Distinguishing Smart from Stupid People
I’ve given this a tremendous amount of thought. No, more. I’ve written chapters in books to this topic. No…More. I’ve devoted many years of my life to interacting with people and trying to treat all people as equal of equal intelligence. My mantra, rubric, guideline, personal manifesto, what have you, was something along the lines of this (outlined in the 8th chapter of the complete rubbish book I wrote, Validate Your Life): “Everyone is of equal intelligence; we all simply channel our intelligence cultivate intelligence rather into different areas. Meaning that someone watching tv beomces “an intelligent couch potato”, someone who studies manifolds and topology, becomes an intelligent mathematican.” Right, sounds elagitarian, equal, all for one one for all nice humanitarian perspective of the world and the minds it, right?
You are not a leming.
Guess, what my hypothesis is disproven. There’s many idiots in the world (MUCH much much more idiocy and idiotic minds than intelligent people). Therefore, you have to view people as unintelligent by default. For the past 8-9 years, be it a paint-smeared construction work or a Phd professor in a suit, I treated everyone as possessing the same intelligence trying to be some naïve, compassionate iditoc “Jesus all loving” stupid fool. A stupid fool I was indeed. There exist some (many) people that you must simply say in your mind: “This person is an absolute buffoon from which zero, literally ZERO advancement, progress, success, excitement, nor cultivation of more intelligence will arise OTHER THAN the reaffirming experience that there are a lot of idiots in the world”.
That’s simply a fact. Believing we’re are all of the same intelligence but with different derivations of it I “felt” (haha ridiculous emotional garbage) as if that compassionate “all loving” belief was in a way protecting me. That some divine protector would look upon me and say “Ah what a benevolent soul who views everyone as cognitively equal!” But there does not exist such a divine being because we all (intelligent people) know there is no “sky god”. Indeed, No ridiculous fictional nuisance hovering in the stratosphere awaiting a calculation of our sinfulness upon death like some vindictive biblical Santa Claus. Therefore, it doesn’t matter what mindframe, what mindset, what perspective you have about the intelligence of others for some kind of fictional afterlife. All that matters is the intelligence perspective that maximizes your survival. The one that does that is knowing that there exist copious, a plethora, an unfathomably high amount of idiots compared to brilliant people. The number of genius: to idiots is such an astronomically, outrageously, pathetically, gigantically SMALL fraction that it makes shocking concepts such as The Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle – that you can never know the simultaneous velocity and location of an electron – or the Bizarre but true FACT – seem humdrum and boring. Indeed, the ratio of genius: idiots is so far below 1% one must take serious measures to avoid being discombobulated into an unintelligent mess of residual stupidity!
I will revise, experiment with, and analyze my data further, but as of now, my working hypothesis is : “The ratio of genius: stupid people is so horrifyingly, pathetically, and monumentally small that one must adopt and fully accept and understand out of preventive safety, the necessity of presuming that someone is an idiot and not worth your time and very unlikely a genius or someone of moderate value to my life, success, career, and happiness.”
In hindsight, I realize I developed the hypothesis of “all equal intelligence but different cultivations of that intelligence” because my intelligence is so incredibly superior to many people. I felt uncomfortable about that. Maybe with the not burden, not responsibility, not awareness, not scope, but just understanding that provided. On many occasion I took refuge in being a moron, acting stupid simply because then I could let idiots be idiots and pretend I didn’t notice.
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