To clarify here, I don’t feel like I’m significantly smarter than most people, but I feel like people have a hard time doing any sort of thinking about stuff. Especially when it comes to verifying “facts.”

  • @misophist
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    5 months ago

    Stupid? Maybe if verifying “facts” is your sole metric. I know people who aren’t very media savvy who fall for some stupid propaganda, but they could empty my car’s engine bay and put it back together again and have it cranking the same day. Or you can drop them in any body of water in a 250km radius and they’ll know what fish can be caught there and be able to hook an edible-sized one in half an hour or less. We don’t all have the same skill sets, but we ain’t all “stupid”.

    • @[email protected]
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      5 months ago

      I’d argue given enough time and effort almost anyone can become a domain expert in specific things and do incredible stuff. What distinguishes smart people from simpler folks usually boils down to them having a very easy time processing new stuff, which includes the ability to filter noise and fact check.

      I don’t like the term “stupid”, but there hasn’t been a whole lot of evidence supporting the idea that human intelligence is compartimented. Humans with high IQs tend to outperform in average at most of what they try. Low IQ probably means you will work harder and have to specialize to achieve the same degree of competency. This just my hot take, I’ve fallen into this rabbit hole before and read a lot on the origin of IQs tests. In the end, intelligence alone does not determine a person’s worth anyway.