I’ve never found it all that difficult to understand the feeling of being stupid. Maybe I’m a natural.
For all of us, there are things we don’t fully understand, or don’t understand at all. I simply don’t believe there is anyone on this board or elsewhere who knows and understands everything that was ever understood by humans.
If you want to know what stupid feels like, try listening in on a conversation about one of those things you don’t currently understand well at all. Why do they understand it already, when you don’t?
Most of the time it’s because I’m not interested in the subject they’re speaking about, and thus have not bothered to educate myself on it.
Rather than be made to feel stupid, I’ve learned that many people have a certain conceit about their areas of specialty and, in order to make themselves feel superior, are more than happy to try to make YOU feel inferior. This can be rather spectacularly less than effective when they’re geeks talking about Magic: The Gathering, Anime or other such ultimately unimportant topics like stamp collecting or wine vintages.
I think that’s possibly part of it too - it’s just that there are some people who are not really interested in the things that most of us consider fundamental.
Gee, I would never have predicted that someone might post a response like that. How long did it take you to come up with that witty rejoinder? :rolleyes:
It took him 13 hours and 18 minutes. What are you, stupid?
Ah, I kid, I kid. Still, with a lame shot like that in the OP, you can hardly complain. This is the trouble with an easy target like Palin - you have to try harder.
I personally refuse to believe there are stupid people - I prefer to think of them as (intellectually) lazy because it makes me feel better about the world.
Yes, and there were also Nazis with a much higher level of expertise in certain areas than the average person. Arguably a person who is intelligent but uses their expertise for evil is worse than a person who just doesn’t know any better.
You have just reminded me of something a college prof said years ago. A smart person is one who can solve the problem at hand. That definition seems to equate being smart with having common sense.
I’ve met a number of people with very hight IQ’s who didn’t have the common sense of a rock.
On the other hand could you define being stupid with the old definition of a “fool”…a person who keeps doing the same thing and expecting a different outcome each time?
If that definition applies it seems that being truely stupid would at least contain a reasonable amount of frustration.
Not really; it’s completely context dependent. What if the problem at hand is defusing a bomb, or diagnosing a subdural haematoma, or removing a race condition from a piece of safety-critical real-time software? These all depend not one whit on “common sense” but on highly specific knowledge. Aren’t they real problems?
There are just problems, and the knowledge and experience that relates to them. This whole “common sense vs book smarts” dichotomy is a non-starter. Some problems require the former, some the latter.
I disagree with you. I think the prof was right. The prof didn’t mean that a smart person should be able to solve all the problems all the time all by themselves.
Here are my solutions to those problems.
The bomb: Get the hell outta there and call the bomb squad.
Subdural hematoma: I have enough first aid training to know that something was very wrong, so I’d get the person to a hospital.
The race condition software hoosiewhatsis: I’d find someone who knew what the heck you were talking about and ask them who I should contact for help.
Sometimes, the common sense solution to a problem is “get help.”
Actually, my coworker that I discussed above provides a good example of this. There was little call for written communication in that job, but when she did leave a note, it was perfectly understandable. But when she needed to send an official-ish letter about something, she asked me to write it for her. She knew that she didn’t know how to format it or phrase it, and that her written grammar was unreliable. She also had enough common sense to know that in some contexts, proper writing is important. So she got help. She solved the problem at hand.
I think I agree - insofar as ‘being smart’ is also a knowledge and experience based thing. It is possible to learn not only ‘stuff’, but method.
It is possible to learn how to think.
But you didn’t solve those problems - you just went and found someone for whom the solution was (if you like) common sense. In any of those situations, would you pat yourself on the back for having saved the day? I don’t think so. So how can you claim it’s common sense winning out over book smarts? Don’t you think the bomb squad might be a bit miffed if you went around telling everyone you solved the problem of their imminent vaporisation?
(Okay, I’ll give you part credit for spotting the haematoma. :))
As we’ve seen, it’s certainly commendable to know enough to realise that you know little, but to claim that it’s this knowledge that is solving the problem seems a bit of a reach.
This is pretty much what I’m trying to say. To my mind, “common sense” is learned response, whether it’s related to frying an egg, safety-critical software design or constructing a logical proof. The only difference is that some of these domains are universal enough that most people have some level of experience in them, and thus are more willing to accord themselves a high degree of expertise. (And as a corollary, are more willing to judge those wacky head-in-the-clouds book types for not having this supposedly universal knowledge.)
I wasn’t comparing myself to the bomb expert. I was comparing myself to the jackass who thinks that he has the wherewithal to evaluate and deal with a bomb-related situation all by himself.
So, of course I wouldn’t be bragging about solving the problem of our imminent vaporization. But if someone acknowledged that I was the one that recognized a likely threat, evacuated the area, and called the bomb squad, well…I would deserve a pat on the back for that. I might not have known what to do with the bomb itself, but I made sure the people were safe.
Ultimately, this thread is about “stupid vs. smart,” not about “smart in specialized areas vs. general common sense.” Knowing how to do some particular thing doesn’t make you smart. Knowing whether you do know how to do that thing or not makes you smart.
Who was it that said something like “knowledge is knowing how much you don’t know?”
Sure, I was just responding to Doug Bowe’s interpretation of his professor’s aphorism, which was indeed referring to the old common sense/book smarts dichotomy.
I partially agree. I’d say the ability to learn and the faculty of reason are what make one smart. Self-assessment is undoubtedly a crucial aspect of learning (or else the feedback mechanism of trial and error wouldn’t work), so in that respect knowing what you don’t know is a crucial element of smartness, but is far from the whole picture.
For good reason have I never heard anyone say, “you know that Dave? He’s really smart. Any problem I put in front of him, he can tell me in seconds that he doesn’t know the answer.”
