Post: #26

The world should be a playground. Why care for something like Asia when you live in the US? You take care of your toys YOLO. To much knowledge is overkill. The mind has it´s limits. Information diet is very important. Better be a rich happy and ignorant guy then the opposite.

Sometimes I think guys who don´t read are more happy for example a mechanic guy who doesn´t think about world problems all day long. In the end we will all die and maybe it´s more important how often we smiled then how much we read.

Post: #27

The quotations around the word "Smart" in the title, and comments like this:

Quote:I've thought for some time that those with degrees are less intelligent than those without.

are screaming "I didn't go to college," or "I fucked up in college."

Even though the Asian guy mentioned in the OP didn't know basic geography, all he would have to do is look at a globe for fifteen minutes and he would understand. Do you think you could grab one of your townie friends, throw him into the same rigorous college program and have him produce the same results as the Asian dude in the OP? Odds are very slim, because chances are, the Asian dude's IQ is simply higher, because his work is intellectually more challenging.

Same with the other example about a country/blue collar man versus a lawyer. Yes, this example is a little more sensitive, because a lot of people are products of their environments, but you can teach a lawyer how to do an oil change, build a tent and gut a deer in a few weeks probably. Chances are the country dude would have a harder time grasping legal concepts, let alone spitting them on the spot in hopes of spinning a court case in his favor. There's a reason why blue collar dudes don't make much. Anyone can do their job.

There are some valid points in this thread about more dumbasses being accepted into college. And yes, over-specialization leaves other essential areas of knowledge absent. That doesn't mean, however, those people can't learn them.

I graduated a couple years ago and whenever I chill with my old hometown crew, I always notice the quality of conversation is way below what it was in college. They talk about sports and drama within the group, in college we talked about the universe and metaphysical topics. Things that can't just be taught. You need an above-average brain to even entertain these concepts.

Of course there are a few people who are smart enough to understand these things in my old home crew. And they all fucked up in high school or dropped out of college due to laziness. And they're all saying the same shit I've been reading here. College life might not be what it was, but let's not get ahead of ourselves. On average, those in college are more intelligent than those who aren't

Post: #28

(07-29-2014 09:27 PM)WalterBlack Wrote:  Him: I don’t know? I’m not a fucking geographer. This requires expert knowledge. It’s a stupid question. It’s a bit like me asking somebody to calculate APR on a mortgage. It’s specialized knowledge.
Me: Now it’s not, I learnt this when I was around 10 years old. I’d give my 15 year old nephew shit if he couldn’t answer it.
Him: Well I disagree. It is specialist knowledge. I don’t watch the news so I don’t know about other countries.

This guy has an MBA from a good university, is a mortgage expert and makes around 6 figures. Wouldn’t you expect a guy of his background to know something so basic?

He's probably lived in a bubble his whole life. He has an MBA and is a mortage expert because he loves predictability. Probably doesn't want a passport and is happy performing the same routines everyday.

I'd recommend he read Nassim Nicholas Taleb's books if he wants to dive into the topic of "experts" and MBAs, but I'm sure he has a nice excuse as to why he doesn't have to worry.

I stopped caring to debate or troll these sorts of thinkers. Life's too short, enjoy the decline and remove yourself from as much of this blindness as you can.

Let the turkey think the butcher's going to keep feeding it.

Post: #29

(07-30-2014 05:43 PM)unbowed Wrote:  He's probably lived in a bubble his whole life. He has an MBA and is a mortage expert because he loves predictability. Probably doesn't want a passport and is happy performing the same routines everyday.

I'd recommend he read Nassim Nicholas Taleb's books if he wants to dive into the topic of "experts" and MBAs, but I'm sure he has a nice excuse as to why he doesn't have to worry.

I stopped caring to debate or troll these sorts of thinkers. Life's too short, enjoy the decline and remove yourself from as much of this blindness as you can.

Let the turkey think the butcher's going to keep feeding it.

He's travelled but he's only ever been to China, Japan and Taiwan. His friends are all east Asian and he married a Chinese-American. He bought a house in a very Chinese part of LA county.

His dream is to live in Orange County - which has a fast increasing East-Asian population. Notice a pattern here...?

Post: #30

(07-30-2014 10:12 AM)Deluge Wrote:  There are a lot of people out there with high IQ's who've never learned anything outside of what they had to learn in high school or university. They've never read a book they didn't have to and never consumed any substantive news. Although one usually does predict the other, just because they have relatively high brain power doesn't mean that they're intellectually curious.

Yep. I've met a few highly intelligent people, who while somewhat well read, are still incredibly apathetic. They just can't even begin to care about most things.

My understanding is that most things are easy enough for them to get, to the point where they can't be bothered. If any given thing is challenging enough, they might give it a go, otherwise, it's a no-go, unless there's it's of direct relevance.

---

Further, OP, you could've handled the situation with your "friend" better. Do you genuinely care about him filling the gaps in his knowledge? It seems like you questioned him with the intent of displaying his lack of knowledge. You seem to have been somewhat irritated that he did not know much about the appearance of Hispanic people, and was somewhat hostile right off the at.

If you call a friend ignorant and shame him for his lack of knowledge, are you really getting into this with the intention of encouraging to learn more or to help him out, or is it rather to simply attack him or show him how much he doesn't know (out of malice)?

Ok, maybe malice is too strong a word, but I can't think of another.

Post: #31

^^^

I was a bit blunt towards him and I did apologise right away for being a bit too aggressive. I wasn’t malicious in any way. I just had my mind blown by the fact that he didn’t know the Hispanic thing given where he grew up and the fact that the place he studied his MBA at has a shit load of international students. An MBA is supposed to learn about international business, so he should know where fucking Asia is on a map! His bloody parents are from Asia!

I used to work with a white American lady who lived in London for a year, and asked her what kind of food she ate there, given that she had access to all kinds of cuisine there. Her answer – “Well I mostly ate Ramen, fried chicken and pizza, I was too scared to try any of the other foods there”.

Another occasion, she said one of her best friends is Asian. I asked which kind of Asian. She said she doesn’t know. How can somebody not know the background of one of their best friends?!!

My theory is that there’s a lot of people who only learn what they need to learn to make money and/or get by, and that they don’t give a shit beyond that.

I wonder, do people like them walk around with their fucking eyes closed? Don’t they give a shit about learning about other cultures?!

I love learning about different foods, cultures and history….quoting trivia has gotten me bangs from Asian students. They’re pleasantly surprised about how much I know about their cultures.

Post: #32

(07-30-2014 08:15 PM)WalterBlack Wrote:  He's travelled but he's only ever been to China, Japan and Taiwan. His friends are all east Asian and he married a Chinese-American. He bought a house in a very Chinese part of LA county.

His dream is to live in Orange County - which has a fast increasing East-Asian population. Notice a pattern here...?

So he wants to keep with his own kind in the USA; no wonder he doesn't care about anything outside of that. Really odd though considering his background. Many Chinese-Americans I've spoken with have a curiosity about things other than money. Granted the ones I met have been from NYC and the surrounding boroughs. Sounds like a strange fellow indeed.

Post: #33

(07-30-2014 09:01 PM)unbowed Wrote:  So he wants to keep with his own kind in the USA; no wonder he doesn't care about anything outside of that. Really odd though considering his background. Many Chinese-Americans I've spoken with have a curiosity about things other than money. Granted the ones I met have been from NYC and the surrounding boroughs. Sounds like a strange fellow indeed.

In my experience many Chinese-Americans can be very insular. I went to grad school in the US and a lot of my classmates were Chinese-American. They basically kept to themselves. They never mixed with the mainland Chinese FOBs but they would mix with the Taiwanese FOBs.

Of course, they're not all like that - the ones I've banged tend to hang out in diverse crowds.

In my undergrad I had a couple of classmates from Hong Kong. They were fine in a 1-1 situation, but if I was talking to one of them in the corridor for example, and another group of their HK student friends walked past they would start talking to them in Chinese and NEVER introduce me to their friends. It was almost like they didn't want to admit they knew me so I thought "fuck these guys", and I stopped talking to them.

Post: #34

(07-30-2014 12:34 AM)Sonsowey Wrote:  The hispanic thing is consistently shocking.

Black and hispanic people, who deal with complex racial identities all the time, share no such idiocy about these things. White people have the "privilege" of completely ignoring racial realities to the point that they are shockingly ignorant. Lower ses races have no such privilege.

How about you shut up about white people? Because you are totally ignorant about white people. White people from around the whole world know racial realities and world geographic. If your American whites don't then it is an American problem, not white problem. There are more white people outside America, then in America and most of those people are neither ignorant about world geography and demographics and neither did their ancestors brought handcuffed blacks to America.

Post: #35

(07-30-2014 09:00 PM)WalterBlack Wrote:  ^^^

I was a bit blunt towards him and I did apologise right away for being a bit too aggressive. I wasn’t malicious in any way. I just had my mind blown by the fact that he didn’t know the Hispanic thing given where he grew up and the fact that the place he studied his MBA at has a shit load of international students. An MBA is supposed to learn about international business, so he should know where fucking Asia is on a map! His bloody parents are from Asia!

Fair enough.

Quote:I used to work with a white American lady who lived in London for a year, and asked her what kind of food she ate there, given that she had access to all kinds of cuisine there. Her answer – “Well I mostly ate Ramen, fried chicken and pizza, I was too scared to try any of the other foods there”.

Another occasion, she said one of her best friends is Asian. I asked which kind of Asian. She said she doesn’t know. How can somebody not know the background of one of their best friends?!!

My theory is that there’s a lot of people who only learn what they need to learn to make money and/or get by, and that they don’t give a shit beyond that.

I wonder, do people like them walk around with their fucking eyes closed? Don’t they give a shit about learning about other cultures?!

I love learning about different foods, cultures and history….quoting trivia has gotten me bangs from Asian students. They’re pleasantly surprised about how much I know about their cultures.

Ha, that's fucked.

I know those types. I've met many of them. I wouldn't call any of them "smart". I like to call them "book smart" (or at least, that's a subset of them). Even if they're somewhat knowledgeable about current affairs or history, it's usually what they learned at school, and rarely anything that is thought provoking. Anything to get by in a regular conversation.

Some people say in Europe, they're more cultured or some shit. At least where I am in Germany, it appears that your average dude is the same, even though he may know a thing or two more, his motivations are more "I need to know so and so to get by/fit in" rather than "I'm genuinely curious about this".

In general, those people have a very low level of awareness. I don't think they even begin to think about that kind of thing. Agree with the blinkers thing. They're like "Ok, go to school, get good grades, find internship, get employed, remain employed, get promoted, and if lucky, find someone willing to marry them, and then live out their lives".

Post: #36

I encounter these people all the time. A chick once told me that the Chinese still hadn't apologised for bombing Pearl Harbor. Another once asked why the capital of Hungary was Budapest if they weren't Buddhists. A colleague tried to tell me that Buddhism and Confucianism were the same religion, and that they were invented by the same guy. He also thought Indians and native Americans were related.

Probably the funniest example though was sitting in the Czech embassy in London, about twenty minutes before it (and most other embassies) closed. On the way there, I had noticed the Russian embassy ten minutes away. A guy (who was some sort of courier, I think) burst inside, pushed his way to the front of the line and demanded that he needed 20 Russian visas that very day and started haranguing the guy who worked there. The embassy employee took it all in his stride as the other guy berated him for several minutes. He didn't raise an eyebrow, but then informed the man that he was at the wrong embassy. After the guy left in a huff, everyone in the entire place did a double take and then cracked up.

Try working with teachers though who don't know basic things and don't care that they don't know basic things. That's a real trip. When I did my teacher training, one day, I got put in a group with an English major (who was going to be a high school English teacher) who didn't know what a preposition was. He couldn't think about the word and what it might mean and have a stab at it. Another woman in one of my groups was training to be a primary school teacher and couldn't do fifth grade mathematics like finding a common denominator or converting a fraction into a decimal. Another time, we got given a mathematics test. I did it all in my head in about five minutes, but of course, it was a group activity. I had to watch in agony as the members of my group bumbled their way through a discussion about what the answers might be and still couldn't figure half of them out. It turns out that it was a test given to Japanese seventh graders.

Post: #37

All the time. I refer to them as "educated idiots".

Post: #38

All the time.

I call them fact rich wisdom poor. Pretty much anyone I met here in Boston falls under that umbrella. You start getting wisdom when you find someone who has made a lot of mistakes in his life.

Post: #39

If you test the average "smart person," for the spectrum of "basic facts," then the average non-educated person, who will have more? Seems like people on this thread are playing gotcha with some smart people, who can learn what they need to to succeed.

Intellectual curiosity is not inherent to all people. I love reading, philosophy, history, and science, but not everyone wants to live an examined life. We all have gaps in knowledge - I have zero interest in sports, real estate, personal finance, art, and many forms of literature. So what? Our time is limited, we should focus on what we are interested in. Most people don't like to question things.

After all, think about all the science that most religious people are ignorant of! Do you think the atheists are really happier in the end?

Post: #40

(07-31-2014 07:50 AM)ao85 Wrote:  If you test the average "smart person," for the spectrum of "basic facts," then the average non-educated person, who will have more? Seems like people on this thread are playing gotcha with some smart people, who can learn what they need to to succeed.

Intellectual curiosity is not inherent to all people. I love reading, philosophy, history, and science, but not everyone wants to live an examined life. We all have gaps in knowledge - I have zero interest in sports, real estate, personal finance, art, and many forms of literature. So what? Our time is limited, we should focus on what we are interested in. Most people don't like to question things.

After all, think about all the science that most religious people are ignorant of! Do you think the atheists are really happier in the end?

The argument being made is about basic life skills. What happens if your car breaks and you can't afford a mechanic? What if you can't afford the contractor for the renovation? You may not have "interests" in these, but they're important to know if you want to improve your standard of living on the cheap.

The more basic life skills you know, the more money you can save by doing it yourself.

Post: #41

(07-31-2014 07:50 AM)ao85 Wrote:  If you test the average "smart person," for the spectrum of "basic facts," then the average non-educated person, who will have more? Seems like people on this thread are playing gotcha with some smart people, who can learn what they need to to succeed.

Intellectual curiosity is not inherent to all people. I love reading, philosophy, history, and science, but not everyone wants to live an examined life. We all have gaps in knowledge - I have zero interest in sports, real estate, personal finance, art, and many forms of literature. So what? Our time is limited, we should focus on what we are interested in. Most people don't like to question things.

After all, think about all the science that most religious people are ignorant of! Do you think the atheists are really happier in the end?

ao85, you've hit the nail on the head, they are playing gotcha. People here are giving examples along the lines of "wow, I remembered a educated person said something dumb, I can't believe how dumb they are" and everyone tends to forget or don't notice when educated people act in smart ways THE MAJORITY OF THE TIME.

I like your point as well about time. I've got things to do and can't be bothered to be as "well rounded" as the incredulous OP geography expert seems to be. If I need information to achieve a goal, I know how to get it quickly.

Post: #42

There are some stupid fucking people in this world man. When you hang around this forum, you're getting a daily dose of smart and down-to-earth people, and that lets you forget that most people are fucking stupid.

I had a tour guide once tell me that their country didn't have daylight savings because they wanted the plants to get more sunlight.



This was a guy who knew everything about every animal in the whole damn world.

Post: #43

(08-01-2014 01:45 PM)Switch Wrote:  This was a guy who knew everything about every animal in the whole damn world.

That was my goal growing up. Almost accomplished.

Anyway, I was having this conversation with an Australian dude last night as we drained 2 liters of mezcal.

The conclusion I came to after talking it out was that its not the amount of knowledge that a person has...cos I've worked with some pretty fucking knowledgeable PhD's and scholars...but its the amount of INSIGHT and REFLECTION a person can do.

Without those traits, there is no growth, no way to teach others, and no depth.

Plus, you gotta have the balls (willpower) to go out and live. Man, I don't think life gets more exciting than drinking yourself blind and running around a foreign city gaming girls who don't speak the same language.

And getting the bang.

Post: #44

You'd be surprised how many people still think the the Earth is bigger than the Sun...

Post: #45

Cardguy and the screen windows

Post: #46

(07-31-2014 06:20 AM)Feisbook Control Wrote:  Another once asked why the capital of Hungary was Budapest if they weren't Buddhists.

This is so funnily stupid that I will start using it in appropriate contexts. Thanks!

Post: #47

You'll love this one. A common friend was going to Edinburgh for one of those intensive summer language courses; we were having dinner and talking about it when a friend's girlfriend who happens to have a bachelor's degree in Psychology and a master's degree in something related with education said:

'Why are you going to Germany?', 'You should go to a place where people are native English speakers'.

We all looked at each and there was an awkward silence.

Post: #48

The language thing reminds me: my roommate in NYC had a girlfriend who went to Barnard. She was proud of her French ability, being enrolled in a literature course. I dropped a Proust reference one day, and she refused to believe that the guy's name was pronounced (more or less) "proost," instead insisting it was "praust" as in "oust." A few days later, she said she'd asked her professor, and I was right.
I have never taken a French class in my life and this (practically) Ivy League girl was the greater barbarian in her area of study.

Post: #49

(07-31-2014 04:19 AM)Mage Wrote:  

(07-30-2014 12:34 AM)Sonsowey Wrote:  The hispanic thing is consistently shocking.

Black and hispanic people, who deal with complex racial identities all the time, share no such idiocy about these things. White people have the "privilege" of completely ignoring racial realities to the point that they are shockingly ignorant. Lower ses races have no such privilege.

How about you shut up about white people? Because you are totally ignorant about white people. White people from around the whole world know racial realities and world geographic. If your American whites don't then it is an American problem, not white problem. There are more white people outside America, then in America and most of those people are neither ignorant about world geography and demographics and neither did their ancestors brought handcuffed blacks to America.

This is because many people in America think that their country IS the world.