I’m terms of abilities, there’s problems other people can solve that I never will even with years of study and training, and there are problems I can solve that my immediate peers never would, even with years of study and training.
I’m terms off knowledge, everybody you meet knows something you don’t. (They might not have the ability to help you find what it is though)
In terms of skills, behaviors it seems like nobody ever considers trying and finding out for themselves, which is endemic across all levels of academia, government, business, and profession, and in that matter they are all as dumb as a bunch of rocks.
Not particularly dumb. The truly dumb as rocks people are probably about 30% - otherwise it’s usually just a question of knowledge specialization… if you can Encyclopedically recite every card in MtG then you’ll generally be looked down on but only because it’s not a monetizable knowledge.
Top 1% is IQ of 135 or higher. They probably get along fine with 115 and up. It’s basically on a bell curve, you can go lol that up.
“Think of how stupid the average person is, now remember that half of everyone is even dumber than them!”
More seriously, intellect can’t actually be measured in an objective way because there’s lots of kinds of smart that don’t have to line up in any measurable way to still be valid.
Being a never ending fountain of factoids doesn’t mean I have my dad’s business sense for example.
What usually happens is that you’re top 1% in certain skill. There are still other skills where you’re not top 1%. Most people always keep learning from other people. A top 1% mathematician may not be top 1% anxiety manager.
Exactly this. I like to think I’m pretty fuckin smart when it comes to sysadmin. I’m an actual moron when it comes to software development. Just all depends on the skills you learn.
And I don’t know Jack shit about either of those, but I can do a lot of different shit on a forklift efficiently and safely!
Same, but reversed.
Same here. I absolutely dread the days where I need to touch my companies infrastructure repo. A simple infra chsnge turns into a week of pain for me
There’s lots of different kinds of intelligence.
Many types of intelligence are no help in a rap battle or a race to grab the high score in Galaga. So choose wisely.
Don’t get to excited about 1%
NdGT points out that 1% difference in DNA has within it somewhere the difference between chimps and humans. Think about that 1% between us and the post humans that come after us, or aliens that are out there already.
To the top 1% truly smart people the other 99% are dumb as a box of rocks. But exactly how fucking stupid is that 99% ?
Do you actually think that they think that basically everyone is that dumb?
Do you really think that there is a magical line dividing people who have a difference of a fraction of a percentage of mental capacity?
There’s quite a range within that 1%. Someone in the top .001% would see the average person very differently than someone at .999%.
If you’ve met 1000 people, on average the top 10 of those would be in this hypothetical 1%. But there’s quite a range in what those 10 people are like, isn’t there? If you think about the 10 smartest people you’ve met, they’re not all Stephen Hawking types. They’re not all sci fi/fantasy fans. They don’t all wear glasses. They don’t all build servers as a hobby.
So, to answer your question, the opinions of those 10 people on how smart the average person is will likewise vary greatly.
The average American reads at the 7th- to 8th-grade level.
Well that’s worse than I thought it would be. And judging from the graph at the bottom, it’s not just a US only issue. Many other major countries (Germany, Denmark, England) have basically the same score.
The scores for the top countries (Japan and Finland) don’t seem that high either (US had 270, Japan had 296), but I might be underestimating how much improvement that score change represents. Edit: was re-reading the article, and the literacy score is out of 500. So 296 as a score still has a long way to go.
Define stupid. Define smart.
Look up a bell curve, most measurements of intelligence that have been conceived end up making a bell curve distribution. That’s your answer, most people pool up around the middle with smaller tails on either end.
Exactly.
Which is to say, the average person is in fact not stupid, they are average. By definition.
The 99% are exactly as dumb as everybody.
If you are one of the 99% dumb ones, then you are unable to recognize the truly smart ones. For you, everybody appears exactly the same dumb.
If you are one of the 1%% truly smart ones, then you know that you should not call the other ones dumb, and you should also not tell anybody that you are 100x smarter than they are.
So in the end, you never know, and everybody remains the same dumb as everybody.
I have a few issues with this, but I’ll just point out the obvious one: being in the top 1% of something doesn’t mean you’re 100x better at it.
I don’t think the math of the post was the takeaway there.
Uuuh look at mister monocle speaking aaahh oooh
Back in high school, I scored 98th percentile on a general intelligence test. I can tell you right now, I was (and still am) pretty stupid in a lot of ways, I just happened to be good at that test. I feel like any “smart” person should know that everyone is good at doing their own thing.
Then again, had I scored 2 points higher, maybe I’d spend all my time sneering down my monocle at people. Who knows?
Lot of people with ADHD score super high in IQ tests because they just tickle their brains the right way. But they still struggle the with day to day tasks.
We are also forced to use our brains a lot more. ADHD induces novelty seeking. This exposes us to new information, which requires processing. It also messes up habit forming, so normal tasks require far more mental effort.
Since intelligence is a little like a muscle, it grows with exercise, it makes sense why a good number of people with ADHD score higher. It’s one of the few useful side effects.
On a side note, raw intelligence does remarkably little to help with day to day tasks. No matter how much you throw at it.
My advice is to drop the oversimplifications. Reality is complex and cannot be reduced to a single double digit number and a label. Use many qualifiers, recognize that we exist on multiple spectrums at the same time, and that stupidness is not a metric.
Raise your hands if you’re on the team of stupidness as a life goal
