No Stupid Questions

I mean if it is a bell curve, even an average person is smarter than half the world. There's a selection bias on social media because those heated and ignorant threads get memed and shared either by people who believe the nonsense or by outrage.

Human intelligence is segmented and specialized. People who are smart at few things are usually very dumb at others. A person who can speak 9 languages can't do more than basic math. An expert computer programmer, who can't figure out how to keep a plant alive. Etc...

Polymaths are very rare. Very few people have advanced understanding and skills in multiple areas.

I think so. One trip through social media is proof enough. Or, people are willing to be stupid for attention/money. But I add self-awareness to that, I’m not as smart as I think I am.

It really depends on where you live. And what kind of people are around you on a daily basis.

By what standards do you rank us? Half of us are stupider than average. We're all of very limited intelligence - the best we can do is to team together to function as one gigantic brain of humanity, drawing from the strongest qualities of all of us. That way the world can be brought forward by brilliant scientists who are completely stupid in their own way, and who would never survive a week on their own.

Politics are tricky, but I think it's more fruitful to think of people as brainwashed than stupid. The amount of propaganda we're subject to these days is unprecedented.

As for general stupidity, be charitable; judge people by what they're best at. Most people have one thing or another they are great at, and our differences is what makes humanity occasionally great.

It's lower than 90% for sure, but I'd be comfortable putting the number at a solid 40%.

Yes, myself included.

I feel this, but more along the line of chosen ignorance rather than actual stupidity. Either a new topic us overwhelming or they worry\fear they'll get it "wrong". Also, being from the south, where so much has been politicized, they fear the tribal back lash of thinking for themselves. I don't know what's wrong with me, I was never the type to "go with it".

Amen brother or sister

Thinking is hard work and with easy access to pre-cooked opinions online, they don't need to put in any effort.

Well, that's the thing about average person. Half of them are below the average and other half is above.

The comments in here are so depressing it's actually funny. Evidently we don't even know what the word means. "No metrics" ffs

Look, the fact of the matter is, as soon as you start even just inching over to the right of the curve, the people rolling the other way down the hill are already, let's say, beyond your horizons. The reverse is true too but in the less salutory way. You will never be able to fully communicate anything to them, their heads are populated with bullshit and nothing true can remain in their minds because it just gets overwritten by the stupidity which they have chosen as their life. They do not see obvious connections, they can not follow principles or see how they apply to them, and they are too arrogant to have sense spoken to them. They can not learn, resent the suggestion that there is something they don't already know in the first place, and they say things like "you can't tell me shit". I mean, thanks for self-identifying as a drain on society but we could already tell...

Excuse me! I resemble that remark!

And getting worse.