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.”
Yeap, Its actually true
Submitted 4 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.”
Yeap, Its actually true
That’s because you don’t realize the stupid things you’re doing or thinking.
The scientific method is the only way we know to reliably discover actual facts, and even with it it can take decades to see through some bullshit we consider as facts.
If you add manipulation, déception and lies, you can’t blame people for being mistaken or stupid. You can blame them for being assholes though.
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.
only when I’m driving
Well, it is not “90% of people is stupid”
It is more “at any given time, the 90% of people is doing something stupid”, or the equivalent statement “90% of the time people does stupid things”
IIRC math guys call this an “ergodic and stationary” system
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 think we live in an age where advertisements are literally gaslighting, and also where large portions of the population are bombarded with advertisements on a daily basis. I’m not surprised if people’s grip on reality gets a little wobbly, resisting all that propaganda is a lot of effort.
I think adblocking is the best thing I’ve done for my children.
Think about all those poor youtubers and the platform itself.
Lol obvious sarcasm, fuck 'm and the insane amount of ads that are nowadays considered normal.
That’s a lot more complex than people are stupid. Occam’s razor.
I would like to believe this is sarcasm, but it’s impossible to distinguish fake stupidity from real stupidity; Poe’s law.
To paraphrase George Carlin, by definition half of the population is below average intelligence. But nobody thinks they’re in that bottom half.
This is interesting to me though. Didn’t most people (at least in developed countries) take tests in school? Get grades? I would think if you did below average on those you kind of…should know that you’re in the bottom half?
I get that it’s possible to make changes after schooling, and grades are only somewhat reliable (in that they also rely on effort) but still.
IQ tests were first developped because it seemed obvious not all students performed equally. On average a student that is good in a given discipline will also tend to do well in other unrelated disciplines. On average is the keyword here, outliers exist.
I think gifted students can easily tell what side of the curve they’re on, even though they might not want to acknowledge it. It is not even avout the grades, because gifted students also often learn early on that they can get away by doing the minimum amount of work and still get passing grades. So they’re not necessarily top of classes.
Gifted students get told they’re fast learner all the time, and they notice how everyone else seem to be progressing in slow motion. They know.
I think it gets harder to self-evaluate the closer you are to the average, since most of your peers will be more or less just as intelligent as you. Then, the dullest you are, and the less you can identify competense and the more likely you are to be over-confident.
I think in the end, most people will end up believing they’re above average because we tend to notice dumb people a lot. Ironically it is probably students who are just slightly above average who will have the most self-doubts, because they feel different and they can probably tell more gifted students are around.
Source: 50% my ass, 50% being surrounded by incredibly smart people who shared their personal experiences with me.
You ever see the people who get As in school take an aptitude test? They don’t always get high scores.
Yes, myself included.
I wouldn’t say stupid but I’d say most people believe they know what they’re doing, and don’t.
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…
It seems like the issue is more nuanced than all that.
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.
Yes, we all do, and most of us outgrow it.
Snark mode activated: After reading through the “Threads Federation” comments, and see what opinions/comments are currently most popular, I’m going to go with YES.
But jokes aside, my actual personal opinion is no.
I mean, a lot of people have a tendency to do “stupid” things, and maybe even say stupid things - but I wouldn’t classify 90% of the population as stupid. First problem is that “stupid” isn’t a very quantifiable quality - and “smarter” really depends on the perspective of the way you’re looking at it. I’ll use what someone else mentioned here as an example: I would like to say that I’m at least a decent software developer (or so I hope), but I know absolutely nothing about cars (I don’t even have one). While I’m pretty well rounded on the software side of computers, I’m terrible at the hardware side. I am also terrible at math aside from the very basics (and even then… eh) - hence, I’d never have a good shot at even getting into game development if that were something I wanted to pursue.
So not only can I not comment on whether other people are “stupid”, I can’t even account for myself, because there’s no metric for it. Are we going off of IQ (I have zero clue what my IQ is, nor do I really have an interest in finding out what it might be)? Are we going off of being able to answer Jeopardy questions?
I wouldn’t necessarily say ‘stupid’. But lacking in sufficient empathy? Fearful of different people (to the point of being irrationally hostile to them)? Feel entitled? Are smug and sanctimonious about their beliefs? Get to caught up on what other people do with their lives and want you control them?..
Then yes. Definitely.
I think they haven’t tapped into their potential intelligence.
Stupid? Mayb3 if verifying “facts” is your sole metric. I know people who aren’t very media savvy who fall for some stupid propaganda, but they could empty my car’s engine bay and put it back together again and have it cranking the same day. Or you can drop them in any body of water in a 250km radius and they’ll know what fish can be caught there and be able to hook an edible-sized one in half an hour or less. We don’t all have the same skill sets, but we ain’t all “stupid”.
I’d argue given enough time and effort almost anyone can become a domain expert in specific things and do incredible stuff. What distinguishes smart people from simpler folks usually boils down to them having a very easy time processing new stuff, which includes the ability to filter noise and fact check. I don’t like the term “stupid”, but there hasn’t been a whole lot of evidence supporting the idea that human intelligence is compartimented. Humans with high IQs tend to outperform in average at most of what they try. Low IQ probably means you will work harder and have to specialize to achieve the same degree of competency. This just my hot take, I’ve fallen into this rabbit hole before and read a lot on the origin of IQs tests.
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.
can’t say about rest of the population but when I read about some great people, I feel there’s too much to learn and too little time.
and it happens every single day.
I dunno your country or your premise, but I can state pretty confidently that the American school system is completely and utterly failing to prepare Gen Z. Working adjacent to the schools, even amongst the best and brightest the country has to offer are thousands of students who fundamentally do not know how to think for themselves about anything.
All this to say, depending on if you’re in the U.S., things might just keep getting worse. Especially if you’re living in a deeply conservative state, I would not be surprised if the number really was 90%. It’s really sad, but that’s what happens when you attack public schools for decades.
fundamentally do not know how to think for themselves about anything.
What’s sad is, that’s the point. That’s how they get prepared for the future.
A future where they work for their rulers and don’t cause controversy.
It’s not necessarily the teachers’ fault. Most of the teachers I’ve talked to legitimately want to help students. The issue is the administrations. I have school counselors who are refusing to write letters of recommendation for full-ride scholarships. Principals who don’t know what a pdf is. Testing coordinators who literally cannot read.
It infuriates me that most of the money that goes to schools ends up in the pockets of these administrative bureaucrats that do not care about children in the slightest. At best they are grossly incompetent, at worst they are actively malicious.
See I don’t buy into this. To me, this is getting into seriously conspiracy theory stuff. I don’t think that there is some grand plan to keep people stupid so that they don’t cause trouble.
I think the system just fails at educating students well due to a variety of factors.
All to make their job easier, lol.
Not a teacher, but what I keep reading is that they’re trying not to get pilloried by students’ screaming MAGA parents.
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.
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.
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.
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.
“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
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.
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
I have no idea, but if so, I’m definitely in that 90%.
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.
It’s more of a mixture of stupidity, distraction, and willful ignorance
When i’m the bad guy because i know that any person who is pregnant is woman… yeah
You are the embodiment of Dunning-Kruger.
see, anytime i say something like this you folks just say something like that. You don’t have facts behind you, you have an idea that psychologists came up with in the 1950’s, that’s it… but sure, just keep insulting me and saying " i can’t believe you believe this, what an idiot!" while proving nothing except that your words speak everything about you and nothing about me.
Maybe more like 50%. But maybe it just seems like that to me, I might just be a mid tier dum-dum ¯_(ツ)_/¯
Is someone stupid because they don’t know how to change a light bulb? A tire? How to do laundry? How to cook a meal? Review a book? Write an essay? Manage a task?
It’s just skills people dont have that often make them look stupid to most people who have that skill. Especially when those tasks seem very trivial once you have that skill.
Being ignorant of something doesnt make someone stupid. But i do think being stupid often prevents you for fixing your ignorance
Just 2 cents of thought
My friend just moved into a new house, and there are no light bulbs anymore. So changing light bulbs is on a trajectory to be like shoeing a horse.
I never did change a tire, but I have changed a wheel. However most new cars don’t even have a spare wheel.
A lot of older folks are actually less likely to know how to do laundry with modern textiles and dyes. The only complicated thing is sorting and that can actually be largely skipped now.
Anyway, 90% of people will agree that 90% of people are dumb, they just won’t agree on which 90%
Anyway, 90% of people will agree that 90% of people are dumb, they just won’t agree on which 90%
Wholeheartedly agree with this
They’re stupid if they don’t know those things and refuse to learn them.
People are allowed to call others stupid and be right about it.
People aren’t committing some great sin by doing so.
The idea we are is the idea the willfully ignorant use to manipulate everyone else into accepting their selfish indolence and it needs to stop.
Part of the problem is how do you determine if someone is willfully ignorant, incapable of learning that skill, or has just never been put in a situation where they needed said skill.
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)
GiddyGap@lemm.ee 4 months ago
It definitely seems like 90 percent of people will twist themselves into knots to find a way to defend their beliefs regardless of how wrong those beliefs might be, morally and factually.
Admitting that you are wrong is hard.