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Smart Versus Stupid


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Cognition identically evaluates the given stimuli.....

 

So what? One person might see the car and have a clear understanding of how it works, how many cylinders it has, its acceleration, its attraction to women hence pulling power as a penis extension, its rivals, its advantages, disadvantages, price, colour choices etc. Another might just see a big blue thing which means you don't have to walk and run the risk of getting your hair wet.

 

Wait .. this wasn't a male - female thread, or was it?

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So what? One person might see the car and have a clear understanding of how it works, how many cylinders it has, its acceleration, its attraction to women hence pulling power as a penis extension, its rivals, its advantages, disadvantages, price, colour choices etc. Another might just see a big blue thing which means you don't have to walk and run the risk of getting your hair wet.

 

Wait .. this wasn't a male - female thread, or was it?

 

 

The heuristics are identical. If you consider a decision to be based on a binary tree with many nodes, at least the first level has the same value. Subsequent nodes may be evaluated on knowledge or personal preference.

 

I can authoritatively state that cognitive evaluation, and perception, certainly differs between drunk and sober, so why wouldn’t it differ between smart and stupid?

 

Drinking suppresses the central nervous system. Being stupid does not require an external agent to affect CNS stability.

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The heuristics are identical. If you consider a decision to be based on a binary tree with many nodes, at least the first level has the same value. Subsequent nodes may be evaluated on knowledge or personal preference.

 

 

 

Great - so you have answered your own question in the OP: "How is it then that some people are smart and others stupid ? "

 

Next thoughtful question please!

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  • 3 weeks later...

There is a distinction between being knowledgeable and being smart.  I have known many who had brains full of facts that they did not understand.  Then there are those who may not know much but can accomplish much with the knowledge that they do have.

 

A question I find much more interesting is why do smart people do dumb things?

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Typically in the American vernacular, smart is interchangeable with intelligent, which I took to be the  intended definition based on the context of it's usage  in the original post.

 

 

 

That's what I thought, in which case I agree with there being a big difference between being knowledgeable and intelligent. In my youth I worked at a specialised technical job and one day a visiting professor turned up unannounced in my office and asked me to explain what I was doing. I hesitated and said I was unsure where to start because I didn't know his background. To which he said "oh - assume zero knowledge and infinite intelligence".

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I have an example of institutional stupidity.  In December, we got a survey from the USDA Statistics Service.  They wanted the survey returned by December 31 2016.  They wanted to know how many cows we milked, and how much milk was produced on January 1 2017!  I did not respond to the survey because I could not honestly answer the questions.  

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I have an example of institutional stupidity.  In December, we got a survey from the USDA Statistics Service.  They wanted the survey returned by December 31 2016.  They wanted to know how many cows we milked, and how much milk was produced on January 1 2017!  I did not respond to the survey because I could not honestly answer the questions.  

 

The British Ministry of Agriculture does similar things - in fact it was a legal requirement to answer their stats survey every year - how many cows and so on. I ignored it on principle, just to see how far they would go, and in any case I just refused to go and count how many bees I had.  I finally got a phone call from their head office, and some bloke balled me out, saying they needed info from all farms to complete their statistics. I pointed out that this was wasn't true, and as long as they had enough samples to make it statistically significant, the sampling rate was not important. He was obviously not expecting a farmer to have some concept of statistics, and they left me alone after that. But the Min of Ag is a kind of fascist state with surprising powers. You can't move a pig from one field to another without a licence. (in theory)

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Wrong on both counts. Intelligence is not knowledge. There is a correlation, so that an intelligent person is likely to be more knowledgeable, but you can have intelligent people who know very little.

 

We are not discussing intellect .

 

Just smart vs stupid . Which to me is about being practical.

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