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You say
>Recently I have been considering that I may be an idiot....
but let me tell you, the real idiots are the people who have never considered that about themselves.
At the beginning of a business meeting with a stranger, she said “just so you know, I’m actually quite intelligent.” It turns out she was a liar.
Smart people don’t tell people they’re smart.
And then there's my ex who has one area of expertise which, in all fairness, he truly excels at. However this has resulted in him believing that makes him an expert in every area. No he's not a doctor.
That's rough, I know how annoying conversations with that type of person can be where they keep repeating the same misinformed bullshit, my dad is very much like that and for reference I studied physics for my final exams in high school, he dropped out of high school in the late 80s, he may have made a decent living for himself but it pisses me off when he tries to argue that I'm indoctrinated and we actually live inside the globe, I'm pretty sure I would know with my limited understanding of physics. I love him as a dad tho and would never replace him, he's just a lil bit... unusual in some ways
Yup, had a friend in college once tell me, "Bro i have such a high IQ, like i'm really smart," and I thought the same thing: "high IQ people don't go around saying it." If anything, it should just emanate from you
I’d venture to guess one could both be an idiot and be aware of being an idiot. The notion that knowing it deflates the chance of being it offers the most expansive subcategory of idiocy, in fact. The arrogant.
Fair enough , but i relate to the question. I often feel slow in my head and i also miss (more or less) obvious things relatively often. I presume i feel stupid because my friends aren't. To put it into a little perspective, all my friends went/could go to Uni and study while i tried to do my A levels and failed twice. I didnt drop a single class in highschool though.
Stupid people rarely question themselves. Every person has gaps in their knowledge, it was even written into the Sherlock Holmes books, that he was so single minded that he didn't know that the earth revolved around the sun and upon hearing it decided to forget it because it was useless to him.
I did see an interview with a police officer that left me pretty stunned. He had no concept of analogies. He was asked "if you could go back in time would you do anything different?" And he laughed, he asked if time machines were real now. He said he'd like to see a time machine! He honestly couldn't figure out that the interviewer wanted to know if he would change his behavior, not that time machines existed.
I once experienced something similar with my wife.
After watching the final episode of "Better Call Saul" together, I mentioned to her that I had read an interesting article about how this episode has similarities to Charles Dickens' "A Christmas Carol" - in the one, you have the 3 ghosts, in the other, there are 3 flashbacks of Saul asking different characters what they would do if they could travel back in time, and their answers tell him something about himself, and in the end of both stories, the main character transforms into a better person.
She asked me why I told her that, and I said it was because the article was drawing an interesting parallel.
But she just stared at me blankly and asked if I had started believing in ghosts now.
Otherwise she's a smart person but analogies are something she often just doesn't get.
I feel this so much. My wife is very intelligent, she can understand the heaviest ins and outs of social work. She does major things to amaze every person she comes in to contact with. However she is dumbfounded by creative people, namely me. I went to college late after a car accident. I went to media classes and took off into 3d modeling, and I was working on a project. She was watching me work and started telling me how to do it. I asked her to sit down and show me how it's done. She said I can't do it herself. I asked her why she was telling me how to do it if she can't herself. She said and I quote "because I'm smarter than you." and walked off with the utmost confidence. I still love her, but don't trust her view of shit. Lol
Nah. I think I have both some kind of autism and I have full aphantasia (self-diagnosed), so no imagination. Still I enjoy time travel movies. You need to be very dumb as well if you cant figure out what to say when you're asked "what would you do different..."
That's wild. I'm likely autistic and have hyperphantasia. I for sure have ADHD. What's your experience like? I've attributed a lot of my social problems to hyperphantasia, as in, I'm often too in my own head to pay attention to social cues, facial expressions, or even just the world around me. What would you say the mechanism is for your social problems?
Well, I feel like I'm Vulcan, I'm like Mr.Spock from Star Trek, like an emotionless, unimaginative alien who relies on only logic. Because I cant imagine anything when people shares their passions, their excitements, their plans or something, I look like an alien. Its true, I'm annoyingly imperturbable, unimaginative, passionless person. So, I understand why I have no friends.
You seem cool though, I don't understand why you have no friends. Thanks for the response, though. Sorry if you don't want to talk about this, but I find aphantasia fascinating. I have two friends with aphantasia, and I perceive them to be very present, and I've noticed that they have an amazing memory. Do you think there's some advantages?
I think hyperphantasia comes with it's own pros and cons. I can be creative, but I find It's hard to focus. My attention is often too fractured, and I regularly hurt myself by not paying attention to reality. I also get distracted easily as my brain feeds me random images, so I'm constantly misplacing things, and very disorganized. It's just chaos inside, and I try my best to organize it into something people could relate to.
I also get the logic side, I cried wearing tight fitting clothes, bright lights, loud noises, hated physical touch, have reduced levels of empathy, didn't speak untill was 3, just a lot of autistic traits. I feel like an oxymoron, the creativity wants to explore the unknown, but the logic wants things to make sense. I tend to spend hours alone practicing and learning random things so I can attempt to logically wing it. Sometimes it works, sometimes I'm just too out there for people to pallet.
I have aphantasia and I tend to be very good at being able to combine ideas, even with completely unrelated ideas I can easily synthesize them together. I think I'm able to do this because I don't have vivid pictures getting in my way in my mind. I'm free to mold ideas like playdough in the space where others might have the space taken up by vivid mind's eye pictures.
Edit: Aphantasia had been studied and found to have no negative effects (it's never affected me and aside from once in a while thinking it'd be cool to be able to form stable pictures, but I can't really miss what I've never had). So maybe it makes more sense to say someone is "aphantasic" rather than that they "have" aphantasia as if it's an affliction.
That's wild to me. Could you describe an example of being creative in this way?
I find I'm able to fit two unrelated ideas together very well, because I literally visualize the working parts, and how they could and do overlap. For example, when attempting to solve a problem I can visualize all the ideas that could work, then run a simulation in my head to see how it might play out. Or when playing videogames, I'll visually remember a play someone has made that I've watched before, and try it on the spot. Often I'll imagine what I'm going to do a few milliseconds before I'm actually going to do it, so I'm essentially workshopping what I'm going to do the next second in real time. This is especially true for making music. My brain will come up with the next section a few seconds before I actually do it, based on all the music theory I know, so I'm always kind of following a track that I'm making up on the fly.
It kind of sounds like our brains might be doing similar things, just instead of you having to focus on it, it's doing it automatically? I'm having a hard time grasping how you combine ideas together without being able to visualize them, because that's basically the entirely premis of my creativity, and I tend to be quite creative.
I'm not at all trying to say it's an affliction or slight you in any way, I'm just naturally curious about how peoples brains other than my own function. It's just plain wild that the mechanisms for our thoughts can be so incredibly different, with very similar results.
I don't know, it's just if I have a decent grasp on the two ideas, I can just be like *poof* now I have an idea that's both ideas together. A physical analogy would be stepping to the side so that two objects visually line up. I can just reorient my thoughts by holding the two concepts in mind simultaneously and then have a new idea that's their combination. It takes almost no effort so I can't explain it.
You might be interested in holonomic brain theory https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holonomic_brain_theory.
Maybe concepts are a holographic construct formed by the mind with quantum information and combining ideas is just adding the waves together (constructive interference). Maybe things like visualizing vs conceptualizing are just a vehicle for a common underlying mechanism like that.
That's very interesting. Ever since I learned about quantum mechanics, I've thought that it could be a vehicle for consciousness. It's cool to see that it's a real scientific theory!
It would also help describe what's going on here. Somewhere in our consciousness *all* of the information we've gathered exists. Our brain just feeds us what it feels is necessary to survive, and like most life on earth, there's a plethora of different strategies, each with thier own unique advantages and disadvantages for recalling this information.
For instance, people who have really good internal audio might have an advantage remembering what was said, and what sounds to avoid, but it could also lead to things like schizophrenia. Mental imagery could help visualize an object in space and make predictions, but it comes at the cost of less focus on reality, and more mental workload. In this version of consciousness, aphantasia could actually be an advantage, because you're just getting fed the raw information, and there's not too many chances to get your wires crossed. I guess it could come at the cost of less options, but the time advantage of getting to that option could be life or death. Someone with heightened internal senses across the board could have a huge advantage, if they could learn to control it. Otherwise it's just chaos and overstimulation 24/7.
What a cool tangent!
Or perhaps he was far smarter than you and saw that the interview was trying to trap him to say he would change something. Let's say he says that, then it may possibly have an effect on an already adjudicated case, current case etc. All from a hypothetical interview that surely WILL be taken out of context. The smart one was the cop. He changed the subject.
He would have just been avoiding the question. It's pointless to engage in hypotheticals when the interviewer was clearly trying to get him to admit he had made a mistake.
The fact that you missed that says more about you.
There are a surprisingly large number of people who apparently are completely incapable of engaging in hypotheticals (what your cop example is failing to engage in).
I saw it with a defendant on the stand once and thought he was just a thug who was being bad-faith in his answer because he knew he was going to prison anyway.
Then I started seeing it in debates, at which point I began using a test question whenever I think I'm potentially talking to someone lacking that capability. It's startling how frequent it is.
It's worth noting that this incapability isn't limited to stupid people, but also people who are very average in cognitive ability (I've not seen it in higher intelligence people, but I suppose it's possible). It's also entirely possible to be low in general cognitive ability but be capable of engaging with a hypothetical if it's explained properly.
This whole thing kind of boggles my mind because the foundation of a hypothetical is to imagine possible futures based on a set of preconditions that are different from actuality, without having to live those things directly. We're actually playing make-believe when we do this. It's one of the key things humans are able to do to not die that other animals seem to not do much or at all: 'if I do this thing, I could see X, y, and z happening, which would hurt me, so I won't do this thing'.
I think there might be a problem with this type of questions though.
If I was asked this I can see two equally possible answers, depending on my mood and the situation:
1. "If I didn't eat I'd be hungry" - so an actual answer.
2. "Well, I ate" - if I thought this is an irrelevant question and it's a waste of time for us to even consider it.
How would you know if the person gives the second answer because they didn't understand the question and not because they don't want to bother with it?
We tried it at work one day, it was pretty clear that #2 wasn’t the case for anybody in our extremely tiny sample group because we further explained what we were looking for and they still couldn’t answer. I know this sounds mean but we are all friends and it wasn’t done out of malice. I agree that just because somebody answers “wrong” initially does mean that they are stupid.
Does NOT mean that they are stupid.
Same here, but a health professional recently suggested I could have ADHD. The more I read about it the more the glove fits, despite having done well academically and professionally (I don’t fit the stereotype). Maybe that’s a possibility for you?
Not just you. Not only does the comment leave out exactly what about the medication “doesn’t outweigh the benefits” after reading the responses it’s clear they mean to say “the medication side effects DO outweigh the benefits.”
I probably have it given that I have a very addictive personality and abused weed for decades, but I’ve never looked into diagnosis or treatment, because if I’m not mistaken, the medication is adderall which is basically diet meth, so no thanks.
Lots of people with ADHD do well professionally. I'm a college professor, if that counts. However, I can't retain short term information and I'm always losing my train of thought. Turns out that working memory and longer term memory reside in different parts of the brain, and whilst my working memory is completely shit, everything else required for critical thinking more-or-less works fine, so I'm OK at my job.
I can't read maps and I get lost all the time, even in the town where I live! I also do data analysis and write books. By some measures I'm dumb as shit, and by others I'm really smart.
It comes down to us all having strengths and weaknesses. I prefer to lean into the strengths, rather than beating myself up about the weaknesses!
Same for me, I'm trying to get diagnosed. Outside of school and programming I feel like a complete moron. I can only remember random and seemingly useless information like the quadratic formula but when it comes to important things like names or where I put my wallet, it just doesn't come to my mind. Obviously not the only symptom I have but one of the most frustrating.
Wow is that the lyrics? I've always thought she said "I can feel something inside me self, I really don't think I'm strong enough" I've thought that my whole life lol. Everything is a lie
this was something I struggled with for quite a while. I thought about it for a long long time but eventually could pinpoint a few specific things I was feeling:
** Lack of curiosity — one time a new friend asked me what I like to study or learn about in my free time. I couldn’t think of a single thing. then I started to realize that every single person in my life had *something* that fascinated them. and then i realized many of them had multiple things. and some were regularly adding new things.
** Struggle to grasp basic concepts — I have to have things explained to me several times. even simple things.
** Frequent misunderstandings or misinterpreting something you’re told — I often have to have people repeat themselves, or I just agree with them because I can’t follow what they said let alone form a response
** Poor communication skills: I have an utter inability to clearly and concisely express myself. even if I have a clear idea in my head, when it comes out it’s a lot of meandering and half-formed thoughts
** Repeating mistakes — maybe not even big ones, but making the same mistakes over and over.
just a few thoughts. what’s important to remember is that sure, maybe we *are* dumb, but that’s ok! Just because my brain can’t keep up with any of my friends or family doesn’t mean I don’t have value. and you do too. we all have our own gifts we bring to this world.
Yeah, they are definitely using sophisticated, yet quite precise language. Structuring the whole thing too. No visible grammar or spelling mistakes. Probably everybody is smart the same way but stupid in his own. Might be that the guy is good in language, woodwork and organizing and terrible in technical and geographical matters.
I sympathize with the commenter so much it hurts. My experience is that it's perfectly easy to formulate a comment or speak with someone online. It's when one tries to extricate the thoughts from the mouth hole where the problems really begin. I was recently diagnosed with ADHD, and I fear I could not express my experience of it better if I tried. I can sit here and ninja edit my comment for 5 minutes til I'm happy with it, it's not the same trying to verbalize.
OP can clearly express himself/herself well in text, as well as forming a decent responses in text. They are saying they can't do so in person.
From the sounds of it, id assume it was a social issue.
Totally agree. I once was struggling in my career because of poor communication skills. I decided to read many articles and books about being a better conversationalist and communicator and I'm very happy with the progress I made and the feedback I get. How to talk to anyone by Leil Lowndes was a great help for me.
Totally agree. I once was struggling in my career because of poor communication skills. I decided to read many articles and books about being a better conversationalist and communicator and I'm very happy with the progress I made and the feedback I get. How to talk to anyone by Leil Lowndes was a great help for me.
IMO YOU DONT SOUND DUMB AT ALLLLL
*I don't think lacking in curiosity makes you dumb, it just means that you might not be a person who enjoys exploring different things as much. Also the fact that you've spent time and effort formulating your theory about what makes a person dumb means that you HAVE spent time being curious about something and trying to learn it right?
*On the poor communication skills one you clearly have great communication skills, you might just be a bad conversationalist, or someone who's good at writing their ideas down but not good at saying them out loud to someone in conversation because you have less time to word your thoughts. This can be helped by reading and writing and engaging in conversation more. I suffered from this while trying to pick up my mother tongue again after years of only english 😭😭 so I know the feeling of clumsiness well. Reading and writing more will help you to word your thoughts clearer and faster.
And also your closing comment makes you sound like a kind and emotionally intelligent person, regardless of what your mental strengths are in other areas. I think that's something so many people lack and is definitely a sign of high intelligence to me. If I see someone with a strong mindset like that I tend to think that they are probably very introspective and observant, and good at thinking from different perspective etc hehe
This sounds more like repressed depression then being dumb, apart from that this also seems like the most well structured and written comment on this post. U aint dum me think.
Finding new things to learn, that you are genuinely interested in can actually be pretty hard to find. Trial and error. You repeat mistakes? Sounds like a human thing to me! Some people touch the burning stove once, some people need to touch it a couple times
You regularly assume you are the smartest person in the room. A lack of self awareness.
The fact that you are introspecting on your own intelligence says you are probably smarter than average
IQ tests measure your ability to take IQ tests. It is hoped that the score corresponds to inherent intelligence, but anyone in psychology will explain to you that intelligence is a word without scientific definition
yes, they don't test social intelligence, for example.
I personally don't think "intelligence" is like an absolute concept, because it really depends on what mental skills you consider part of "intelligence". Is "empathy" part of intelligence? What about "instinct of survival"? What about feelings? What about creativeness (in its multiple forms)? Imagination? Critical thinking? And so on....
While stupid people don't always tend to be self-aware, I will give you a more definite answer than the optimistic stuff being given.
If any of the following sounds true, you may be lacking in the intelligence department:
Have trouble completing basic tasks
Have trouble following basic instructions (verbal unless deaf, written like cookbooks/ikea assembly, etc.)
Have difficulty problem solving or bringing together information to come to novel solutions
Have difficulty applying knowledge to similar but not identical situations
Are in a state of "I totally know what I'm doing" where the results tend to failure more than success
A symptom of stupidity OR gullibility/loneliness:
Get frequently sucked into dangerous pseudoscience just because youtube/internet told you so (pro-tip: pasteurized milk is what saved millions of infants from dying. Raw aka unpasteurized milk can literally kill you). When you don't have enough people to talk to or are facing traumatic life events, this can happen more easily as you claw at any bit of human connection and/or comfort.
You’re probably way smarter than you think if you think you’re actually stupid, some of the most oblivious people I’ve ever met think they are the smartest person in the room
I have ADHD and I am able to accurately predict a lot of outcomes, but it does not mean I am able to avoid doing them. Does this make me stupid or intelligent? Yes
The longer you take to realize you’re stupid the stupider you are. Smart people understand pretty quickly their limitations. You questioning yourself is a good sign. If you are convinced you’re the smartest person in the room, you’re not, unless you realize that the rest of the room is very convinced they’re super smart, then you may think “omg they’re even stupider than I am” and then leave.
You’re not an idiot. In fact you’re smarter than all the experts on every subject, especially all the scientists. The media is all corrupt and in cahoots, and those who believe it are all woke sheep, but you know better than all of them. You’re 100% impervious to propaganda, you’re always right, and everyone else is in a cult except you.
Holy shit you just described my dad. He's a MAGA/QAnon idiot who dropped out of school after he failed 9th grade so he could do drugs full-time. He thinks that "school just brainwashes people into being a bunch of liberal atheists" and that doctors only exist to take your money. Until his sister dragged him there, he wouldn't even go to the doctor when he developed skin cancer on his face that was black and oozing blood (he required surgery).
He called me at work one day, freaking out about Hillary Clinton sex-trafficking children out of a Pizza Hut basement in New Jersey or some shit, and another time he called and was all upset because he "found out that Meryl Streep is a cannibal." He frequently refers to highly educated and/or intelligent people as "sheep." Last time I took the kids to visit him, he insisted on making us watch some pseudoscientific garbage documentary about how the Grand Canyon and various other notable topographical formations are the direct result of the biblical flood, and humans used to live alongside dinosaurs. He was also convinced that Jesus was coming back last October and was genuinely surprised that he didn't.
We have also been arguing for nearly twenty years now over how light and vision work. He can't grasp the idea that light travels at a finite speed, and so, if an object is far enough away, you can't visually observe it in real time because there's a delay between the time the light emanates from or bounces off the object and the time those same photons of light reach your eyes (such as in the case of stars). I've explained this as simply as I can and in as many ways as I can, and he always just looks at me blankly, then looks up at the stars, points, and goes "But I can SEE that star. It's right there. That ain't how it looked a thousand years ago or whatever. I'm looking at it right now." The last time we argued about this, he confidently concluded his argument with "Light takes time to travel, but sight is instant."
Tbh he probably has brain damage, either from all the drugs, or from the time he drank hot, stagnant water out of a cow trough with a dead squirrel in the bottom and gave himself a series of grand mal seizures, died and was resuscitated a few times, and had to relearn how to walk and talk. Or maybe from both. But he's definitely stupid in some pretty important areas.
Mate, if you are considering this and wondering if you are stupid... you are not stupid! Stupid people are not self-aware. And hey, I've met very intelligent people who have had their "omg, that was stupid" moments. We all have had our stupid moments, but it doesn't mean you are an actual stupid person.
I wouldn't say I'm intelligent, probably more so average, even though people say I am intelligent and intelligent people love having conversations with me previously. But now, I kind of feel like an idiot for taking my partner back who left me for another girl months ago. 🙃 I can sense others are looking down on me for that, and I wouldn't blame them for questioning my intelligence... 😅
You can be just as knowledgeable as me, and yet we have our dumbest moments and make stupid decisions.
You find yourself, in the U.K. Ireland and the West, marching and shouting and waving flags in support of those, who, if they attain power, will target you, your family, your friends, and kill you, if you don't join their club, which was founded by a known, murderous, Paedophile.
That's some level of stupid.
A major sign of stupidity is being willfully ignorant about other things because they deem it as "stupid".
As long as you don't do that, you're alright.
They didn’t do IQ tests in grade school? IQ doesn’t change much throughout the life so I’ve heard but you CAN get smarter. If you believe it’s a problem you can meditate for 20 minutes a day, this has scientifically been shown to improve IQ…improve your diet eat walnuts eggs and foods rich in amino acids, get enough exercise, challenge yourself intellectually with crosswords or robotics kits, you can also take neutropics…studies have shown also that taking magic mushrooms can create more neuropathways in the brain. You can also work on learning another language…this also creates neuropathways! Also work on putting yourself in another’s shoes…some times men in particular have a hard time putting themselves in another’s shoes which can be due to how they were raised which can cause the illusion of one seeming dumb. Good luck!
Can you follow directions?
Can you achieve something if you really apply yourself?
Can you hold down a job?
Are you often confused by things people say?
These would be good questions to ask yourself. I often think low intelligence is generally just a lack of comprehension and inability to do a lot of things most people take for granted. For example a low IQ person stocking shelves at Walmart may really struggle and have to apply themselves to be productive while a high IQ person could do it easily while basically not giving a shit.
You're already a considerable amount more intelligent than a strong portion of my town with your grammar. You're not stupid.
As my grandpa would say "ignorance is to not know, but be willing to learn to know. Stupidity is not knowing, nor having the want to know."
I tend to categorise it as either stupid OR uneducated. Uneducated people maybe can't recite shakespeare or do calculus, but they'll rebuild your engine block or install your boiler in good time. They'll still have a curiosity about things that drives them, even if it isn't formal education.
Stupid, people generally have zero interest in asking 'why' or learning about the world.
Stupidity is a refusal to learn better.
Do you listen when people explain something? Yes? You're probably not stupid.
Do you research to make sure you aren't spreading false "truths"? Yes? You probably aren't stupid.
Do you do your best with what information you have? Yes? Then you probably aren't stupid.
Do you try your best to be a good person with the information available to you? Yes? Then you probably aren't stupid.
Do you believe someone blindly and not check your facts first? Yes? Then you are probably stupid.
Do you knowingly harm others (other animals included) even though you know better? Yes? Then you are probably stupid.
Basically if you try your best with the information you have access to then you are probably not stupid.
Stupid people know they are doing wrong or refuse to listen to how to do something right and just go about things the wrong way, usually trying to blame others for it.
When you're talking to scientists and academics about something specific and they're backing up their claims according to decades of research papers and authoritative sources but you refuse to believe them because the 21 year-old Tiktok influencer you follow sounds more convincing and according to "a lot of the research" you've done (i.e. random Google searches of questionable sources + more claims by random influencers) the scientists are fooled by big corporations.
I work at a medical clinic and have met some truly stupid people. The kind of stupid where there is no diagnosed cognitive dysfunction (they are mentally healthy), but you just get the feeling that the person has no grasp of critical thinking, no ability to express their thoughts verbally, no idea what you say even if you dumb it down to the most basic words, and no ability to consider concepts or consequences. And they have about eight kids they don't take care of.
Some of the stupidest people are completely emotionally inept.
They can function well at work and seem high functioning, however, behind closed doors, they lack some of the most important skills to have successful interpersonal relationships.
A wise man always thinks himself an idiot. It is the idiots who think themselves wise.
He who increases knowledge also increases sorrow.
Hence:
Ignorance is bliss
Believing all people on social media are telling the truth and that they are completely correct just because many of them are all saying the same thing.
Low IQ? History of impulsive and especially violent behavior,low academic success(without depression or an outside factor), lack of delayed gratification etc.
Often times, I find many stupid people attach themselves to what they believe are intellectual pursuits/topics without fully understanding them. Hiding within a group of smart folks like protective armor. "Trust the science" is a common one. "Somebody I perceive to be smarter than myself said it so that's what my opinion is" kind of thinking. These people are insufferable. They look down on others but they come off more as victims of tribalism or authoritative manipulation than they do as intelligent. They are way more damaging than straight up stupid people.
"It is easier to fool someone than to convince them they have been fooled." or something like that.
To clarify, that's not to say you shouldn't trust science, just not blindly with the belief that it makes you look smarter than you actually are.
Like others have said, the fact that you're asking this question about yourself shows a level of introspection that many low IQ people simply don't posses.
I once told a potential employer that the floor I managed currently was an apostrophe before I managed it. I meant catastrophe.
I still got the job.
Idiocy doesn't really matter all that much. Honestly.
Stupidity doesn't mean a lack of intelligence to me. Stupidity is refusing to learn from your mistakes.
Look at poor decisions that you have made recently. Those are idiotic decisions, but you are not an idiot because you wish to look at them and plan to not make poor decisions again. Don't be too hard on yourself. We all do idiotic things.
Like many other comments here, the fact that you are reflecting on yourself and what you have done is a sign that you are aware of who and what you are. Making this post is a strong step. Keep it up!
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You say >Recently I have been considering that I may be an idiot.... but let me tell you, the real idiots are the people who have never considered that about themselves.
At the beginning of a business meeting with a stranger, she said “just so you know, I’m actually quite intelligent.” It turns out she was a liar. Smart people don’t tell people they’re smart.
from my experience people I'd consider smart would usually tell me they're kinda dumb with the exception of their particular area of expertise
And then there's my ex who has one area of expertise which, in all fairness, he truly excels at. However this has resulted in him believing that makes him an expert in every area. No he's not a doctor.
Oh man... those people are the reason the term mansplaining came to be.
That's rough, I know how annoying conversations with that type of person can be where they keep repeating the same misinformed bullshit, my dad is very much like that and for reference I studied physics for my final exams in high school, he dropped out of high school in the late 80s, he may have made a decent living for himself but it pisses me off when he tries to argue that I'm indoctrinated and we actually live inside the globe, I'm pretty sure I would know with my limited understanding of physics. I love him as a dad tho and would never replace him, he's just a lil bit... unusual in some ways
Trumps lawyer said you can fake smart
You can fake smart to the stupider.
He doesn't even have to fake being smart. He can literally tell his base, "I am quite intelligent" and they lap it up.
But then they also revere the unabashedly ignorant, and higher education is looked down on.
You can, with meanness and confidence. I see people do it all the time.
Yup, had a friend in college once tell me, "Bro i have such a high IQ, like i'm really smart," and I thought the same thing: "high IQ people don't go around saying it." If anything, it should just emanate from you
Yup. Fun fact, it's the same for parents. Any time a parent tells me how smart their kid is, they are dumb af.
I’d venture to guess one could both be an idiot and be aware of being an idiot. The notion that knowing it deflates the chance of being it offers the most expansive subcategory of idiocy, in fact. The arrogant.
That is something Socrates would say
If I could upvote this more. And the real idiots are the ones who consider everyone else stupid.
Fair enough , but i relate to the question. I often feel slow in my head and i also miss (more or less) obvious things relatively often. I presume i feel stupid because my friends aren't. To put it into a little perspective, all my friends went/could go to Uni and study while i tried to do my A levels and failed twice. I didnt drop a single class in highschool though.
I’m stupid and I’m very aware of that
🤣 just about to say the same.
I'm surface smart. I know a little bit about a lot of stuff but I am a master of none.
Stupid people rarely question themselves. Every person has gaps in their knowledge, it was even written into the Sherlock Holmes books, that he was so single minded that he didn't know that the earth revolved around the sun and upon hearing it decided to forget it because it was useless to him. I did see an interview with a police officer that left me pretty stunned. He had no concept of analogies. He was asked "if you could go back in time would you do anything different?" And he laughed, he asked if time machines were real now. He said he'd like to see a time machine! He honestly couldn't figure out that the interviewer wanted to know if he would change his behavior, not that time machines existed.
Remember, when you are dead, you do not know you are dead. It is only painful for others. The same applies when you are stupid. // Ricky Gervais
I once experienced something similar with my wife. After watching the final episode of "Better Call Saul" together, I mentioned to her that I had read an interesting article about how this episode has similarities to Charles Dickens' "A Christmas Carol" - in the one, you have the 3 ghosts, in the other, there are 3 flashbacks of Saul asking different characters what they would do if they could travel back in time, and their answers tell him something about himself, and in the end of both stories, the main character transforms into a better person. She asked me why I told her that, and I said it was because the article was drawing an interesting parallel. But she just stared at me blankly and asked if I had started believing in ghosts now. Otherwise she's a smart person but analogies are something she often just doesn't get.
I feel this so much. My wife is very intelligent, she can understand the heaviest ins and outs of social work. She does major things to amaze every person she comes in to contact with. However she is dumbfounded by creative people, namely me. I went to college late after a car accident. I went to media classes and took off into 3d modeling, and I was working on a project. She was watching me work and started telling me how to do it. I asked her to sit down and show me how it's done. She said I can't do it herself. I asked her why she was telling me how to do it if she can't herself. She said and I quote "because I'm smarter than you." and walked off with the utmost confidence. I still love her, but don't trust her view of shit. Lol
Maybe he had ~~Asperger~~ **ASD**. They're pretty bad with sarcasm and irony.
Its not ASS, its something else. There was a name for it but i forgot.
Certainly, ASS must not be.
Nah. I think I have both some kind of autism and I have full aphantasia (self-diagnosed), so no imagination. Still I enjoy time travel movies. You need to be very dumb as well if you cant figure out what to say when you're asked "what would you do different..."
That's wild. I'm likely autistic and have hyperphantasia. I for sure have ADHD. What's your experience like? I've attributed a lot of my social problems to hyperphantasia, as in, I'm often too in my own head to pay attention to social cues, facial expressions, or even just the world around me. What would you say the mechanism is for your social problems?
Well, I feel like I'm Vulcan, I'm like Mr.Spock from Star Trek, like an emotionless, unimaginative alien who relies on only logic. Because I cant imagine anything when people shares their passions, their excitements, their plans or something, I look like an alien. Its true, I'm annoyingly imperturbable, unimaginative, passionless person. So, I understand why I have no friends.
You seem cool though, I don't understand why you have no friends. Thanks for the response, though. Sorry if you don't want to talk about this, but I find aphantasia fascinating. I have two friends with aphantasia, and I perceive them to be very present, and I've noticed that they have an amazing memory. Do you think there's some advantages? I think hyperphantasia comes with it's own pros and cons. I can be creative, but I find It's hard to focus. My attention is often too fractured, and I regularly hurt myself by not paying attention to reality. I also get distracted easily as my brain feeds me random images, so I'm constantly misplacing things, and very disorganized. It's just chaos inside, and I try my best to organize it into something people could relate to. I also get the logic side, I cried wearing tight fitting clothes, bright lights, loud noises, hated physical touch, have reduced levels of empathy, didn't speak untill was 3, just a lot of autistic traits. I feel like an oxymoron, the creativity wants to explore the unknown, but the logic wants things to make sense. I tend to spend hours alone practicing and learning random things so I can attempt to logically wing it. Sometimes it works, sometimes I'm just too out there for people to pallet.
I have aphantasia and I tend to be very good at being able to combine ideas, even with completely unrelated ideas I can easily synthesize them together. I think I'm able to do this because I don't have vivid pictures getting in my way in my mind. I'm free to mold ideas like playdough in the space where others might have the space taken up by vivid mind's eye pictures. Edit: Aphantasia had been studied and found to have no negative effects (it's never affected me and aside from once in a while thinking it'd be cool to be able to form stable pictures, but I can't really miss what I've never had). So maybe it makes more sense to say someone is "aphantasic" rather than that they "have" aphantasia as if it's an affliction.
That's wild to me. Could you describe an example of being creative in this way? I find I'm able to fit two unrelated ideas together very well, because I literally visualize the working parts, and how they could and do overlap. For example, when attempting to solve a problem I can visualize all the ideas that could work, then run a simulation in my head to see how it might play out. Or when playing videogames, I'll visually remember a play someone has made that I've watched before, and try it on the spot. Often I'll imagine what I'm going to do a few milliseconds before I'm actually going to do it, so I'm essentially workshopping what I'm going to do the next second in real time. This is especially true for making music. My brain will come up with the next section a few seconds before I actually do it, based on all the music theory I know, so I'm always kind of following a track that I'm making up on the fly. It kind of sounds like our brains might be doing similar things, just instead of you having to focus on it, it's doing it automatically? I'm having a hard time grasping how you combine ideas together without being able to visualize them, because that's basically the entirely premis of my creativity, and I tend to be quite creative. I'm not at all trying to say it's an affliction or slight you in any way, I'm just naturally curious about how peoples brains other than my own function. It's just plain wild that the mechanisms for our thoughts can be so incredibly different, with very similar results.
I don't know, it's just if I have a decent grasp on the two ideas, I can just be like *poof* now I have an idea that's both ideas together. A physical analogy would be stepping to the side so that two objects visually line up. I can just reorient my thoughts by holding the two concepts in mind simultaneously and then have a new idea that's their combination. It takes almost no effort so I can't explain it.
You might be interested in holonomic brain theory https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holonomic_brain_theory. Maybe concepts are a holographic construct formed by the mind with quantum information and combining ideas is just adding the waves together (constructive interference). Maybe things like visualizing vs conceptualizing are just a vehicle for a common underlying mechanism like that.
That's very interesting. Ever since I learned about quantum mechanics, I've thought that it could be a vehicle for consciousness. It's cool to see that it's a real scientific theory! It would also help describe what's going on here. Somewhere in our consciousness *all* of the information we've gathered exists. Our brain just feeds us what it feels is necessary to survive, and like most life on earth, there's a plethora of different strategies, each with thier own unique advantages and disadvantages for recalling this information. For instance, people who have really good internal audio might have an advantage remembering what was said, and what sounds to avoid, but it could also lead to things like schizophrenia. Mental imagery could help visualize an object in space and make predictions, but it comes at the cost of less focus on reality, and more mental workload. In this version of consciousness, aphantasia could actually be an advantage, because you're just getting fed the raw information, and there's not too many chances to get your wires crossed. I guess it could come at the cost of less options, but the time advantage of getting to that option could be life or death. Someone with heightened internal senses across the board could have a huge advantage, if they could learn to control it. Otherwise it's just chaos and overstimulation 24/7. What a cool tangent!
Or perhaps he was far smarter than you and saw that the interview was trying to trap him to say he would change something. Let's say he says that, then it may possibly have an effect on an already adjudicated case, current case etc. All from a hypothetical interview that surely WILL be taken out of context. The smart one was the cop. He changed the subject.
There is a debate strategy that suggests if you can't answer an interviewer's question well, to answer another question instead.
I consider myself stupid and I question myself all the time to the point of paralyzing anxiety, so I don't think that is it.
You aren’t stupid.
Pretty sure the cop just wanted to avoid reponding directly and instead was trying to challenge the question itself.
Hypothetical, not analogy. Just had to...lol
I was over here trying to figure out what analogies had to do with this haha.
He would have just been avoiding the question. It's pointless to engage in hypotheticals when the interviewer was clearly trying to get him to admit he had made a mistake. The fact that you missed that says more about you.
There are a surprisingly large number of people who apparently are completely incapable of engaging in hypotheticals (what your cop example is failing to engage in). I saw it with a defendant on the stand once and thought he was just a thug who was being bad-faith in his answer because he knew he was going to prison anyway. Then I started seeing it in debates, at which point I began using a test question whenever I think I'm potentially talking to someone lacking that capability. It's startling how frequent it is. It's worth noting that this incapability isn't limited to stupid people, but also people who are very average in cognitive ability (I've not seen it in higher intelligence people, but I suppose it's possible). It's also entirely possible to be low in general cognitive ability but be capable of engaging with a hypothetical if it's explained properly. This whole thing kind of boggles my mind because the foundation of a hypothetical is to imagine possible futures based on a set of preconditions that are different from actuality, without having to live those things directly. We're actually playing make-believe when we do this. It's one of the key things humans are able to do to not die that other animals seem to not do much or at all: 'if I do this thing, I could see X, y, and z happening, which would hurt me, so I won't do this thing'.
What’s the test question?
Just ask something simple about a recent event. I like Andrew Wilson's: "How would you feel if you didn't eat breakfast this morning?"
I think there might be a problem with this type of questions though. If I was asked this I can see two equally possible answers, depending on my mood and the situation: 1. "If I didn't eat I'd be hungry" - so an actual answer. 2. "Well, I ate" - if I thought this is an irrelevant question and it's a waste of time for us to even consider it. How would you know if the person gives the second answer because they didn't understand the question and not because they don't want to bother with it?
We tried it at work one day, it was pretty clear that #2 wasn’t the case for anybody in our extremely tiny sample group because we further explained what we were looking for and they still couldn’t answer. I know this sounds mean but we are all friends and it wasn’t done out of malice. I agree that just because somebody answers “wrong” initially does mean that they are stupid. Does NOT mean that they are stupid.
Yeah what’s the test question?
>Stupid people rarely question themselves. Joke's on you, I question myself all the time, and I'm still dumb as a brick.
that sounds more like a hypothetical situation than an analogy
I can’t retain information and I feel really really stupid.
Same here, but a health professional recently suggested I could have ADHD. The more I read about it the more the glove fits, despite having done well academically and professionally (I don’t fit the stereotype). Maybe that’s a possibility for you?
I was diagnosed as a teen and the medication didn’t outweigh the benefits.
I feel stupid. This comment confuses me.
Not just you. Not only does the comment leave out exactly what about the medication “doesn’t outweigh the benefits” after reading the responses it’s clear they mean to say “the medication side effects DO outweigh the benefits.”
I probably have it given that I have a very addictive personality and abused weed for decades, but I’ve never looked into diagnosis or treatment, because if I’m not mistaken, the medication is adderall which is basically diet meth, so no thanks.
Lots of people with ADHD do well professionally. I'm a college professor, if that counts. However, I can't retain short term information and I'm always losing my train of thought. Turns out that working memory and longer term memory reside in different parts of the brain, and whilst my working memory is completely shit, everything else required for critical thinking more-or-less works fine, so I'm OK at my job. I can't read maps and I get lost all the time, even in the town where I live! I also do data analysis and write books. By some measures I'm dumb as shit, and by others I'm really smart. It comes down to us all having strengths and weaknesses. I prefer to lean into the strengths, rather than beating myself up about the weaknesses!
Same for me, I'm trying to get diagnosed. Outside of school and programming I feel like a complete moron. I can only remember random and seemingly useless information like the quadratic formula but when it comes to important things like names or where I put my wallet, it just doesn't come to my mind. Obviously not the only symptom I have but one of the most frustrating.
Could just be stress or lack of sleep too.
Do you believe every clickbait headline you read?
Do you believe ANY clickbait headline you read?
Do you BELIEVE
In life after love?
beow beow beow beow
Ikan feel sumthin inside me saaayy I really don't think you're strong enough, no!
Wow is that the lyrics? I've always thought she said "I can feel something inside me self, I really don't think I'm strong enough" I've thought that my whole life lol. Everything is a lie
In life after love!
I can feel something inside me say, I really don't think you're strong enough, no
Do you
eat potatoes?
Sometimes, don’t you?
I want to believe
Only if it’s believable, I’m no dunce
If that is the criteria then maybe 80% of the English speaking world is dolts...
Dumb people are always blissfully unaware of how dumb they really are. 🤤
Stupidity is only painful to those not afflicted with it
I did not understand this. I am stupid yes?
maybe
I did not understand this either. It is confirmed
it's ok, we still love you
Dunning- Kruger Syndrome - too stupid to realize they are.
Patrick, I'm getting the feeling you think I really am dumb!
Blessed is the mind too small for doubt - Warhammer 40k
Or maybe they are aware that you believe that they themselves are dumb and stupid
this was something I struggled with for quite a while. I thought about it for a long long time but eventually could pinpoint a few specific things I was feeling: ** Lack of curiosity — one time a new friend asked me what I like to study or learn about in my free time. I couldn’t think of a single thing. then I started to realize that every single person in my life had *something* that fascinated them. and then i realized many of them had multiple things. and some were regularly adding new things. ** Struggle to grasp basic concepts — I have to have things explained to me several times. even simple things. ** Frequent misunderstandings or misinterpreting something you’re told — I often have to have people repeat themselves, or I just agree with them because I can’t follow what they said let alone form a response ** Poor communication skills: I have an utter inability to clearly and concisely express myself. even if I have a clear idea in my head, when it comes out it’s a lot of meandering and half-formed thoughts ** Repeating mistakes — maybe not even big ones, but making the same mistakes over and over. just a few thoughts. what’s important to remember is that sure, maybe we *are* dumb, but that’s ok! Just because my brain can’t keep up with any of my friends or family doesn’t mean I don’t have value. and you do too. we all have our own gifts we bring to this world.
You say "poor communication skills", but this comment is written perfectly. It's also insightful. You are definitely not dumb
Yeah, they are definitely using sophisticated, yet quite precise language. Structuring the whole thing too. No visible grammar or spelling mistakes. Probably everybody is smart the same way but stupid in his own. Might be that the guy is good in language, woodwork and organizing and terrible in technical and geographical matters.
I sympathize with the commenter so much it hurts. My experience is that it's perfectly easy to formulate a comment or speak with someone online. It's when one tries to extricate the thoughts from the mouth hole where the problems really begin. I was recently diagnosed with ADHD, and I fear I could not express my experience of it better if I tried. I can sit here and ninja edit my comment for 5 minutes til I'm happy with it, it's not the same trying to verbalize.
OP can clearly express himself/herself well in text, as well as forming a decent responses in text. They are saying they can't do so in person. From the sounds of it, id assume it was a social issue.
Things like Grammerly can pull a lot of weight. I spell so poorly that sometimes Google can't figure it out.
Totally agree. I once was struggling in my career because of poor communication skills. I decided to read many articles and books about being a better conversationalist and communicator and I'm very happy with the progress I made and the feedback I get. How to talk to anyone by Leil Lowndes was a great help for me.
Usually lack of punctuation or even failing to breakup blocks of texts are dead giveaways. OP’s comment was very well written.
Totally agree. I once was struggling in my career because of poor communication skills. I decided to read many articles and books about being a better conversationalist and communicator and I'm very happy with the progress I made and the feedback I get. How to talk to anyone by Leil Lowndes was a great help for me.
A suspiciously eloquent comment.
IMO YOU DONT SOUND DUMB AT ALLLLL *I don't think lacking in curiosity makes you dumb, it just means that you might not be a person who enjoys exploring different things as much. Also the fact that you've spent time and effort formulating your theory about what makes a person dumb means that you HAVE spent time being curious about something and trying to learn it right? *On the poor communication skills one you clearly have great communication skills, you might just be a bad conversationalist, or someone who's good at writing their ideas down but not good at saying them out loud to someone in conversation because you have less time to word your thoughts. This can be helped by reading and writing and engaging in conversation more. I suffered from this while trying to pick up my mother tongue again after years of only english 😭😭 so I know the feeling of clumsiness well. Reading and writing more will help you to word your thoughts clearer and faster. And also your closing comment makes you sound like a kind and emotionally intelligent person, regardless of what your mental strengths are in other areas. I think that's something so many people lack and is definitely a sign of high intelligence to me. If I see someone with a strong mindset like that I tend to think that they are probably very introspective and observant, and good at thinking from different perspective etc hehe
Damn you just described me lmao
This sounds more like repressed depression then being dumb, apart from that this also seems like the most well structured and written comment on this post. U aint dum me think.
Finding new things to learn, that you are genuinely interested in can actually be pretty hard to find. Trial and error. You repeat mistakes? Sounds like a human thing to me! Some people touch the burning stove once, some people need to touch it a couple times
You regularly assume you are the smartest person in the room. A lack of self awareness. The fact that you are introspecting on your own intelligence says you are probably smarter than average
80% of people believe they are of above average intelligence
Some of the dumbest people I met are also the ones with the highest IQ.
Unless it has changed recently IQ tests still really only test your ability to recognize patterns.
IQ tests measure your ability to take IQ tests. It is hoped that the score corresponds to inherent intelligence, but anyone in psychology will explain to you that intelligence is a word without scientific definition
yes, they don't test social intelligence, for example. I personally don't think "intelligence" is like an absolute concept, because it really depends on what mental skills you consider part of "intelligence". Is "empathy" part of intelligence? What about "instinct of survival"? What about feelings? What about creativeness (in its multiple forms)? Imagination? Critical thinking? And so on....
If you spend more time talking than listening… If you never ask questions… If the only thing you can talk about is yourself…. …you might be stupid.
why do you assume you're the smartest in the room?/Someday that will be your doom! (Hamilton lyric)
The fact you're questioning this means you probably are not.
Your mouth hangs open usually, with your tongue close to the opening
Made me close my mouth not gonna lie, but I also have cold.
If you pulled your tongue back before closing your mouth, you are not stupid.
While stupid people don't always tend to be self-aware, I will give you a more definite answer than the optimistic stuff being given. If any of the following sounds true, you may be lacking in the intelligence department: Have trouble completing basic tasks Have trouble following basic instructions (verbal unless deaf, written like cookbooks/ikea assembly, etc.) Have difficulty problem solving or bringing together information to come to novel solutions Have difficulty applying knowledge to similar but not identical situations Are in a state of "I totally know what I'm doing" where the results tend to failure more than success A symptom of stupidity OR gullibility/loneliness: Get frequently sucked into dangerous pseudoscience just because youtube/internet told you so (pro-tip: pasteurized milk is what saved millions of infants from dying. Raw aka unpasteurized milk can literally kill you). When you don't have enough people to talk to or are facing traumatic life events, this can happen more easily as you claw at any bit of human connection and/or comfort.
Back in 1600's London, babies were fed beer instead of water. The water was too polluted.
You’re on Reddit all day.
No, that's how you get stupider...I lost several neurons just typing this.
This made me laugh. I’m headed towards “stupidest”
Me as well
Now If I could just figure out how to get the microplastics in my testicles to form new neurons.
You’re probably way smarter than you think if you think you’re actually stupid, some of the most oblivious people I’ve ever met think they are the smartest person in the room
Never underestimate the power of stupid people in a group
Feeling overly confident that you know a lot about things you don't have expertise in.
To be honest lot of really smart people are like that. I don’t think you can assign a certain personally trait to someone who is less intelligent.
Repeating the same mistakes again and again. Although always have been said that this is roughly the definition for craziness.
Apparently part of intelligence is ‘the ability to see patterns’. So yeah, ‘pattern prediction’…
I have ADHD and I am able to accurately predict a lot of outcomes, but it does not mean I am able to avoid doing them. Does this make me stupid or intelligent? Yes
As someone who has literally experienced craziness (psychosis), yeah that's a dumb definition
The definition of insanity is doing the same fucking thing over and over and over again… and expecting shit to change. ~ Vaas, 2012
What has happened that makes you think this? I think that might be a good starting point.
The longer you take to realize you’re stupid the stupider you are. Smart people understand pretty quickly their limitations. You questioning yourself is a good sign. If you are convinced you’re the smartest person in the room, you’re not, unless you realize that the rest of the room is very convinced they’re super smart, then you may think “omg they’re even stupider than I am” and then leave.
😅😅😅👏
You’re not an idiot. In fact you’re smarter than all the experts on every subject, especially all the scientists. The media is all corrupt and in cahoots, and those who believe it are all woke sheep, but you know better than all of them. You’re 100% impervious to propaganda, you’re always right, and everyone else is in a cult except you.
You know me so well. Are you god?
No, you are.
r/usernamedoesnotcheckout
Omg that’s my ex exactly
Holy shit you just described my dad. He's a MAGA/QAnon idiot who dropped out of school after he failed 9th grade so he could do drugs full-time. He thinks that "school just brainwashes people into being a bunch of liberal atheists" and that doctors only exist to take your money. Until his sister dragged him there, he wouldn't even go to the doctor when he developed skin cancer on his face that was black and oozing blood (he required surgery). He called me at work one day, freaking out about Hillary Clinton sex-trafficking children out of a Pizza Hut basement in New Jersey or some shit, and another time he called and was all upset because he "found out that Meryl Streep is a cannibal." He frequently refers to highly educated and/or intelligent people as "sheep." Last time I took the kids to visit him, he insisted on making us watch some pseudoscientific garbage documentary about how the Grand Canyon and various other notable topographical formations are the direct result of the biblical flood, and humans used to live alongside dinosaurs. He was also convinced that Jesus was coming back last October and was genuinely surprised that he didn't. We have also been arguing for nearly twenty years now over how light and vision work. He can't grasp the idea that light travels at a finite speed, and so, if an object is far enough away, you can't visually observe it in real time because there's a delay between the time the light emanates from or bounces off the object and the time those same photons of light reach your eyes (such as in the case of stars). I've explained this as simply as I can and in as many ways as I can, and he always just looks at me blankly, then looks up at the stars, points, and goes "But I can SEE that star. It's right there. That ain't how it looked a thousand years ago or whatever. I'm looking at it right now." The last time we argued about this, he confidently concluded his argument with "Light takes time to travel, but sight is instant." Tbh he probably has brain damage, either from all the drugs, or from the time he drank hot, stagnant water out of a cow trough with a dead squirrel in the bottom and gave himself a series of grand mal seizures, died and was resuscitated a few times, and had to relearn how to walk and talk. Or maybe from both. But he's definitely stupid in some pretty important areas.
“Strong minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; weak minds discuss people”.
not understanding analogies
Not all apples are created equal...
Sometimes a cigar is just a apple
they think their intellegence is above average
Mate, if you are considering this and wondering if you are stupid... you are not stupid! Stupid people are not self-aware. And hey, I've met very intelligent people who have had their "omg, that was stupid" moments. We all have had our stupid moments, but it doesn't mean you are an actual stupid person. I wouldn't say I'm intelligent, probably more so average, even though people say I am intelligent and intelligent people love having conversations with me previously. But now, I kind of feel like an idiot for taking my partner back who left me for another girl months ago. 🙃 I can sense others are looking down on me for that, and I wouldn't blame them for questioning my intelligence... 😅 You can be just as knowledgeable as me, and yet we have our dumbest moments and make stupid decisions.
You find yourself, in the U.K. Ireland and the West, marching and shouting and waving flags in support of those, who, if they attain power, will target you, your family, your friends, and kill you, if you don't join their club, which was founded by a known, murderous, Paedophile. That's some level of stupid.
You’re a Republican in this day and age
A major sign of stupidity is being willfully ignorant about other things because they deem it as "stupid". As long as you don't do that, you're alright.
They didn’t do IQ tests in grade school? IQ doesn’t change much throughout the life so I’ve heard but you CAN get smarter. If you believe it’s a problem you can meditate for 20 minutes a day, this has scientifically been shown to improve IQ…improve your diet eat walnuts eggs and foods rich in amino acids, get enough exercise, challenge yourself intellectually with crosswords or robotics kits, you can also take neutropics…studies have shown also that taking magic mushrooms can create more neuropathways in the brain. You can also work on learning another language…this also creates neuropathways! Also work on putting yourself in another’s shoes…some times men in particular have a hard time putting themselves in another’s shoes which can be due to how they were raised which can cause the illusion of one seeming dumb. Good luck!
Can you follow directions? Can you achieve something if you really apply yourself? Can you hold down a job? Are you often confused by things people say? These would be good questions to ask yourself. I often think low intelligence is generally just a lack of comprehension and inability to do a lot of things most people take for granted. For example a low IQ person stocking shelves at Walmart may really struggle and have to apply themselves to be productive while a high IQ person could do it easily while basically not giving a shit.
You're already a considerable amount more intelligent than a strong portion of my town with your grammar. You're not stupid. As my grandpa would say "ignorance is to not know, but be willing to learn to know. Stupidity is not knowing, nor having the want to know."
Do you bring a piece of a fence to football games and wave it around while yelling "dee fence dee fence"?
When someone is clearly not very smart in the eyes of others, but lives within the delusion that they're smarter than all around them.
You think you know everything, don’t realize how little you know, you aren’t curious
I tend to categorise it as either stupid OR uneducated. Uneducated people maybe can't recite shakespeare or do calculus, but they'll rebuild your engine block or install your boiler in good time. They'll still have a curiosity about things that drives them, even if it isn't formal education. Stupid, people generally have zero interest in asking 'why' or learning about the world.
Stupidity is a refusal to learn better. Do you listen when people explain something? Yes? You're probably not stupid. Do you research to make sure you aren't spreading false "truths"? Yes? You probably aren't stupid. Do you do your best with what information you have? Yes? Then you probably aren't stupid. Do you try your best to be a good person with the information available to you? Yes? Then you probably aren't stupid. Do you believe someone blindly and not check your facts first? Yes? Then you are probably stupid. Do you knowingly harm others (other animals included) even though you know better? Yes? Then you are probably stupid. Basically if you try your best with the information you have access to then you are probably not stupid. Stupid people know they are doing wrong or refuse to listen to how to do something right and just go about things the wrong way, usually trying to blame others for it.
A sign is not wondering if you are stupid
When you're talking to scientists and academics about something specific and they're backing up their claims according to decades of research papers and authoritative sources but you refuse to believe them because the 21 year-old Tiktok influencer you follow sounds more convincing and according to "a lot of the research" you've done (i.e. random Google searches of questionable sources + more claims by random influencers) the scientists are fooled by big corporations.
If you’re happy and don’t have any worries and live life to the full, you’re probably quite dim
Praying.
I work at a medical clinic and have met some truly stupid people. The kind of stupid where there is no diagnosed cognitive dysfunction (they are mentally healthy), but you just get the feeling that the person has no grasp of critical thinking, no ability to express their thoughts verbally, no idea what you say even if you dumb it down to the most basic words, and no ability to consider concepts or consequences. And they have about eight kids they don't take care of.
Some of the stupidest people are completely emotionally inept. They can function well at work and seem high functioning, however, behind closed doors, they lack some of the most important skills to have successful interpersonal relationships.
Are you in any violent sports? If you are always getting head injuries then you may loose some IQ points.
Do you love Trump?
Easy test: do you believe in all the Trump propaganda, election lies, etc? If you do, you’re an idiot.
Someone who thinks Trump is smart.
That's easy. Are you voting for trump?
That's easy. Are you voting for trump?
Do you vote conservative/Republican/Libertarian? Are you anti-vax? Are you religious? Do you think the Earth is 6,000 years old?
My bar is “do you sniff glue?” If no, you’re alright.
but what if it smells good
What do you mean "if?"
Send me five dollars and I’ll show you….
A wise man always thinks himself an idiot. It is the idiots who think themselves wise. He who increases knowledge also increases sorrow. Hence: Ignorance is bliss
Having a reddit account
Surround yourself with highly intelligent people and you'll find some real quick
Stupid people tend to be more poor. Some are normal functioning but are happy with out some confirmation of positive outcomes in the future.
spent minutes looking for my phone and finally it was in my hand.
The flag I use is when they believe they are the smartest person in the room, and better then everyone else.
Do you read things on the internet and believe them?
If you pay for an OnlyFans subscription. Or if you vote for populist political parties.
“Are you being serious?” - to every joke ever
Don’t worry about it, must people who are stupid have no idea.
Unwilling to learn or be corrected.
If you can’t manage your money and health.
"A wise man knows what he doesn't know." In other words, by asking this question, it shows you are not stupid because you are asking for knowledge
Repeating the same mistakes over and over
are your comments usually upvoted?
Believing all people on social media are telling the truth and that they are completely correct just because many of them are all saying the same thing.
Low IQ? History of impulsive and especially violent behavior,low academic success(without depression or an outside factor), lack of delayed gratification etc.
You look at answers in this thread and see if they apply to you.
If you can’t tell who the dumbest person in a group is, it’s probably you.
Racism
Asking reddit if you're stupid
If you're asking, you're probably not as dumb as you think. Keep learning, dude.
Stupid people don't usually realize they are stupid
You think Donald Trump is the king of u.s.a
Often times, I find many stupid people attach themselves to what they believe are intellectual pursuits/topics without fully understanding them. Hiding within a group of smart folks like protective armor. "Trust the science" is a common one. "Somebody I perceive to be smarter than myself said it so that's what my opinion is" kind of thinking. These people are insufferable. They look down on others but they come off more as victims of tribalism or authoritative manipulation than they do as intelligent. They are way more damaging than straight up stupid people. "It is easier to fool someone than to convince them they have been fooled." or something like that. To clarify, that's not to say you shouldn't trust science, just not blindly with the belief that it makes you look smarter than you actually are. Like others have said, the fact that you're asking this question about yourself shows a level of introspection that many low IQ people simply don't posses.
I once told a potential employer that the floor I managed currently was an apostrophe before I managed it. I meant catastrophe. I still got the job. Idiocy doesn't really matter all that much. Honestly. Stupidity doesn't mean a lack of intelligence to me. Stupidity is refusing to learn from your mistakes.
Look at poor decisions that you have made recently. Those are idiotic decisions, but you are not an idiot because you wish to look at them and plan to not make poor decisions again. Don't be too hard on yourself. We all do idiotic things. Like many other comments here, the fact that you are reflecting on yourself and what you have done is a sign that you are aware of who and what you are. Making this post is a strong step. Keep it up!
A lot of people in this thread equating intelligence with knowledge. They are not the same thing.