Well yeah. 11 out of 10 times the people calling themselves more intelligent than most mean that they are just superior. Being unable to shut the fuck about it is also a sign of one aspect of it being lower.
What? Who frowns on people who think they’re above average intelligence? People around here get frowned upon if they are a jerk about it, but not otherwise.
It’s perfectly fine to think that you are more intelligent than those around you, you might be right. Generally speaking, though, if it’s true you’d shut the fuck up about it and maintain your advantage.
That’s the thing. Many would say that declaring it out loud is already proof it’s not true, but I’m not sure that logic holds up.
I can totally imagine a person of below-average intelligence thinking they’re smart. But would a genuinely smart person conversely think they’re actually stupid? I don’t think so. They might be more humble about all the things they realize they don’t know, but that’s a different thing.
Also, being socially clumsy and saying stuff like that is exactly what I’d expect from a truly intelligent person. When I picture an actual genius, social skills aren’t the first thing that comes to mind.
Intelligence might be desireable but it can come with trade-offs. It doesn’t exist in a vacuum and may not thus be all good.
But would a genuinely smart person conversely think they’re actually stupid?
There have been studies that disagree with you. The less you know, the more you think you know. The more you know, the more you realize how much you don’t know.
The more you think you know, the less you understand. It’s just how humans function, so if you think you’re smart the odds are that you are not.
The more you think you know, the less you understand.
This doesn’t quite make sense to me.
That would suggest that my perceived knowledge about plumbing systems is a strong indicator that I don’t actually understand them - despite having done it professionally for over a decade.
What I think is true is that someone with a very basic level of knowledge simply doesn’t know what they don’t know - which explains the strong conviction and lack of nuance, for example. But I don’t think that the belief in one’s knowledge or abilities alone is an indicator of the opposite being true.
Then ask yourself this: what proportion of people who consider themselves knowledgeable or intelligent do so based on evidence rather than the Dunning-Krueger effect or simple buffoonery? And what proportion of people who actually boast about it have the emotional intelligence to make interacting with them worthwhile? There’s a reason this behavior is frowned upon.
Sometimes I’m not sure if I’m the dumbest genius or the smartest idiot.
If you’re the smartest person in the room, you’re in the wrong room.
Kindergarten teacher shows up for the first day of school:
“I’m in the wrong room!”
They aspire to become the least intelligent person in that room.
