Smart people don't think others are stupid (2012)

"There are no smart people or stupid people, just people being smart or being stupid."

I don't know if I really agree with that. I mean, there's definitely some behaviour stuff that can be changed, and some things someone can do to make themselves think more logically and clearly. But what about innate ability? It seems to me that some people just find it easier to make connections and certain kinds of logical thinking comes easier to them than to others with very little effort.

Although perhaps the terminology is a bit dichotomous - smart vs. stupid, which could be misleading also. I mean it's a bit ridiculous to condense ability and wisdom along many dimensions into this single dimension. And it further seems that in common parlance, stupid can mean a variety of things based on context...

Although I get the spirit of the article, I think it's just too much of a simplification to be useful.

"If you run into an asshole in the morning, you ran into an asshole. If you run into assholes all day, you're the asshole." -Raylan Givens, Justified

I believe the same applies to stupid. Yes, you will occasionally run into stupid people (or as the OP states "people being stupid"). But if it happens more often than not, look in the mirror.

As I am sure many HN type people are familiar with, growing up and into my adulthood, people have often commented on me being "the smart one". It confused me, because I honestly have never felt particularly smart. I have always felt like I have been playing catch up.

I have been a member of a local makerspace for the past couple of years, and one thing that being a member has crystallized for me is that pretty much everyone is smart in their own way. It feels obvious to say, but being a member there really made that click for me. People just think I'm smart because I have interests often associated with smart people, not because my capacity for learning or the size of the set of things that I know are all that different from other people.

The other big thing that I think makes people think I'm smart is that I have absolutely no issue saying "I don't know", or just asking questions about something, like the article says. I think people don't really weigh statements or questions like that into their understanding of the knowledge you actually have nearly as much as if you do something like guess incorrectly. I have a habit of shutting up and letting people talk, and people just assume that I know more than I do :P

There is not really that much deviation in intelligence among most adults. People just have different experiences, and therefore different knowledge sets. The way those sets intersect, and the way that non-overlapping sections are treated during interactions seem far more influential for how "smart" someone is perceived, than the actual size of those sets, or even the rate at which one can change that set (how fast they can learn).

>Smart people don't think others are stupid

In my experience, this is true even when they _should_ believe that someone is stupid. It seems that the very intelligent make two errors: humility, and then the same theory of mind error that every makes.

The "humility problem" is well-intended but incorrect; they don't want to claim they're above anyone, at at least in the same of some very intelligent people this is not just a social signal. They seem to think that other people must be just as intelligent as they are, but there's some other explanation for why they don't understand things. This ties into the next problem:

I don't have a clever name for the next problem, but I would call it "the same theory of mind error that every makes." When we try to model other people, we use our own mind as a model. We do this even when we've been proven wrong over a lifetime. We do this when we know better. We slip back into this when we've previously corrected for this. How many extroverts do you know who can tell when an introvert has had "enough" social interaction. It's exceedingly rare. But the extroverts aren't bad people. They just have no real way to slip into the introvert's perspective. They're modeling the introvert as being more or less the same as them, but just with a few quirks. The model fails over and over.

The in case of intelligent people, they seem to have no understanding what a very unintelligent mind would look like, and instead seem to believe that apparently unintelligent people _could_ be brilliant if they just read more, or were not so closed minded. Or maybe they had a poor upbringing, or are dealing with trauma. They don't seem to understand that for stupid people, abstractions are often impossible, impulse control is fleeting, and emotions rule their mind more than thoughts. They cannot really place themselves in the stupid person's mind, so they try to ask "how much would need to go wrong for _me_ to come to such an incorrect conclusion." And so they come up with a false hypothesis, such as "their school teachers must have failed them."

Smart people do not default to thinking that others are stupid.

They go through the answer space, exhausting the other options and then settle on "that guy must be an idiot" with a confidence level somewhere in the high 90%.

It has to be this way, because stupid people do in fact exist. So there must be a process of which the outcome is thinking that someone might be stupid.

Theory falls flat quickly when discovering there's actualy people who will never think 1 step futher.

Ludwig Wittgenstein, considered as one of the important phillosophers of 20th century, did it all the times! he even compared simple people to animals. When he was a teacher in small village(s) in Austria, he was higly disrespecting to the simple village-people and their kids he was teaching. Using force on dumb pupils to put knowledge into them with his bare hand!!!

i think its lack of understanding and empathy in smart people causing them to think others are stupid - when I studied, the only thing i really learned is to ask "why in this stupid way, and not in some other more smarter way" when there's one answer one can use to explain why, then its enough to counter that "stupid"/"smart" arguments. Smart people often live in a higher state where their knowledge allows them to find better approaches/answers/methods - so the result is they alwys question approaches/answers/methods and if there's a simple better approaches/answers/methods, they say "thats stupid" - but never consider the why was it made this way and not the other way around.

Thats my experience. Until I learned to question first, then think&suggest, I was, i thought, "the smartest guy in the world, because all other were plain dumb!". Now i differentiate more and only if something is not explainable, erratic, uncalculated, i call DUMB with an emphasis on the forced, spitting, pronounciation without opening the mouth for vowels! :)

My first-year philsophy professor gave a similar warning. He offered words to the effect that if we (the students) started thinking that the philosophy we were reading made no sense, was idiocy, or just nonsense, pause for a moment and imagine whether we thought it was likely that Plato was an idiot and everyone hasd missed it for millenia, or that we might be misinterpeting something. There’s always the chance that we’ll have an insight that others might not have had, but there’s a reasonable chance the the philosophers we were to study might not be exclusively stupid.

The primary argument of this article can be simplified and rephrased as “Only stupid people call other people stupid” which really points the finger back at them.

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surrounded_by_Idiots for the case that people generally aren't stupid, they're just different - personality, upbringing, culture, etc. Being smart is knowing how to spot those fundamental differences, interpreting them for what they are and adapting your behaviour.

But there are also proper idiots.

I see this style of framing a lot and it always seems like turtles all the way down to me:

- Smart people recognize that some people are stupid

- No, real smart people recognize that behaviors are stupid, not people

- No, real smart people don't label others, including calling themselves smart, based on a small sample of observed behaviors. They leave the dichotomy behind.

- Wait, you still called yourself smart...?

- You are all wrong, all labels are generally meaningless and unhelpful in describing dynamic people in a dynamic world, though let's not be dogmatic about it, sometimes a dolt is a dolt and a genius is a genius

I think smart people either don’t say it out loud or just don’t care. The hard part about this topic is, the moment you say anything you’re kind of saying that you’re one of the smart ones lol

I don't think this is a good marker for intelligence, but I think if you avoid dismissing issues because other people are dumb you will generally think harder and in the end will have a better understanding of the issue.

I have a personal rule that goes along the lines of "If I can't explain why a smart and kind person thinks the opposite of me it means I don't really understand the issue". It doesn't mean that I have to agree with them, but I always try to understand where they came from.

The line of thinking progresses like this - it starts at ignorance, then it comes to the showcased "there are no stupid people" partially because of the still remaining ignorance in the "unimportant" humanities areas usually "STEM and economics is all that's needed to be smart!". And partially because of the combination of self-censoring and social virtue signalling "Look, I'm super duper extremely tolerant and avoid even a slight mention of the "bad words", please praise me!". And then, rarely, a person understands that a) there are no "bad words" and opinion of others is more or less worthless with the exception of friends and family, and b) a lot of people are actually stupid in a clear biological or medical sense. Like for example, the oft incorrectly remembered IQ score. It is quite openly in the definition of that score, that score 100 is around the median. And word median implies that there are not only higher scores than 100. but also lower too. It's really obvious, and after virtue signalling is no longer in the picture, it is very easy to explain.

I read and love all from Derek. I like that he always makes you think through, even when starting from simple and stupid ideas.

Personally I tend to dismiss myself as stupid, because many times I detect I'm being misguided by lazyness and not wanting to think things through, which obviously makes me feel so smart that I could spend all day trapped in this stupid paradox.

> There are no smart people or stupid people, just people being smart or being stupid.

Only problem is that there are people that are actually stupid in the actual medical sense of the word. And a side effect is that they’re not great at thinking things through.

idk this sort of thinking just feels very “everyone gets a participation trophy” when much of the world doesn’t work that way

My experience is rather:

Smart people typically turn out to be disrespectful towards stupid people if in their life such stupid people made their life more difficult. And smart people often have a good memory.

If they never had any problems with stupid people in life, smart people are in most cases much more respecting.

I'd argue that this is a matter of wisdom, not intelligence per se. Lots of smart people think others are stupid, especially when they're young. Most smart people grow out of this over time, as they gain experience. Some don't, but that's not because they get stupider. Sometimes it's due to lack of real-world experience. Other times it's inappropriate devotion to certain fictional tropes that people always seem to forget are usually villain-coded: the heroic smart guy sometimes gets frustrated but rarely complains about the intelligence of their comrades, but the villainous smart guy complains about it all the time.

some people are being stupid all the time though. stupid is a shorter way to say it

I wonder if people who call people stupid for calling other people stupid might also be stupid. But I’m not jumping to conclusions. Just a thought

As a second comment: Nowadays the main problem that people who are smart in one field think they can solve all problems because they have the proven track record of one. The tech field is full with that kind of people sadly. And they have a followers too.

Smart, and not so smart, people realise you can't categorise people in such binary ways

This has the smell of enterprise corporate positivity. In a corporate setting, you have to keep the peace.

But no, there are absolutely maliciously intentionally stupid people out there.

The other fallacy is the author who says "smart people don't think others are stupid", makes an assumption that this Derek Severs is a " smart person".

i forget where i heard it first, but people may still forgive you after burning down their house, killing their parents, kidnapping their daughters, but will never for calling them stupid.

> Smart people don’t think others are stupid > saying “I don’t know” is usually smart — because it’s refusing to jump to a conclusion.

this has been on my mind a lot lately

for decades ive been interacted with people assuming were all on the same page, have thought things through, and that many conclusions to statements are implied, thus would be rude and patronizing to clearly call out. doing so would be treating the other like a child. i dont think im that smart, i mostly spend time with friends, peers, and family who all keep up with me

my therapist pointed out my way of processing things is actually uncommon and suggested i could seek out a spectrum diagnosis. this comment took a lot to process but it helped me remember im in the 99% given a standardized test or if we look at other, certainly flawed, education metrics. similar to a varsity athlete who never makes it past high school is in the 99% of athletes, they dont think theyre so good because theyve seen much better competition and their peers are others at their level

on top of all this i find thinking of myself as smart as disgustingly egotistical

now my point: ive found i get along much better with people i normally alienated or conflicted with if i treat them the way i refused to before my therapist called me out. i clearly describe all of the thought that went into a conclusion, something i would have considered rude and "mansplainy" 6 months ago, and others seem to treat me entirely differently. pretty much completely rehabilitated my relationship with my inlaws

I’d rather be around a self-proclaimed stupid then a self-proclaimed smart

Then I guess I'm not smart

> There are no smart people or stupid people, just people being smart or being stupid.

Yeah, no. When someone is constantly being stupid they are stupid. That is what that word means. Sugar coating that is just fake positivity.

"Smart" people realize that smartness is not binary and that there all sorts of things that can influence people's smartness in a situation or on a topic other than intelligence. Very intelligent people absolutely do stupid shit. Emotions, ideology, pride, wishful thinking, laziness, arrogance, just refusing to understand something etc. can make the most intelligent people really dumb fucks.

But there absolutely are stupid people. Sometimes they have the potential to be smarter by actually using the brain capacity they have but don't use for one of the aforementioned reasons. Sometimes people are just really unintelligent; Which is fine. There is no moral failing in this. Being unintelligent but good person is perfectly okay. The real issue here is that we judge people based upon their intelligence – or rather our perception of their intelligence, which is often skewed – rather than what they do with the intelligence they have, something they can control. Nothing wrong with being unintelligent, but being purposefully stupid because it serves your point or interest is unacceptable.

In the end smartness is also an overloaded term that we project all kinds of different things into.

> There are no smart people or stupid people, just people being smart or being stupid.

If you believe this, go to where my mother in law lives in rural Oregon and spend a few months there among the people who weren't smart enough to go live somewhere else.

You could replace smart with mature.

It took time for me to mature and see others this way.

There are many ways one can be smart. Having an intuition for solving complex problems is not the same trait as having a good memory or controlling your emotions or being environment and self aware.

Many are overlapping traits sure, but someone that has them all, can easily be the worse at each one, when compared with others that excel in that area. This is why you see so often brilliant people doing idiotic stuff.

So, "everyone's stupid" is a matter of alignment, in the areas you're best, where you can judge best, few around are better. Which can be true while still not making you the smartest person around in all ways.

I don't agree that this iuis an indicator of any kind of intelligence other than social intelligence (e.g. don't say stupid things that affect your life, in other words socially intelligent people keep it to themselves)

You see this in political discourse all the time

There are lots of smart people on all "sides" of the political spectrum, but in online forums (especially Reddit in my experience) people on dismiss the other side as stupid or evil, rather than trying to see the issue from a different perspective and understand the other persons point of view

I think the anonymity of being online brings out the worst in people. Having a discussion in person tends to be much more civil, even if you completely disagree with the other person

> They say it because it’s satisfying to jump to that conclusion.

> So if you decide someone is stupid, it means you’re not thinking, which is not being smart.

That’s also a jump to conclusions. You don’t know what their decision is based on.

This may seem like a trivial article, so it probably won't survive on the front page, but it's one of the hardest points to get across. We see it all the time on HN, where drive-by dismissals are an art form (I'm as guilty as everyone). Often, our main interest in an article is the possibility that the author is an idiot and we can quickly correct them for internet points. Maybe with "correlation isn't causation" or some other perennial comeback that isn't as clever as it seems.

I guess the internet tests you because it exposes you to more stupidity than you might have thought existed, and some of it is engineered to keep you outraged or otherwise glued to the screen. But I think we have a choice between fewer more meaningful engagements and higher numbers of drive-by quips, and we should probably be choosing the former.

Unfortunately, it's another thing made worse by AI, because when the volume of long-form punditry is up 10x due to LLM-generated blogs and social media posts, how do you even choose what's worth engaging with? Increasingly, there's no human on the other end who cares about what you have to say. It's just karma / reach farming at a scale, and it makes no difference if you respond with a thoughtful argument or a singular "this is dumb".

> So if you decide someone is stupid, it means you’re not thinking, which is not being smart.

What if, according to the author's definition, after thinking through, one has decided someone really is stupid. Then one's decision that the person is stupid is just true. Isn't it being smart according to author's own definition.

It appears the author didn't think it through essentially making the author "stupid" according to the author's own definition.

Does the author think he is smart? And smart compared to whom?

I'm smart and I think others are stupid

I guess I’m stupid, then, because I think a lot of other people are stupid. Like holy crap, so stupid. Have you seen people? They are by and large not smart.

I know for sure I am stupid because HN reminds me about it from time to time with downvotes when I write dumb comments

I mean, Einstein said there is no limit to stupidity... Do you think he said it about himself?

> There are no smart people or stupid people, just people being smart or being stupid.

The author needs to touch grass and meet more people - maybe go to your local prison or skid row and have a chat to the people there. Prison has some smart ones for sure, but it’s also got some profoundly stupid people; skid row is almost wholly stupid people who have also fried their brains. There are of course plenty of stupid people in almost all other places, too, but pound for pound skid row probably wins.

I am smart enough to realize the smartest people I ever met indeed did not think others were stupid, they considered them to be complete imbeciles instead.

Curious if this is even accurate now (if it ever was). At some point we as a society are going to need to come to terms with the fact that many or most of our psychological, sociological, and anthropological studies are now grossly inaccurate. Social mores have changed a f-ton. People are far less polite and far more narcissistic. Globalization has made localization sort of a joke. Wonder how anyone can still write a thesis or dissertation in good faith now in the social sciences.

Albert Einstein, who was accused of being stupid in his youth, once stated "We still do not know one thousandth of one percent of what nature has revealed to us."

It seems there is indeed room for some humility.

I'm skeptical. I've met some of the smartest people on earth and some of them indeed called others stupid, and I personally believe rightly so. The statement is on the level of "there are no stupid questions", which is also a myth. I can't back this up with hard data but in my personal experience I've witnessed all combinations of {smart, stupid} people calling {smart, stupid} people {smart, stupid} without any strong tendency towards a particular combination.

This is just... stupid...

Of course there's stupid people. A lot of them. It's simply dishonest, manipulative or plain stupid or say otherwise.

If this article was more insightful, thoughtful, etc it would be saying that a smart, decent, wise etc person wouldn't belittle anyone for the combination of innate intelligence and environmental factors that caused them to not be thoughtful, creative, able/willing to learn etc.

And they'd moreover perhaps even take the responsibility upon themselves to try to do something about it - addressing inequality, social and educational systems, changing culture, better family planning, and endless other things.

[dead]

[dead]