Comments on: Stupider Than You Realize

By: hmm

hmm — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 01:22:57 +0000

Do you really think that smart people are only motivated to use their intelligence if there’s a prize? Or that they otherwise do a cost/benefit analysis every time their “cognitive talents” are called upon, no matter how mundane the task before them? I don’t know any people who I consider intelligent who function that way. And I would go even further and say that the fantasy of people functioning purely on the basis of rationality is a tiny bit autistic.

By: Independent Accountant

Independent Accountant — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 12:36:59 +0000

Mark:
I went to a grade B undergradudate school. Many of the students there were miserable. Then I got an MBA at the University of Chicago. What a difference in student bodies. Welcome to the real world. I await your saying a large proportion of your students do not belong in college at all.

By: Sarah Et Cetera » Free for All Friday 29

Sarah Et Cetera » Free for All Friday 29 — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 11:14:08 +0000

[...] to move, y’all. I mean, I plan on packing house down under, mates. Or something like that. A common bias among the smart is to overestimate how smart everyone else is. I know I do this. I always I assume I am the floor of any given set of intellects. This backfires [...]

By: GU

GU — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 01:26:31 +0000

You are evil.

By: Mark

Mark — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 22:00:22 +0000

I attended two of the most famous and respected universities in the US – the sort of places that produce Nobel Prize winners on a regular basis. Now, as a professor at a B or C grade university, I am stunned by the low quality of my students.

However… although, sure, there may be a less “raw intelligence” in the student population, even the top students seem to lack curiosity and certainly lack ambition.

I wonder if ambition (as in, ambition to learn new things, master a field, make an intellectual contribution) is really the key difference.

By: elfu

elfu — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 16:37:05 +0000

Interesting topic.
Another (slightly different) manifestation of this can be found in academic seminars, at least in my field (economics). Presenters often include very complicated maths in their slides, assuming that the audience can follow this. In my experience, even very smart people can usually not follow though.
The best presenters simplify their stuff as much as possible and give the audience a simple take-away message.

By: chris

chris — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 18:35:40 +0000

Presumably, college educated teachers would be above the median in intelligence

an unwarranted presumption. and education degree is what one gets if one is too stupid to get a degree in basket-weaving.

By: Texan99

Texan99 — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 19:39:41 +0000

When something comes very easily to you, it’s natural to assume it comes easily to others until you see hard proof to the contrary. Wouldn’t a person with perfect pitch imagine that others had it, until he confronted the surprising lack in a companion? And how often are our interactions precise enough to make this kind of discrepancy obvious?

I’d imagine that people who have to train others for a living pretty quickly figure this out, though, unless they’re given a pool to train that is very homogeneous and very similar in intelligence to themselves. If you take a bright person and ask him to train ten random assorted people in a task that seems fairly straightforward to him, he’ll notice that one of them gets it right away, some of the rest seem to be struggling surprisingly hard, and one can’t seem to grasp it no matter how hard he struggles to make it plain.

By: Samantha Atkins

Samantha Atkins — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 03:36:55 +0000

I find that smart people have had ample experience of the stupidity of others and have usually been rather isolated in early life when they had little control of who their associates were.

Smart people think of things that would work for them in terms of solutions to problems, explanations, what is interesting, what is an effective argument or stimulus to desirable outcomes and so on. There model of necessity begins with introspection.

Perhaps one other factor is that the world is a bit more frightening if you imagine most people are significantly more limited. While I am certainly not at the nosebleed peak of IQ my IQ is high enough that I was quite saddened to learn of it. I had rather hoped there were a lot more people smarter than I to carry the load that I felt so inadequate to handle.

By: Flow » Blog Archive » Daily Digest for July 7th - The zeitgeist daily

Flow » Blog Archive » Daily Digest for July 7th - The zeitgeist daily — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 03:14:45 +0000

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