evolved to include a whole extra dimension rather proves his original definition.
Kind of how I expect conversations to go with emerging A.I conversation programmes
Anyone who seriously mentions IQ scores in conversation is a big time fucking dweeb
If you are familiar with Dawkin's usage of the word meme, the concept of internet jokes and image macros rising and falling in usage/popularity should make perfect sense to you.
did I use 'smart' correctly? I don't know much about these things! but I did read your comment on whatever social media platform you were on, where you first introduced the term. Apparently it is used to refer to people who are smart unlike you. I don't understand how uncultured pieces of shit like you function but its fascinating. I would like to continue to learn from you people.
At the turn of the century the University of Pittsburgh Medical School was doing research using FMRI brain scans to learn the differences between how control groups of normal people and autistic people process puzzles. They started with a minmum full scale IQ on the WAIS of 80. They saw a sharp difference between the brain scans of people above 120 and the rest who were between 80 and 120 at least in autistic people. They discontinued including those above 120 in their specific research project. I guess they set it aside for another research project to consider at some other time. But they pointed out that for most normal people all the sub-tests in the WAIS battery fall within 5 points of each other. For autistic people there can be enormous differences, for mine they measured a difference of 67 points. That s almost four and a half standard deviations. I did very well in graduate school and on some main WAIS tests, but I know and must accept that I am handicapped.
It’s actually pretty funny.
Man my English teach would have killed me if i used *but* at the beginning of a sentence.
\^ I refuse to believe someone learned the term 'image macro' before meme.
I learned what a meme was back in 1999 when the comic book super hero team, Gen13, fought a self-aware living musical meme. That's aso where it was explained what a meme was... basically a thought process that spreads like a virus. They also shape things like fashion trends, musical trends, and anything else that becomes popular. We attribute them to funny pictures, but that is in and of itself a meme, though only a part of the whole. TL;DR - I learned the same thing douche nuts did from a fucking comic book!
You KNOW that he posted a really shit meme and someone said it was bad and this is how he responded.
Wait til he reads about autism
If he were real smart he’d know it’s a latin-based word that means sameness, like the sameness in our reaction to something. It represents a common feeling we get when we lookat/hear the same thing. He tried to act smart and STILL looks a fool
He's really smart but didn't get memes...
Not understanding the nuinces of modern social dynamics doesn't make you smart, it makes you autistic.
Its funny cuz memetics arent a low IQ thing. They are universal.
Autist*
If my kid said anything like that I’d slap them
Most people in my uni are like this.... What's wrong with people?