Think you're smart? New research shows that smart people are dumber than stupid people. Wait,what?

Kinda figured this.

Smart is something you do, not something you are.

Just as a way of looking at "smart"...
On one hand, you have Stephen Hawking, one of the great minds of our time.
On the other hand, you have MacGuyver, a fictional tv character, but indulge for a moment the character represented, not the fact that he is fictional.

Which of these men are "smarter"? Would Hawking be smarter due to his academic level and research or would MacGuyver be smarter due to using his intelligence in productive ways in a physical sense?

I assert that both are "smart" in different ways. Each are making positive contributions.

Then lets look at the "Turtle Man". He's serving a purpose, productive in what he does. Is he "smart"? Is he on the same level as the previous two?

This is who the Turtle Man is for those who are not familiar with him:


I would argue that being "smart" isn't dependent only upon interaction in your element, but it has other conditions. The Turtle Man is a great guy, he's entertaining, he does his job well, but I wouldn't classify him as "smart" in the intellectual sense. Perhaps he's the smartest turtle salvage guy who ever existed, but he's not "smart" compared to the general public and it's the general public that must be held as the standard when classifications are made across the board.

reply to post by FortAnthem


"Why Smart People Are Stupid


Here’s a simple arithmetic question: A bat and ball cost a dollar and ten cents. The bat costs a dollar more than the ball. How much does the ball cost?

The vast majority of people respond quickly and confidently, insisting the ball costs ten cents. This answer is both obvious and wrong. (The correct answer is five cents for the ball and a dollar and five cents for the bat.)"

Algebraically, this is right.
Ball = x
Bat = x + 1

x + (x + 1) = 1.10
2x + 1 = 1.10
2x = .10
x = .05

But I highly doubt a "stupid person" is smarter than a smart person because the smart person didn't pull out a pen & paper to work it out....and a stupid person wouldn't have worked it out at all.

**The problem is, this is a trick question. It's all in how the question was asked. BOTH answers are technically correct in this instance because of how the question is phrased. In both the ($1.05 + $.05) and ($1.00 + $.10) scenarios the bat is still..."a dollar more".

reply to post by starsyren


Yes, the "smart" person would take the dollar away, then divide by 2. The question is a poor representation since those considered "stupid" would most likely miss it more quickly than someone considered "smart", so it's not supportive of the hypothesis at all.
The article is nothing more than pseudoscience written by people to support their own ego due to them not being as "smart" as their colleagues.

Originally posted by starsyren
reply to post by FortAnthem

 

"Why Smart People Are Stupid


Here’s a simple arithmetic question: A bat and ball cost a dollar and ten cents. The bat costs a dollar more than the ball. How much does the ball cost?

The vast majority of people respond quickly and confidently, insisting the ball costs ten cents. This answer is both obvious and wrong. (The correct answer is five cents for the ball and a dollar and five cents for the bat.)"

Algebraically, this is right.
Ball = x
Bat = x + 1

x + (x + 1) = 1.10
2x + 1 = 1.10
2x = .10
x = .05

But I highly doubt a "stupid person" is smarter than a smart person because the smart person didn't pull out a pen & paper to work it out....and a stupid person wouldn't have worked it out at all.

**The problem is, this is a trick question. It's all in how the question was asked. BOTH answers are technically correct in this instance because of how the question is phrased. In both the ($1.05 + $.05) and ($1.00 + $.10) scenarios the bat is still..."a dollar more".

edit on 14-6-2012 by starsyren because: (no reason given)

Just proved you're stupid and must have failed algebra in seventh grade. Your second example ($1.00 + $.10) the bat is NINETY CENTS MORE. Duh.

Originally posted by PurpleChiten

Originally posted by FortAnthem


So how smart do you think you are now?

Much smarter then the guys doing the study because I got the question right and am also quite smart... as well as a smart-alek when I need to be

so basically... a couple of guys that are lower than average for the field they're in got upset that other people were smarter than they are, so they made up a study and asserted an argument with logical fallicies to try to lift their egos and say they are smarter than the others when in actuality, they're not... and now the truely stupid people will jump on it because it boosts their ego and will become even more stupid yet claim they are smart.... great... like we didn't have enough of those aleady

edit on 14-6-2012 by PurpleChiten because: (no reason given)

Kudos to you. Apparently the only one here who is not stupid.

Over seventy percent of people, when asked, will grade themselves as "above average" in intelligence, thus proving the stupidity. IF seventy percent are above average, well, that would raise the average, and they would then be average.

Those of average intelligence NEVER get it. Average IQ is 100. To me, a person of 100 IQ is pretty much of a dimwit. That's because I am about 140. This is merely bright, borderline genius. I am smart enough to tell that I am a lot smarter than most people, and also smart enough to realize how little I know about anything. I've met people far smarter than myself, I can tell in an instant.

Unfortunately, REAL geniuses sometimes tend to be, shall we say, socially retarded, and seem dorky to the dimwitted plebes. The character of Sheldon on Big Bang is a prime example. OF course, that much dorkiness is very rare in an actual genius, yet not so rare in a PhD who THINKS he is smart. Theoretical physicists being the prime examples, spending their lives studying stuff that is leading them down the wrong path to a dead end. All the book learning in the world does nothing if you are reading books that are WRONG to start with.

The All Powerful PHAGE here is a good example. Everyone seems to think that guy is some kind of genius, yet don't question why he spends all his time on a crazy conspiracy website instead of, you know, DOING something with his big brain. No one seems to even notice what the word Phage means, either. He is simply a DESTROYER. That's why he's here. Ain't nothin smart about it.

It's fairly easy for a true genius to learn how to be witty and charming. They may be abrasive because they are sick of answering the same stupid questions all the time, but that does NOT make them like Sheldon. He is actually REALLY stupid.

Originally posted by CaptChaos

Originally posted by PurpleChiten

Originally posted by FortAnthem


So how smart do you think you are now?

Much smarter then the guys doing the study because I got the question right and am also quite smart... as well as a smart-alek when I need to be

so basically... a couple of guys that are lower than average for the field they're in got upset that other people were smarter than they are, so they made up a study and asserted an argument with logical fallicies to try to lift their egos and say they are smarter than the others when in actuality, they're not... and now the truely stupid people will jump on it because it boosts their ego and will become even more stupid yet claim they are smart.... great... like we didn't have enough of those aleady

edit on 14-6-2012 by PurpleChiten because: (no reason given)

Kudos to you. Apparently the only one here who is not stupid.

Over seventy percent of people, when asked, will grade themselves as "above average" in intelligence, thus proving the stupidity. IF seventy percent are above average, well, that would raise the average, and they would then be average.

Those of average intelligence NEVER get it. Average IQ is 100. To me, a person of 100 IQ is pretty much of a dimwit. That's because I am about 140. This is merely bright, borderline genius. I am smart enough to tell that I am a lot smarter than most people, and also smart enough to realize how little I know about anything. I've met people far smarter than myself, I can tell in an instant.

Unfortunately, REAL geniuses sometimes tend to be, shall we say, socially retarded, and seem dorky to the dimwitted plebes. The character of Sheldon on Big Bang is a prime example. OF course, that much dorkiness is very rare in an actual genius, yet not so rare in a PhD who THINKS he is smart. Theoretical physicists being the prime examples, spending their lives studying stuff that is leading them down the wrong path to a dead end. All the book learning in the world does nothing if you are reading books that are WRONG to start with.

The All Powerful PHAGE here is a good example. Everyone seems to think that guy is some kind of genius, yet don't question why he spends all his time on a crazy conspiracy website instead of, you know, DOING something with his big brain. No one seems to even notice what the word Phage means, either. He is simply a DESTROYER. That's why he's here. Ain't nothin smart about it.

It's fairly easy for a true genius to learn how to be witty and charming. They may be abrasive because they are sick of answering the same stupid questions all the time, but that does NOT make them like Sheldon. He is actually REALLY stupid.

...yeah, but Sheldon's also a fictional character, and darn funny!!!

I do agree with a great deal of what you wrote. With the bell curve, it's easy to see that 65% of the population falls between 85 and 115, well below what many of us are actually at (or at least you and me, and I would hazard to guess Phage). As a result, people imagine that those in this range are the "smart" ones. Afterall, there are so many of them, they think just like that person does, and that person KNOWS he/she is "smart", therefore, that must be what "smart" is.
"Smart" in the minds of many people is nothing more than "average" and they have built up a disposition to become defensive when others are above that average and it attacks their ego. As a result, we get things like this report. They do everything they can possibly think of to prove they are "smart" instead of just being happy with "average". There's nothing wrong with being average, it means you are no worse than anyone else, but human nature makes us want to be better, so they have the issue of having to raise themselves above that, if not by putting in effort and work, then by changing the standard in some way to make them feel better.

Originally posted by CaptChaos

The All Powerful PHAGE here is a good example. Everyone seems to think that guy is some kind of genius, yet don't question why he spends all his time on a crazy conspiracy website instead of, you know, DOING something with his big brain. No one seems to even notice what the word Phage means, either. He is simply a DESTROYER. That's why he's here. Ain't nothin smart about it.

...said the self described genius, posting on a crazy conspiracy website when he could be doing something important with his brain.

With a name like CaptChaos, you got no room to go criticizing Phage's moniker either.

If you want an example, there's always Mensa.

For decades, literally, it believed that it was the brainchild of Sir Cyril Burt, a British psychologist, who had proposed a high IQ society in a BBC interview. For that reason, very early on it made Burt its International President. And it would kick out members who said disparaging things about Burt or his administration of Mensa. When Burt finally died, in the 1980s, it came out that - there was no such BBC interview, that Burt's study of the IQs of twins - on which his knighthood and reputation had been based - was faked, and that he exercised no leadership in Mensa but merely shilled for the people who had made him the International President (which people were ripping Mensa off).

In American Mensa, Margot Seitelman, the executive secretary of American Mensa, got elevated pretty much the same way and a rule was actually adopted that anyone who disparaged her could be kicked out. She got American Mensa to raise her salary according to the growth of the American membership (on the theory that more members meant more work for her) and she demanded and got at least $10,000 per year for the expenses of upgrading the computers in her office (which no one was allowed to visit). When she died of cancer in the 1990s it was found that (1) she had not set foot in her office for the last year of her life, (2) a new and reliable count of the American membership done immediately after her death showed that the actual membership was only 75% of what she had claimed so she had effectively Enron'd Mensa out of many thousands of dollars of her salary, and (3) despite the enormous annual infusion of money for the purpose of upgrading her office machines, the office was still running on old HP computers dating back to the late-1970s - all using ancient HP code which hardly anyone knew how to program anymore; revamping the membership and other records to run on Windows cost Mensa the earth.

American Mensa also enabled one of its own officers, Gabe Werba, to spend a very substantial sum - a quarter million dollars every two years - on an advertising campaign that ran for six years. It turned out that he spent it all on the advertising firm of - wait for it - "Gabe Werba Associates", which had been set up just before Mensa authorized this advertising campaign - and closed a few months after the Mensa advertising campaign was stopped. In six years he spent 3/4 of a million dollars through his own company, always, of course, paying himself a "reasonable" sum for his own supervision. The artwork was extremely simple and involved only white text on a black background, inviting people to try out for Mensa membership. Display ads appeared ... but mostly in magazines that were just starting up, so their advertising rates were quite low. Some people complained that they had not found any ads in any of the magazines they saw. Werba never revealed to Mensa just how effective or otherwise this ad campaign was .... but it was brought to a halt by the new membership count done after Seitelman's death, when the membership appeared to have shrunk dramatically instead of having grown. In the meantime, the advertising industry magazine, Ad $ Summary, showed that less than half the money given to Werba was actually spent on advertising - and this proportion even persisted to the last two years of the ad campaign, by which time all the artwork expenses and other developmental costs should have been zero.

It turned out that, at the same time, Werba had made himself the Chairman of International Mensa (the post immediately below Burt) by staging a palace coup. Over the years that he participated in the International Committee, Werba repeatedly reported that some new national Mensa had sprung up in a third world backwater (often in the South Pacific) and that he was authorized to cast its proxy vote in the Committee. Finally, using all those proxy votes (about 20), he jammed up any progress in the Committee unless the duly elected Chairman abdicated in his favor. He held onto the post for about three years - then he stopped coming to meetings (about the same time that his ad campaign for American Mensa was exposed as a scam) - the remaining Committee members eventually sent letters to those third world Mensa organizations asking who they wanted as their new proxy - and it turned out that none of those new national Mensas actually existed, that Werba had been casting votes for fictitious organizations. Shortly thereafter it came out that Werba had, back home, been prosecuted for stock fraud, admitted the fraud, and been deprived permanently of his stock broker's license.

So much for the High IQ crowd.

"Dumber"?

I think you mean stupid...

"Dumb" means unable to speak... pretty sure you are either dumb or you're not.... impossible to be dumber.

I know... I know... "smartass"

I'm just playing.... I'll leave the intellectual stuff to all you smart folk.

Originally posted by LesMisanthrope
You could go so far as to say all "knowledge" is based on assumptions rather than facts. Math, science, and language itself is built on assumptions and presuppositions.

this doesn't make sense.

math science and language are based off of experience, no assumptions,
facts are necessary for them to progress.
assumptions may have led to their initial discovery, but the facts are evident and snowball with each addition.

2 + 2 = 4

thats a fact. an assumption within this problem isn't even possible.
there is nothing to assume when the facts are self-evident. unless the problem is because i'm human?

Originally posted by FortAnthem

Originally posted by CaptChaos

The All Powerful PHAGE here is a good example. Everyone seems to think that guy is some kind of genius, yet don't question why he spends all his time on a crazy conspiracy website instead of, you know, DOING something with his big brain. No one seems to even notice what the word Phage means, either. He is simply a DESTROYER. That's why he's here. Ain't nothin smart about it.

...said the self described genius, posting on a crazy conspiracy website when he could be doing something important with his brain.

With a name like CaptChaos, you got no room to go criticizing Phage's moniker either.

"Missing the point, here, smartypants," said the self-described 'bright' guy, home sick after a tooth implant and bored, "Obviously you still don't get what a PHAGE even is, do ya?"

And I was christened Captain Chaos by others. Didn't make it up myself. Long story. I could explain it, but it would just confuse you.

Originally posted by yourmaker

Originally posted by LesMisanthrope
You could go so far as to say all "knowledge" is based on assumptions rather than facts. Math, science, and language itself is built on assumptions and presuppositions.

this doesn't make sense.

math science and language are based off of experience, no assumptions,
facts are necessary for them to progress.
assumptions may have led to their initial discovery, but the facts are evident and snowball with each addition.

2 + 2 = 4

thats a fact. an assumption within this problem isn't even possible.
there is nothing to assume when the facts are self-evident. unless the problem is because i'm human?

actually.... 2+2=4 in base 5 or higher, for base 3, it would be 11 and for base 4 it would be 10. You can't go below base 3, because "2" doesn't exist if you do... just sayin

Originally posted by PurpleChiten

Originally posted by yourmaker

Originally posted by LesMisanthrope
You could go so far as to say all "knowledge" is based on assumptions rather than facts. Math, science, and language itself is built on assumptions and presuppositions.

this doesn't make sense.

math science and language are based off of experience, no assumptions,
facts are necessary for them to progress.
assumptions may have led to their initial discovery, but the facts are evident and snowball with each addition.

2 + 2 = 4

thats a fact. an assumption within this problem isn't even possible.
there is nothing to assume when the facts are self-evident. unless the problem is because i'm human?

actually.... 2+2=4 in base 5 or higher, for base 3, it would be 11 and for base 4 it would be 10. You can't go below base 3, because "2" doesn't exist if you do... just sayin

but what I said makes sense right? I don't dispute what you added nor do I think I could if I wanted.,
my math skills just don't go much beyond 2+2 = 4.

Originally posted by yourmaker

Originally posted by PurpleChiten

Originally posted by yourmaker

Originally posted by LesMisanthrope
You could go so far as to say all "knowledge" is based on assumptions rather than facts. Math, science, and language itself is built on assumptions and presuppositions.

this doesn't make sense.

math science and language are based off of experience, no assumptions,
facts are necessary for them to progress.
assumptions may have led to their initial discovery, but the facts are evident and snowball with each addition.

2 + 2 = 4

thats a fact. an assumption within this problem isn't even possible.
there is nothing to assume when the facts are self-evident. unless the problem is because i'm human?

actually.... 2+2=4 in base 5 or higher, for base 3, it would be 11 and for base 4 it would be 10. You can't go below base 3, because "2" doesn't exist if you do... just sayin

but what I said makes sense right? I don't dispute what you added nor do I think I could if I wanted.,
my math skills just don't go much beyond 2+2 = 4.

yes, I'm just having some fun with it

I understand what this study is saying, and it holds true to an extent, but certainly is far from absolute.

Mental shortcuts are a part to applying intelligence wisely. It can work against us if we get stuck in our ways, but there's a way out.

It's called not being dense.

Problem solved!



Realize at one point these mental shortcuts were the result of creative/intuitive + analytical thought, and so these same resources can be drawn upon to tune up old, demolish, or create new mental shortcuts to whatever seemingly novel situation which may arise!

I guess some smart people become dense, and are dumber than dumb people.

Sucks for them.



That problem was stupid easy. I guess stupid easy is too hard for a once-was smart guy...

Originally posted by unityemissions
I understand what this study is saying, and it holds true to an extent, but certainly is far from absolute.

Mental shortcuts are a part to applying intelligence wisely. It can work against us if we get stuck in our ways, but there's a way out.

It's called not being dense.

Problem solved!

Realize at one point these mental shortcuts were the result of creative/intuitive + analytical thought, and so these same resources can be drawn upon to tune up old, demolish, or create new mental shortcuts to whatever seemingly novel situation which may arise!

I guess some smart people become dense, and are dumber than dumb people.

Sucks for them.

That problem was stupid easy. I guess stupid easy is too hard for a once-was smart guy...

edit on 14-6-2012 by unityemissions because: (no reason given)

But I assert that as the "smart" grows old and "dense", so does the "stupid" , hence the smart is always smarter than the stupid as they both have grown dense and at least the "smart" still have most of their mental shortcuts as well as the ability to create more and the "stupid" never had them.

better lucky then smart - old Polish proverb

if you are so smart, how come you ain't rich? - Jewish proverb

save the empty beer cans ..
there is enough empties in a case to get a free beer when we go to the beer store
- Happy Canadian proverb

there is smart...and there is smart

how many people who responded to the OP actually READ the ENTIRE article?

reply to post by CaptChaos


Thank you for proving my point...


2nd line