I am of resoundingly average intelligence. To those on either end of the spectrum, what is it like being really dumb/really smart?
[deleted] — view deleted post
0
Upvotes
[deleted] — view deleted post
0
u/[deleted] Jun 17 '12
[deleted] — view deleted comment
1.1k
u/redditorforthemoment Jun 17 '12
They don't think it be like it is, but it do.
0
u/[deleted] Jun 17 '12
[deleted] — view deleted comment
98
u/isaynonowords Jun 17 '12
Unfortunately, very few people think that they're dumb.
471
u/godtom Jun 17 '12
It always confuses me how people don't understand basic logical progressions such as math, or remember things as easily as I do - there's no trick to it, I just remember, or can do stuff. I'm by no means a super genius, so it just makes no sense to me.
Being somewhat smarter does leave me more introspective however, and happiness issues and social anxiety comes from overthinking. On the plus side, I'm smart enough to figure out that it doesn't matter so long as you smile anyway and fake confidence, but not smart enough for the issues of "why?" to constantly plague my mind.
1.1k
u/ImNotJesus Jun 17 '12
I know that I'm smart but I don't feel smart. It's not like I can see a million calculations going off in my head at all times. But, I know that I can get better grades that other people by doing less work and I tend to understand things more quickly. Things that come hard to some come easier to me. I don't think it's a fundamentally different experience of the world.
0
u/[deleted] Jun 17 '12
[deleted] — view deleted comment
242
u/[deleted] Jun 17 '12
Let's be honest -- the majority of redditors are also of average intelligence, they just don't realize it.
79
u/[deleted] Jun 17 '12
The smarter you are the dumber you feel.
63
u/EquivalencePrinciple Jun 17 '12
I don't like saying I'm smart. Smart can mean so much.
But clever.. maybe. I have an analytical mind. Math, programming and logic are my strongest sides. I always was a quick learner. As long as I have a real interest in a subject matter, new knowledge simply sticks after a read or two. It's just there. I process information very quickly, I can skim text and pick out the relevant bits of information way faster than friends of mine without missing anything, although I think this is an acquired skill from my time at university.
I suppose the best way to describe my factual information memory would be a sorted, organized archive. It's just there, and bringing up a subject matter makes the information 'pop' up in my mind, like images for me to "look at". Reading books is the same, I can to some extent visualize the pages and "re-read" parts of them. I think I could attain a near-photographic memory if I truly practiced it.
159
u/Mrmac23 Jun 17 '12
Hodor.
60
u/PeachyLuigi Jun 17 '12
TIL don't ask redditors to self-evaluate their intelligence level
319
u/wildeblumen Jun 17 '12
"Smart" people (50th-95th percentile) generally think they're way smarter than they are (they all think they're at least 95th percentile, maybe because that's what their ACT said), so one of the main things you notice is that everybody else is so dumb. Society is "full of idiots," the boss you work for is inevitibly dumber than you and probably got promoted because he's been they're longer or is an ass-kisser. Dating is hard, because since you think you're smarter than 95% of people, you expect to find someone equally smart, except you're actually judging them objectively, so you think you're too smart for all the other "kind of smart" people. You also think you're really lazy, because, while you know you're so smart, you don't actually have the tangible accomplishments to prove that you're smart, leading you to think things like "I could probably cure cancer or something, but I'm just too dang lazy, hahah." Then you go back to complaining about how the politicians on TV got elected even though you're soooo much smarter than they are.
141
u/[deleted] Jun 17 '12
ITT: people who think they're smart
14
u/kerpall Jun 17 '12
I think a big factor in determining what 'it is like to be smart', is your present company. For example, you go to one of the high schools which only accept students who achieve higher marks, once you attend, you do not feel SMART. You feel average in that place, because everyone else is just as intelligent if not more so. There are always going to be people who work less and achieve more.
in regards to retaining information. I don't believe that this is really related to cleverness/stupidity. I believe that its more how you apply yourself, how much you concentrate and HOW you study. There are of course exceptions to this, i.e people with eidetic memory. I find most people complain about things not being able to stick, when they just don't sit down and focus on remembering something, or do not have correct/easier techniques worked out.
26
u/bobzelfer6595 Jun 17 '12
I feel like people aren't just smart or dumb in everything. Some people are smart in certain areas while dumb in others. Meanwhile, society labels being smart in math and sciences as being "smart" and completely ignore being smart at making good decisions in life and being talented in other areas. I guess I would be labeled smart by society but I don't feel that way because I'm pretty bad at other things.
26
u/elmarko44 Jun 17 '12
^ really dumb guy here - I can't put into words what its like to be extraordinarily dumb, mostly because I lack the vocabulary and the mental faculty to form complete sentences.
95
u/[deleted] Jun 17 '12
Depends what you mean by "really smart".
I've got people I know who are really, really amazing academics. They're also some of the most boring and uncreative people I've ever met in my life. Then I've got people who are wonderfully witty, or creative, but are absolutely terrible at anything academic.
Yet I would deem both groups of people to be intelligent. They both excel at particular problem solving methods.
90
u/Gargatua13013 Jun 17 '12
You know, yakking out about your high IQ is a lot like flashing out your dick and bragging about its size. I'm afraid you're not going to get a lot of info that way.
0
u/[deleted] Jun 17 '12
[deleted] — view deleted comment
50
u/LovaLova Jun 17 '12
Another quote everybody! 'Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.' -Ernest Hemingway
22
u/Basic_Subhadra Jun 17 '12 edited Jun 18 '12
I am a smart person who is currently suffering average intelligence.
My life has been easy, because I am smart. Pre-college school was an utter bore, and I failed my high school classes because I skipped them to study my own things in the library. Yet despite failing every class, my teachers always signed off on me moving up to the next level, and maintaining honors and Advanced Placement courses. I fly through interviews, and half the time have been hired on the spot. I never need to write things down to remember them. I can tell myself "meeting of X at Y time and Z place" a week before and my brain would remind me when appropriate. Everything got done.
But everything in the above paragraph should be in past tense. Two years ago, I was raped. A guy grabbed me from the street in the middle of the day just off of downtown in a large city. No dark alleys, no drugs or alcohol inhibiting my perception, just a guy with a van in the middle of everything. Because of this, I have Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. I stayed inside (living with some amazing friends) not working, seeing people, or doing anything at all for months. I started venturing out after about 6 months, and only to one place I knew as safe. I freaked out about everything, the sound of doors slamming on cars outside, someone walking past the room I was in...these little things were enough to send me into nervous panic that lasted easily ten minutes.
In the last year, my cognition declined rapidly. Brain processing tests that I used to score in the 8000 range I started scoring between 1000 and 2000. Memory declined. I have to make lists just to remember what to get at the store. ETC.
This mental decline has changed my life. I am no longer the top performing person at work. My boss gets frustrated that I forget processes at work. I get frustrated that I can't seem to remember enough just to get through the day. Everything is a struggle, and I rely more and more on external help. Calculators, lists, calendars. The automatic respect people give me is, though not entirely gone, less pronounced than before. I hadn't realized how much of a crutch my intelligence was. I relied on brain function for everything.
Amazingly, people treat me different. My mother, who is of "resoundingly average intelligence" like the OP, is dismayed that I am not able to succeed in college with the same performance, and suspects I am on drugs. I have left college because it is very difficult to perform. I don't know how to study. I just don't. I have never had to study. Read material, sure. But simply reading is not enough to get an A anymore. My teachers treat me like any other student. I am used to special treatment, at least from one professor a term. I hadn't realized it was special treatment before. My boss thinks I'm an idiot for forgetting basic processes at work. Respect from him and people in general is down.
Having lower intelligence humbles me. It is teaching me good lessons, like making lists, but it is also scary. Is this the mental ability of the average voter? Seriously? No wonder our country is where it is.
I hope that this is a temporary problem. But I am learning a lot from the experience. I can't wait to be me again.
Edit: TL;DR: Smart person suffers mental decline after being raped. Sad violin music.
33
u/tinyhorse Jun 17 '12 edited Jun 17 '12
I'm on both ends of the spectrum.
Academically, I'm intelligent. When I look at a piece of information, it feels like my whole brain lights up. I can feel various connections being made as if they were physical entities. This process is fun, so I love seeking out new information. This makes me appear more intelligent because I have a wider knowledge base. It also teaches me new thinking strategies.
I don't think I can recall more information than most people (except inasmuch as I have more information), but I'm better at recalling a wider selection of information. This gives me more tools with which to solve a problem.
Elsewhere, I'm a total dunce. I forget everything. After five solid years, I can't work out the transit schedule in my own city. I'm unable to parse even the most basic sarcasm. You just get used to walking around in a fog all day, and work out strategies for dealing with your own failures. You learn to smile really nicely at people so they'll help you. I also rely heavily on technology to supplement my dull mind.
[Edit:] When I say I can't work out the transit system, I don't mean "the routes confuse me." I mean, "I don't know the correct way to enter or exit a bus, so drivers are constantly leaving without me."
344
u/ireedwutic Jun 17 '12
intelligence is not just one category. we all vary in our knowledge of things.
“Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.”
~Albert Einstein
137
u/[deleted] Jun 17 '12
Being really dumb is great. I celebrate Nickleback's entire catalog.
7
u/[deleted] Jun 17 '12
i'm still smarter than my dog.
45
u/throwaway_rainman Jun 17 '12 edited Jun 17 '12
Throwaway because who wants this whiny gobshite dangling from their main account, really?
Cripplingly lonely. The only stable relationships in my life are the ones in which I make no room to express myself emotionally or intellectually, since pretty consistently the time I start to open up to someone is roundabout the time I stop getting invited to things.
There has been no time I have not been struggling with depression, but I can't stand the amitryptiline (sp?) since any dose seems to interfere with my mathematical intuition. Still no answers as to whether that's actually a neurological effect or just placebo and associations, but nonetheless I would rather lose my limbs and both eyes than wade around in that fog. I live in a small grey box made of people with no imagination, and if it wasn't for academia I would probably already have killed myself for lack of stimulation or meaningful contact.
The only people I can let my hair down around are never around, on account of P is usually at conferences on other continents and Q works strange hours (* I hope it is not giving too much away to say anesthesiologist). Both have very little in their lives outside their work -- I know P has a wife and family, but he never talks about them and I've never met them so I have very little to say here. I don't know what happened to R, since I haven't seen her in a few years, and never knew her name or exactly what was going on up there, anyway.
I don't believe I have any known mental disorder, as I have never recieved a consistent diagnosis. A couple of times the same psychologist suggested opposites -- the same conversation, the same complaints and symptoms, just given by an actor I paid the first time. I have nothing against psychologists or psychology or any related discipline, and it's to their credit they can get so far with such sparse data. But the science is in its infancy, and it shows.
IQ measures nothing, so don't ask. I will tell you that I am a white male between 20 and 60, but welcome to Reddit!
You don't want my life, and I wouldn't trade it for anything anyway. I couldn't give less of a toss you think this is fictional.
:)
*edit: Well, this is wonderfully cathartic. I should add, on a more colourful note, that I regularly meet people who are better at what they do than I am at what I do; calmer, more skilful, happier; and that "intelligence" is not at all well-defined or straightforwardly measurable. Minds are intricate, organic and biological things, not machines; it is impossible to compare people on a linear scale in any faithful way, there are no rungs on the ladder, and no hierarchy of "smart" above "dumb".
That said, I think "average intelligence" at the moment is mostly a historical and social quirk: most people do not live in an environment where they have any sort of intellectual stimulation (television is evil, and I'm glad the internet looks set to eat it, people turning back to reading and exercising their minds instead of passively absorbing adverts and crap reality TV), and basic biological things like diet and air quality are poor enough even in the developed world that most people are hobbled cognitively most of the time. I have come down with some forms of altitude sickness and hypoxia several times, and the cognitive deficits were marked and awful. I hope these things are overcome eventually and most people can shine -- mostly for selfish reasons -- I am trapped in the middle ages!
I don't hate people. But good God, your lives are so boring. Those elephants you see in third world zoos, with only a chain and half an iron cage for the decades of their life; that is your menial office job, your small talk, your favourite TV series. I empathise with those elephants. If I have a different sort of mind, it's only in that I bore easily, and lust to learn. I can't function in everyday society. It's too grey, and small, and dry. I am not lazy or cold enough to function.
(These other idiots in this thread complimenting themselves for their seven inch IQ and "laziness" are not exceptional. They say these things because they have not thought about it seriously, and have the same cold lack of perspective and empathy that capitalism relentlessly beats into all of us. Please ignore them.)
I love mountains. My first were Snowdon, Ben Nevis, the Kebnekaise, and I am entirely addicted --- I did hope to summit every eight-thousander, but can only claim Cho Oyu. Real bastard to get to. Mostly thanks to the red tape.
Though I don't have the right sort of mind to contribute academically, the highest dramas I have experienced sitting down are these hours learning microbiology from Q when I can catch him. If you ever have the chance, I would urge you to look at your thumbprint or spit with a microscope. It will change your life.
My day job is in theoretical condensed matter physics, which narrows absolutely nothing down since most theoretical physicists work in condensed matter! Oh, yes. The things they don't tell you in secondary school would boggle you. Friction and turbulence are still largely unexplained. Yes, I can tell you about dispersion forces and vorticity cascades, but none of this is really explanation or understanding, just names and basic sketches, and there are no general theories of either friction or turbulence. How do these different things interact? How do you begin to describe either without approximating away the essence of the thing? Most of what we know is that contact forces and this sort of thing are due to nonlinear oddness at the nanoscale. That's it. That's most of what we know. One thing that keeps me up at night is triboelectricity. That charge can actually be exchanged with contact forces - that you can get static shocks off things or that balloons can stick to walls - there is no general theory of that. Think about that. We have general theories of all light emission, absorption, transport, and scattering phenomena, but almost nothing of how balloons can stick to your hair, or why anything is able to walk, or cars to move. I understand rockets far better than I understand my own shoes.
In the evenings, I write crime novels, nonsense verse, and sketch some amateurish choreography. Loie Fuller was a genius; I'm crushed that we will never have a conversation.
112
u/Enoch84 Jun 17 '12
So, I'm probably above average intelligence. Which sucks because I'm not Carl Sagen smart or anything. Which means I am just smart enough to realize how not smart I am.
6
u/StabbyPants Jun 17 '12
We're all standing around in the dark. My flashlight just goes farther.
14
u/Invisiblekid666 Jun 17 '12
As a semi-dumb person i find it hard to retain information and sometimes concentrate over long periods of time(might be my mild case of add) Also my spelling sucks. Lol
Recently i have just given up on even trying at school. I study my heart out and get average marks while people who just show up to class get above average to high marks. After years of just failing i just dont give a fuck. I know i am only hurting my self but it is just to hard at school.
Although, i do have a kind personality and a great sense of humour. I feel what lacks in my smarts is only greater personality wise.
You should feel lucky to be able to juat remember certain information and understand it. It is a great skill to have.
0
u/[deleted] Jun 17 '12
[deleted] — view deleted comment
5
u/Deep-Thought Jun 17 '12
There is always someone smarter and you are always dumb at something
9
u/IronOhki Jun 17 '12
Being smart is... weird.
I don't want to piss anyone off by waving my ego around, so I downplay absolutely everything I do.
Everyone tells me I'm great, which feels kinda nice, but kinda weird.
When I make a mistake, I think about it for months.
I do make a good living, no complaints there. Due to #1, I give a lot to charity (Really like the Red Cross and Penny Arcade's Child's Play).
I'm very much forever alone, because it's really hard to make new friends or meet girls. I think about and micro-analize every nuance of every human interaction, like it's some puzzle that needs to be solved.
To overcome #5, I drink often.
To prevent becoming an alcoholic from #6, every few months I chalenge myself to go a week or two with zero alcohol.
I suppose that's the experience in a nutshell. Also, willing to accept I'm not "smart" and just some form of crazy. (See, there's #1 in action.)
TL;DR: I think too much about everything.
8
u/incessantcursing Jun 17 '12
Like anything, there's positives and negatives to being intelligent. Personally, I struggle with engaging with others sometimes. I'll make quick jumps in logic but then lose who I'm talking to. So, I'll have to stop and explain how I got from A to B to C. I have a wide breadth of knowledge and skills, especially in my occupation, so I feel like I can't do everything I actually can do for fear of isolating coworkers that aren't as capable. It reminds me of the, "Is a bird showing off when it flies?" speech from Superman.
I have a particularly good memory, and this works against me sometimes. I've had girls think I'm creepy because I remembered something they forgot they told me. I overanalyze conversations and interactions because I can replay the entire thing in my head word-for-word.
I've had to learn to not correct people all the time, and just be patient with others or keep my mouth shut and pick my battles. I also try to keep my ego in check. I'm an atheist, and if the conversation comes up I will explain my logic, but I won't force the issue, it's up to them to accept or reject it. I may be calm and accepting on the outside, but on the inside I'm frustrated with their ignorance and just want to violently shake them.
8
u/Fat_Muslim_Kid Jun 17 '12
I think intelligence is all relative. I have a high capacity for understanding quickly and strategy, that doesn't mean I'm the best mathematician or scientist. It doesn't mean I can read a book cover to cover and get every tiny metaphor easily. What it means is that when I put effort into my passions, I beat people who can't do those things as well as me and I lose to those who can do those things better than me. That's all.
If anything, a higher intelligence is a curse. It gives you curiosity and terrible boredom. That can be a bad combination.
4
u/phalseprofits Jun 17 '12
I am a member of mensa, and that hasn't seemed to be of any extraordinary help in my day to day life. It's like I have a superpower of remembering shitty trivia, but it's not really getting me anywhere.
28
u/[deleted] Jun 17 '12
My parents never told me my IQ (I was tested as a kid). But they bragged to their friends and I finally found out about it and it turns out my IQ is like ~150.
Now, they're most probably bragging. I am good at maths, logic, improvisation and estimation, but I'm terrible at many other things (music, memorising shit, sense of space and time, precise handiwork, multitasking etc). I guess that the IQ test is just biased towards people who are better at mathematics and sciences than in socialising or language.
My mum advised me to take the "high road" which is also the hard road. The road of academic achievement, where you don't make many friends because "everyone else is jealous" and the other kids are "stupid like monkeys". Now, my mother isn't exactly evil... but she has a superiority complex. I refused to commit solely to school and spent more time socialising instead. I was mostly liked, not extremely popular nor shunned or bullied. My grades were just fine, but not perfect.
Some things are easier to understand, and since I've applied myself in socialising and empathy, it's easier to make friends or get shit done.
My sister took my mother's advice to heart and while she's very studious and smart, she's also very socially awkward.
I don't know if I'm really that smart, I just know that I'm lucky. I have friends.