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Are you really smart? Are you really dumb? Are you average? How did you come to your conclusion?

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  • About average. I have a master's in maths, and am pretty competent at tech stuff. Also do a lot of music. Those are just interests though, really. It's easy to get caught up on the idea that being good at the skills society deems as "valuable" or "smart" means you're in some way objectively smarter than other people. I've just found that isn't remotely the case though. People have different interests, I've heard "dumb" people passionately talk about things they love, going into complex inner-workings that I would have to also spend hundreds of hours trying to wrap my head around. Also, a lot of the "smartest" people I know are utterly clueless at anything social. Sure they may end up as maths researchers but they can't pick up on nuances of social interaction.

    Some people would argue that the metric for smartness is a little more set in stone, usually the same people who think that IQ is anything more than an ego-trip to justify MENSA charging people money for a shitty magazine and "proof" that they're smart. It's never felt that simple to me though, there are so mant facets of life to be understood and everyone has different understandings of them

121 comments