Title.
When you say, “fucking stupid” is “stupidity” actually the problem? Like what, they can’t do math?
Raw brainpower is only a fraction of what’s involved in good judgement. Book knowledge is another fraction. But there’s a whole host of other factors that can influence decisions. Poor impulse control, psychological hangups, bad habits, greed, privilege, etc. That’s assuming that the education they received actually taught them how to think critically in the first place.
The vast majority of the time, when I have a problem with someone, it’s not just a matter of lacking brainpower or education. Condensing those problems down to “stupid” is, aside from any other concerns, simply inaccurate.
also different standards.
one person’s clean is another’s dirty. etc.
Username/pfp checks out.
Intelligence and wisdom are separate things.
E.g. you are intelligent enough to know smoking is bad for you, but lack the wisdom to stop smoking.
Intelligence is knowing a tomato is a fruit, and wisdom is knowing to not put it in a fruit salad.
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People keep saying that, but it’s bullshit. In many countries outside the US, people can only do a degree if they’ve proven that they’re intelligent.
But intelligent people can be really stupid too.
Depends on what you mean by that.
Stupid as in not grasping some concepts quickly?
Education is just a narrow overview of a particular field. Once you’re out the narrow scope of what you’re taught - it’s all about your general knowledge. I know a world-class physicist who does not comprehend basic things about society, economy, relationships etc. And, working in a scientific field, I see plenty of such examples.
Stupid as in unable to aggregate data and synthesize understanding?
The state of modern tech and media more broadly eats heavily into people’s attention span. People have harder time concentrating, and it gets so much worse when they need to aggregate all the sources they have. They just don’t have enough short-term memory to keep it all together.
Stupid as in making weird life decisions?
Everyone’s life experience is drastically different than yours, and, seeing only the surface, people often downplay what others went through and how it shaped their thinking. Sometimes it introduces genuine logical errors into the behavior, and sometimes it just comes from a much different perspective than you can imagine. In their world, the decisions they make makes sense. In your world, you also normally make sense for yourself, even if you’re actually irrational in one thing or another. This does, by the way, include all the typical political rants - high-ranking politicians and their numerous advisors are unlikely to all be stupid. More likely, these people pursue different interests from what you imagine.
Overall, the word “stupid” is heavily overused and applied to a lot of different things. So, it always makes sense to clarify, or else it looks more like a rant rather than a genuine question.
Complaining about people being stupid is as old as the world itself, yet it’s not very productive or done in good faith. Before claiming anyone stupid, try to ask them for their perspective and the way they look at a problem. And if you’re able, unpack what you think is wrong.
Some people are very intelligent in their area(s) of expertise, but are alarmingly senseless outside of a lab/classroom/office environment. The “clueless professor” trope wasn’t just made up for laughs; it’s real. I’ve seen it firsthand. I’ve talked to spouses who love the “brilliant moron” they’re married to. Some people with degrees acknowledge their limitations with good humor, others don’t.
Cause education is not equal to intelligence.
Work at a university; try telling that to the academics. Some of them are phenomenally simple that I often wonder how they continue through adult life. The are coinvicrd of intellectual superiority because they’re a world expert in frog genders, but struggle to solve simple problems or absorb reasoning without having it dumbed down.
A university is like a daycare for those adults. And the trantrums and toy throwing they have with each other, oh my god. Daily I wonder how some of these people would survive if they ever had to leave school.
Reminds me of a joke from Ghostbusters, when Ray and Peter are kicked out of the university:
“You don’t know what it’s like in the private sector. They expect results!”
Academia is a good walled garden for those hyper specialized researchers. They progress research and the institution acts as a patron and sanctuary from the world. Perhaps we should reward continued general education though
To know is not to be wise. Many men know a great deal, and are all the greater fools for it. There is no fool so great as a knowing fool. But to know how to use knowledge is to have wisdom.
-Charles Haddon Spurgeon
Simpler & clearer:
Intelligence is solving-the-problem-efficiently/quickly…
Wisdom is realizing we’d been solving the wrong problem, & working-out what the right-problem is…
Wisdom’s meta-intelligence.
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It also seems that the more specific a person’s education gets, it replaces general knowledge and thinking. For many it seems their entire thought process changes to focus on that specific thing, to the detriment of anything else. Doctorates seem to be less capable of working outside their specific focused niche compared to those with lower degrees. They’ve spent so much time focusing that they can’t unfocus very well.
This is the real answer. Most people conflate the two.
Knowledge is not intelligence.
The difference is the conclusions drawn from the knowledge obtained. Dumb people can survey knowledge and come to wrong conclusions, it happens all the time.
Education isn’t just learning knowledge, it’s also skills and thinking. But it is usually restricted to a limited domain…
Why would you expect them to be immune to stupidity?
Because it’s the emotional inner world that defines how people behave, not education or knowledge or wisdom.
Staring at teacher’s boring Powerpoint presentations and reading through a chapter an hour before a test only to forget it after doesn’t magically make you a smart person. In fact, I felt more like it numbs the brain.
C’s get degrees.
I heard that after the Vietnam war with most the protesters being college students they made an effort to remove lessons that teach critical thinking and problem solving to make people more compliant and less likely to do that again.
So current education is more about regurgitating information unless you go for your doctorate I would think. Dont know in that one, just a guess.
maybe for public k-12 yea,theres definite attack on that. but private instituition have thier own curriculum, and its not the same at each school, some schools have better teachers than others, and better resoruces for experience in stem field. the more elite ones though have a different mentality, it breeds elitist/entitled graduates.
This is conspiracy nutjob thinking.
The federal government does not control university curricula. It doesn’t control what professors teach or how they teach it. Professors often have tenure, and can barely be fired by their own university for being subversive.
I thought education was standardized across all levels, didnt know universities had the leeway to do whatever with that curriculum. Thats interesting.
Certainly not. At least not in the US. Afaik, what is taught in public schools is defined by various levels of government. For example, the federal government sets standards for levels kids should achieve in reading at various ages, and mandates testing for this. The states define what should be taught in history classes in broad strokes (should be taught US history, world history, etc) but typically don’t get into the details (you must teach the battle of Gettysburg). Then school boards, or sometimes the schools themselves, choose textbooks to teach the topics. The textbooks are written by private publishers - information from one book to another will be largely the same, since it is mostly well established facts, but emphasis might change between books as much as the authors want. For classes like English, teachers can typically assign whatever books they want - though for classes with standardized tests (like AP classes), teachers must stick to a (fairly large) list of approved books so that test graders will be familiar with them when evaluating essays.
At the university level, the government typically has even less influence. Really, anyone can claim to be a university - hence Devry and Pheonix. But if you want to be a university anyone gives a shit about, you need to be accredited as a university, and accreditation happens via a non-government organization which exists to maintain the standards of university education. Core classes at the undergraduate level tend to be fairly standardized - not by any central planning, but simply because the knowledge is fairly standardized in any given field and universities often must transfer credits for students from other universities. Professors - especially tenured professors - can teach more or less whatever they want in their classes, but class curricula are typically set by department committies to ensure continuity in students’ education. And professors typically stick to the curriculum that has been set, since (1) it is probably a decent definition of what the students need to learn, (2) they don’t want to catch flack from their collegues next semester when the students dont know something they should, and (3) cranking through the syllabus is faster and easier than being subversive, and they have grants they need to write.
That makes sense. This is a very thorough explanation, thank you very much for taking time to explain that, I appreciate it. Always up to learn something new! :)
Np!
All humans think fast and slow
College degrees are usually a way to differentiate the rich and poor not prove how smart someone is.
If you identify educated people as drastically different from you, perhaps they are just trying to fit in when they’re around you.
