The life of stupid people

In My Humble Opinion
21

I suppose a lot of it depends on what other traits the person has. There are plenty of jobs for people who are not that smart but are attractive, tenacious, and/or charismatic.

The problem with being, for lack of a better term, “dumb” is that by definition dumb people aren’t particularly creative or adaptable to complex or nuanced situations. I would imagine that they would be more likely to respond emotionally than intellectually to situations. And because they don’t understand complexity or nuance, those emotions might more often than not be frustration or anger.

There’s a lot more “living in the moment” vs thinking about the future as the simple-minded often can’t imagine much beyond “right now” or extrapolate how a situation may play out long term.

I kind of extrapolate what life for dumb attractive people might be like based on what I observe in reality shows on the Bravo network. For the most part, their behavior is what I would expect from someone who doesn’t give much thought into their actions. Their brains seem to operate in a very simplified sense of “I want to do this now so I should do this now!” Because those actions often come in conflict with some other littlebrain within their circle, it usually ends in some sort of fight or argument.

22

Strangely, the dumb person’s life may be happier. They may be less prone to questioning things, just accepting things as is.

The smart person may be in a lot more anguish, constantly thinking “Things shouldn’t be this way” and seeing how un-optimal everything is.

23

thx, those are the kind of posts I was hoping for …

any Ideas if a “dumber” person would perceive he/she is slower/less flexible/less creative than many/most? … (Forest Gump was portraited as having this trait)

I venture the guess that a “smarter” person would be able to detect that they are smarter than the avg. person … (e.g. more complex reasoning, identifying “patterns” beyond the obvious, being able to separate relevant from irrelevant information more readily,…)

24

Oh, you mean over half of the US.

25

How has it become this? Has it changed much in fifty years or however long?

I’m just asking because my kid did the WPPSI a couple weeks ago, he’s three. There was a verbal comprehension component and a visual/spatial component. Though he’s not even in school, they were more or less able to assess his IQ. (The “less” part being extreme resistance to completing some tasks.) So I am truly not sure what you’re talking about.

I took it ages ago, as a favor for a psychology student, and it had basically all the same things my son’s had, just adjusted for age, only there was a working memory part I struggled with (when I was later diagnosed with ADHD, that cleared a lot of things up.)

So it looks to me like it hasn’t changed in twenty years.

26

The subject seems to be rather provocative, and likely to ignite flamewars.
I am staying well out of it, that’s all I have to say.

27

I’ve met very few people I would saddle with such an ugly word as “stupid”. But of the two or three I can think of who most embody the term, here is what I noticed:

  • They haven’t traveled much, or experienced a lot beyond what’s immediately around them.

  • Limited, or no sense of humor.

  • Lack of curiosity.

28

I have a niece who was oxygen-deprived at birth by a stupid medical person. The amount of effort it takes by a lot of people to make her able to function in normal society is (and has been) staggering. People are fond of telling her brother how well she gets along living independently and driving a car. What they never see are the meltdowns, the temper tantrums, the looping, and the endless car accidents that has my nephew constantly begging the insurance company not to cancel her. She functions at about the age of a not-too-bright 12-year old, and she holds a government job at a GS-2 level, making copies for office personnel who are well-aware of her limitations. Does she live a normal life? Well, she has a boyfriend who is worse off than she is; she goes to movies, out to dinner, and has other friends outside of family. She drives (as mentioned), has a checking account, etc., but she is also under the guardianship of her siblings.

29

A post was merged into an existing topic: Sageese77 Troll Posts

30

I have some cousins, whom I like, who would never be described as “smart.”

One of them is developmentally disabled, and it would honestly never occur to me to describe her as stupid. This thread made me realize that, and think about why. I think it’s because, to me, “stupid” describes someone who isn’t exercising their capacity for intelligence. It’s the intellectual equivalent of the physical “weak.” This particular cousin is at her peak, which just isn’t very high, so I don’t think of her as smart or stupid, since neither seems to apply.

Many of my other cousins, however, I do think of as stupid, because they are incurious and generally intellectually lazy. I don’t know whether they have the capacity to be smarter, but we’re never going to find out because they’re never going to try. They all have things that they’re interested in and learn a lot about, whether it’s the bible or airplanes or jewellery or opera, but while they collect knowledge, they don’t really manipulate it, just gather it.

I think, overall, they’re just not in the habit of thinking critically or creatively. They will, now and again, but by and large they know what they need to know, and don’t worry about the rest of it. They don’t seem to be able to (interested in?) analyzing complex patterns, such as “why am I always losing my job.” (My analysis is “you’re consistently incurious and not a self-starter, so while there’s nothing wrong with your work, you’re hardly a stellar employee, and they think they can do better.”)

My interactions with them are generally surface-level. Another cousin, who is politically vile, is clearly much smarter in the way she engages with her Trumpism. She’s more passionate about ideas, even ones based on conspiracy theories. It’s not that she couldn’t deconstruct a conspiracy theory, it’s that she is too loyal to her group to try. But she does turn her intellectual gaze on other topics, rather than just following the party line.

My smart cousins and my stupid cousins are generally in the same economic and social classes. They have the same range of education (some have university degrees, some do not). They have the same range of relationships with drugs and alcohol. I can’t speak to their internal dialogues, but I suspect the stupid ones just proceed along a narrower range of topics, and are more focused on the plot of the latest TV show or social life news rather than on abstractions or ideas.

31

The above is not universally true of less intelligent people. As a psychiatric rights activist I have interacted with another group of people also unhappy with the institutional treatment they receive: the folks labeled “mentally retarded / developmentally disabled”. That’s your post topic people. And yes, they organize to fight for their rights. That’s sort of the epitome of thinking “things shouldn’t be this way” and caring enough to show up at conferences and try to do something about it.

32

Yes and no. There’s a fallacy (I forget what it’s called off the top of my head) where dumb people think they know more than they really do. A good example of this is whenever you see someone on social media post something like “you know how I can tell if someone is stupid…” and then their test is something vaguely racist. It’s usually because they maybe mastered their particular tiny body of knowledge but lack the imagination to envision anything more than or different from what they already know.

IMHO, there’s like a “sweet spot” for mediocrity. As long as you sort of middle of the bell curve intelligence-wise, you tend to be content working your regular job leading your regular life. Maybe you dream of something more in abstract, but those jobs are so unobtainable it’s like being disappointed you can’t be a wizard or mermaid IRL.

I think as you get smarter or show more talent at certain things, life can get more frustrating. Those “smart people” jobs get a lot more competitive and you actually have to accomplish “smart things” to be successful at them. Otherwise you end up as a failed startup CEO or alternate for the astronaut program or something.

33

I don’t know to what extent we can generalize about this. IQ isn’t really linked to other types of intelligence, for example some people with lower IQs can be absolutely brilliant at learning other languages, or working on cars, or dancing, or whatever. I’m not saying everyone is equally talented, some people lose the life lottery in that regard, but I don’t think you can generalize about people with an IQ of 80 much beyond, “they are limited in verbal comprehension and visual/spatial skills which will likely result in poor academic performance” because that’s what IQ tests measure. An IQ is just one aspect of the person, used for a pretty narrow purpose. It can’t really speak to internal experience which is probably varied depending on the individual.

There are also a subset of people for whom IQ tests cannot accurately measure academic intelligence, such as many autistic people, who tend to score lower on verbal comprehension even if they are highly intelligent. I don’t think the issue is actually lower verbal comprehension in a lot of cases, but it’s possible to have high verbal comprehension and have that not reflected on the test because of difficulties with spoken language. There are people who are completely nonverbal who can express themselves beautifully on the internet, and we didn’t know those people existed until it was possible to communicate fluidly in ways beyond spoken language.

Example.

34

Dunning-Kruger effect.

35

Yeah, that’s the one.

36

This is just not true. IQ (by definition) is designed to measure general intelligence. Whether IQ tests do so accurately is a moot point, but the underlying general intelligence factor is undeniably real. A vast amount of data shows that performance across different cognitive tasks is statistically pretty well correlated - general intelligence explains about half the variance.

Somebody with below average general intelligence may be above average at certain specific types of cognitive task, but they are not statistically likely to be.

The consistent finding of universally positive correlation matrices of mental test results (or the “positive manifold”), despite large differences in tests’ contents, has been described as “arguably the most replicated result in all psychology”.

37

Interesting. I stand corrected.

Since you seem to know a lot about this, can you comment on the claim upthread that IQ used to be a measure of critical thinking skills, and is now based on how many facts you know? Is IQ measured differently than it used to be?

38

I see little evidence on social media that stupidity is strongly correlated with IQ.

Based on Twitter/X, it seems that the life of stupid people revolves heavily around posting “hahahahaha”, “You sound vaccinated” and clown emojis.

39

Generally, the stupid people I’ve interacted with over the years (and there have been many) seem more content, stress-free, and happy than the super-intelligent folks I encounter. They don’t worry about the myriad of problems that others worry about—the Holocene extinction event, keeping up with the Joneses, death, and whatnot.

And, I have no doubt that stupid people have self-aware inner voices. But, their inner voices are as stupid as they are, which is probably a good thing. They don’t have to deal with the existential angst and self-doubt that plague the smart ones.

Most appear happy thinking of the simple pleasures of life, such as eating, sleeping, and watching TV. And as a result, stupid people are generally more pleasant to interact with. They don’t judge you, argue with you, or bore you with their opinions.

Slightly stupid people may recognize their lower intelligence and feel jealous of smart people who attain more in life than they do, while profoundly stupid people don’t seem to care at all. They are blissfully ignorant of their own limitations and failures. So, if you have to be stupid, go all the way to super-stupidity, and enjoy life to the fullest. Ignorance is bliss, after all.

40

I know a guy who I would say is definitely not the brightest bulb on the christmas tree string of lights.

This fits him to a tee. He really struggles with seeing what the consequences of his actions might be. “What were you thinking?!” has been said to him with regularity. The answer, I think, is that he wasn’t. He just does stuff, and then appears puzzled down the road when the consequences hit him in the ass. His general explanation is that people are out to get him, or the system is “not fair”. He is unable to connect his prior actions to his present bad circumstances - just flails around angrily and blames others.

I suspect in his particular case, fetal alcohol syndrome plays a role.

Edit: On an IQ test, I think he’d do poorly. In a questions that asks “what comes next after circle, square, circle, square, circle …” He’s just as likely to answer “triangle because it’s his turn now and it’s not fair he never got a chance” . Just odd reasoning.