Submitted 11 months ago by QaspR@lemmy.world to [deleted]
To clarify here, I don’t feel like I’m significantly smarter than most people, but I feel like people have a hard time doing any sort of thinking about stuff. Especially when it comes to verifying “facts.”
Not that high a number but there are some complete idiots out there.
Think about how stupid the average person is, then realize that half of the population is stupider than that.
Yes. But the 90/10 varies by topic.
And never assume you’re in the 10%. Arguably, everyone they are is the problem
Everyone says that to try to make themselves appear humble, but most of the ones who genuinely say stuff like 90% of the population is stupid tend to be unequivocally not part of the problem.
It’s kind of a socratic wisdom situation lol, humble brag time
I get told by a lot of people in my life that I’m smart, I don’t FEEL very smart though, I just tend to catch on to things quicker then others and will dive deeper in subjects I find interesting. I’m well aware that there is an insane amount of depth to many things I’m interested in that I just can’t bother to get into due to various factors. I also have imposter syndrome so idk.
Only when I’m driving
That’s a significant insight. It’s only once you’ve been in a car with someone driving that you really become aware of how “awake”(?) They are. Observance and prediction seem to come with higher intelligence, and some people do not have it.
I think ignorant might be more accurate than stupid. That crosses into stupidity if the ignorance is wilful eg they refuse to accept facts or refuse to even investigate if someone tries to present evidence.
People these days seem exhausted and angry and for some there’s comfort in the ‘certainty’ of their wrong beliefs. I read a piece recently about an ex qanon guy who said a large part of the appeal was being part of a community and encouraged to be angry about everything.
I feel like 20% of people are stupid but they cause 80% of the annoyances in my life.
The Pareto principle is everywhere in life.
And now I’ve learned what that rule is called. Cheers.
I do wonder how widespread Astro-turfing is. I just came from a discussion of EVs and some of the anti people were really obtuse in their claims. Just making wild claims that are completely against any actual real life data. There was similar for climate change, and smoking …… sure I’m biased but people want to support the status quo against all reason. Is it some sort of stubborn stupidity? Are they malicious/trolls? Is it corporate propaganda?
I know, I think this a lot when I’m on here. Especially the whole “don’t vote for Biden because Israel” thing. I just saw some comments saying that Trump would be better to have as president because he’s just dumber and wouldn’t be able to carry out any kind of war. I honestly can’t tell anymore whether a real person would actually say that.
I mean I’m sure someone honestly believes that. But to be fair, people believe the earth is flat.
I feel like 90% of people don’t put in the mental effort to resolve cognitive dissonance, not that they are incapable of feeling it.
If that counts as stupid, then I fully agree 90%+ of people are “stupid”.
Human intelligence is segmented and specialized. People who are smart at few things are usually very dumb at others. A person who can speak 9 languages can’t do more than basic math. An expert computer programmer, who can’t figure out how to keep a plant alive. Etc…
Polymaths are very rare. Very few people have advanced understanding and skills in multiple areas.
Maybe people tend to specialize because they’ve been told that’s how they should do it. The reality is there is no limit known to what the human mind can learn. I’ve found that I can do just about anything I set my mind to do.
I can do car repairs, electronics design and repair, plumbing (which I avoid if at all possible), music (guitar, keyboard, bass, and drums), painting, drawing, computer systems design and repair, basic programming (powershell and bash scripting mostly), carpentry, farming, chemistry, cooking, hunting, and math. Math was always pretty easy to me until I got into Calculus which kicked my ass initially.
When I was growing up we didn’t have the internet or cable TV so I read books all the time. I’ve read hundreds of novels, and it gave me an excellent grasp of language and a massive vocabulary. Everybody should do that too.
The comments in here are so depressing it’s actually funny. Evidently we don’t even know what the word means. “No metrics” ffs
Look, the fact of the matter is, as soon as you start even just inching over to the right of the curve, the people rolling the other way down the hill are already, let’s say, beyond your horizons. The reverse is true too but in the less salutory way. You will never be able to fully communicate anything to them, their heads are populated with bullshit and nothing true can remain in their minds because it just gets overwritten by the stupidity which they have chosen as their life. They do not see obvious connections, they can not follow principles or see how they apply to them, and they are too arrogant to have sense spoken to them. They can not learn, resent the suggestion that there is something they don’t already know in the first place, and they say things like “you can’t tell me shit”. I mean, thanks for self-identifying as a drain on society but we could already tell…
I think it’s interesting how mathematically hard it is to judge anyone else’s intelligence, like you talk about the issue of people rolling down the hill and I get that and agree but really it’s vastly more complex topography - if the conversation is about python programming I can look very intelligent, if it’s about java programming then I’ll look a bit of a fool, and these are as similar as you can get were the topic famous geologists then I’d probably seem like a total idiot
Now you’ll be tempted to say but you can still tell by how you carry yourself and it’s s bit true but that’s not really true either, I’ve travelled enough to know that common sense in one area is dumb somewhere else - ask too many questions in one place they’ll think you’re simple and don’t ask enough somewhere else they’ll think it too.
Part of it is that we don’t really know what level someone is on, if you see a guy in the garden staring at the pretty leaves for hours he just might be empty headed, or he could be Alan Turing working out one of the most fundamentally brilliant mathematics discoveres of the era.
We’re on our own hill of intelligence so it can be hard to tell if someone on a different one is smart or dumb
I also think so. You can usually tell who is close to your own level, but anything too far off andthe signals for what is considered smart or dumb tend to blend together.
The one trait which usually don’t lie is the person ability to learn. Fast learners and autodidacts are almost always smart, and people who are slow to learn are almost always left of the curve. Other signals you mentioned are deeply rooted in culture.
Very well said. Is it even possible to quantify intelligence? I mean, you can obviously measures brain size, which they did, and that was lacking, then they measured amount of gray matter, which matters a lot more, conclusively, but there is also the fact that even losing pieces of the brain cannot stop a person from being fully functioning due to neuroplasticity, and then you have concepts like IQ tests which are verifiable steeped in white exceptionalism aka racist as hell.
It seems like the issue is more nuanced than all that.
The under 25 crowd seems to be a bit…off. I’m just an old guy now, so I’ll be here yelling at my clouds.
I’m not so sure, I saw this short the other day of this Gen z woman with a caption that said something like “you can tell gen z from millennial by the rise of their jeans” with her wearing mid rise (labeled low) and high rise jeans, and the comments were full of millennial women pointing out that in the 90s the low rise was like way way way low (which they were) or that millennial wore low rise first, or that it was a bad style or whatever input they felt they needed to give
And I realized this Gen z girl doesn’t care about any of this, and is actually quite clever, she’s just effectively gotten an insane amount of engagement and is positioning herself as an influencer because much of my generation are idiots and are commenting and reacting on her stuff over the rise of pants
One thing that seems to be true for so long as we have been writing stuff: people 35 and older have always always complained about how hopelessly stupid/lazy/off the people under 25 are and how society is doomed when those folks take over. I take comfort that we seem to have consistently gotten this wrong for hundreds of years.
“The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise.".
Socrates. ~400BC
Ya, I don’t think they’re lazy or stupid but I’m clearly seeing enormous swaths of people being herded by social media and it’s quite fascinating to see. Prior to this generation, the ability to influence wasn’t nearly as easy to do and attention spans weren’t quite as easy to capture. Now we’re all captured by the device we’re holding and influenced by one thing or another.
A major difference is they can get information whenever they want.
It used to be sort of hard to find academic knowledge outside of an institution. Now you can download it all for free on libgen and have youtubers walk you through it.
That kind of accessibility causes people to take it for granted.
The biggest difference is where the information is coming from, moreso than its availability imo. Previously what you read in a journal or textbook was typically pretty well vetted, it’s hard to say that about the information I’m getting here.
90% of the population think that 90% of the population are stupid.
Why not? Please elaborate.
You’re probably as stupid as the rest. I expect there’s loads of stuff you’ve just taken at face value that is completely wrong.
Agreed
It’s more of a mixture of stupidity, distraction, and willful ignorance
I mean if it is a bell curve, even an average person is smarter than half the world. There’s a selection bias on social media because those heated and ignorant threads get memed and shared either by people who believe the nonsense or by outrage.
Do you think it is a bell curve?
Most tests of intelligence lands close to a bell curve. With how many different factors that can influence intelligence it seems quite likely (the average of many different distributions each with a peak in the center is likely to look like a bell curve)
There’s a lot of things that can go into being “stupid”, and it’s important to remember that these are largely conditions that are debuffing them rather than inherent features of who they are. Most specifically, huge deaths of the population (61% as of Oct 2023) are living paycheck-to-paycheck in the US and have little to fall back on - that kind of perpetual, hopeless stress can greatly fatigue you and occupy your higher reasoning. Moreover, a number of people have become “locked in” to certain kinds of facts - for example the belief that America is inherently good or that God actively relieves suffering; they would have to put their axioms through substantial reevaluation and fresh information to be able to cross through uncertainty and then accept contrary facts, and their living conditions make that difficult.
Epistemology, the theory of knowledge, especially with regard to its methods, validity, and scope. Epistemology is the investigation of what distinguishes justified belief from opinion.
People suck at it.
Especially when it comes to verifying “facts.”
“90%” doesn’t feel very factual to me.
No, I don’t feel (or think) that.
If 90% of the population was stupid there’d be no need to spend uncountable billions brainwashing them with propaganda at every turn, would it?
FYI… I once worked in the propaganda industry - propaganda doesn’t work on the stupid (and I use that term lightly, since I’m not sure “stupid” is something that even really exists). The smarter you assume yourself to be, the more susceptible you are.
Everyone is stupid some of the time and after we’ve noticed all that it feels like we’re surrounded by idiots.
Truth is we’re just not seeing the competence.
I wouldn’t say stupid but I’d say most people believe they know what they’re doing, and don’t.
No, this is a classic case of confirmation bias on social media. And I’ve seen too many people on Lemmy on the daily who have developed a smug attitude because of it. For a crowd that preaches compassion and understanding, sometimes I wonder why it’s only selectively applied by these folks.
Well obviously you are just another idiot because you disagree with me about whether everyone is dumber than me.
I think so. One trip through social media is proof enough. Or, people are willing to be stupid for attention/money. But I add self-awareness to that, I’m not as smart as I think I am.
You are so generous ❤️ because i think 99% it’s stupid
And when I see and feel people on important jobs just because they are parents or friends or friends from friends from someone on the top and not because they are right skilled for that job… Then… You smell the stupidity 10km far away And nowadays it’s what you find on all companies 🤮
Well, half of us are below average, a lower bar than many who ask this question imagine. For example, a significant portion of us struggle to read cereal boxes, let alone books.
But more importantly, a bunch of us recently gained access to global platforms and, coincidentally, a bunch of global platforms recently gained access to us.
I believe a farsighted perspective would say it’s for the best, but there will be growing pains.
I think a lot of it is that we all have topics which we are knowledgeable about. Common discourse then takes different topics, and some people will contribute to the discussion who don’t understand the underlying stuff so much, they have different interests.
The problem is when you read a tech article as a tech worker, you laugh at how stupid the journalist and the commenters are. Then you read an article on some geopolitical event, or some natural phenomenon, and you take what is written as gospel, and even comment on it on forums, despite not having the same level of understanding as in your favourite topic. And you don’t feel you’re part of the stupid 90% then and there.
It really depends on where you live.
Covid showed me we are living in a asylum.
If you “don’t feel like I’m significantly smarter than most people” but view “90%” of people, which I think is well into “most” territory, are stupid then one can reasonably infer you’re putting yourself into that category. Additionally, what does stupid even mean? If I were to try to engage with the spirit of your question, I ironically find myself reflecting on a wise insight my uncle once gave me. Someone who would fall under “stupid” if I am to understand your question right. Anyways, my uncle once said that smart or dumb don’t have an all-encompassing nature (IQ eat your heart out). Instead, one can be smart or dumb with respect to specific domains. My uncle knows a lot about guns, not so much about the internet. So to answer your question, yes most people are “stupid” about most things, but are often quite smart in specific fields related to their life experiences. That’s why we have experts in various fields of study. You and I are no different, and employing empathy seems to be the best strategy to bridging knowledge gaps with others, if that’s your goal.
My take is most people have a lot more intellectual capacity than people think, but the majority don’t know how to use it.
Trivial proof;
Ask somebody to solve a propositional logic question. Give them all instructions they need. Then ask them if some person cheated in a hypothetical social situation. The majority instantly solves the latter correctly, the majority has no idea how to handle the former. Note: social rules can be directly translated to propositional logic, the two types of questions are effectively equivalent. The same thing applies to advanced math like statistics and many other fields.
Humans have the capacity. They just don’t know how to generalize correctly. They don’t know how to deal with problems of an unknown form. The have a hard time following instructions if they feel to abstract. All of this can be trained, if people want to learn. Unfortunately most people don’t want to learn.
Well maybe not 90% but I do feel like smarter* than average but then again half of the population is so that hardly makes me special.
I used to work for the military, i had to keep 65 random guys between the age of 19 and 39 busy for two weeks. Every now and then there was a batch of guys that was shockingly stupid. I'm not a very smart guy, usually when someone has an idea, i run with that, because i assume everyone else is smarter than me. But holy shit, i have no idea how some of these people even exist in the real world.
I paired two guys up, one was a carpenter and the other one works at a post office. Their task as to close up a door that wasn't used anymore. I got two boards cut in size to mount on both sides. If i would've done it, i woul've given myself an hour. They spend 9 hours on it, using all kinds of tools, somehow ruining both boards, and it looked like ass.
This is only one story of two people, but the list just never ends. I'd never run out of stories for doing that job for only 5 years, which means a total of 10 weeks.
Some guys were scary dumb, but somehow had a functioning life.
Try driving in Rhode Island you’ll feel like the number is way higher than 90%
Judging by news and media I’d probably feel that way just being in US in general
Sometimes, though I think it’s easier for anybody to be duped by things they’re already pre-disposed to believing in. Show me a fake article about Trump doing something stupid or evil and I’ll probably be like, “How is he still free?” without really double-checking the source, unless it’s blatantly questionable.
Meanwhile, somebody of the opposite political persuasion will similarly soak in anything that confirms that Biden is the worst president we’ve ever had in history, but their range of “trusted” news sources is completely different than mine. I’m not sure how we can even bridge that gap, since our definition of reality and accepted facts isn’t really even the same anymore. There’s just so many propaganda engines active in the US right now, it’s hard to imagine anything being done about it. If anything, it’ll get worse.
What a refreshing comment. No one is immune to propaganda, but I feel like I’m going insane seeing all of this binary, red vs blue rhetoric. One thing is for certain, we are all being fucked. We need to stop looking left and right, I just don’t see it happening, as the propaganda has gotten scary good in this day and age.
gmtom@lemmy.world 11 months ago
I wouldn’t say that high, but yeah I think the majority of average people are dumb. Even people that are well educated and considered smart, will just believe stupid things they’re told without spending a few seconds to think it through or verify it.
You see it on reddit/lemmy a lot when an obviously fake post gets taken seriously by most commentors, or people just assume that the context someone gives in a title is true, because they literally believe whatever they see on the internet ESPECIALLY if its something that reinforces a strongly held belief.
And that’s lemmy users who I generally consider to be on average a fair but smarter and more critical than you’re average bloke.
So if we were to talk about you’re average middle aged man that’s been a trade for 20 years, spends every night down the boozer and his only hobby is getting into fights at football matches… yeah.
maryjayjay@lemmy.world 11 months ago
“Think of the average American and realize that 50% are dumber than that” - George Carlin