are people who claim that they are intelligent

really that smart?

or is it grandiosity?

most of the television-addled shallow pates i run across who think they are einstein because they know about web trends BEFORE they are cool and make humorous photoshops seem nominally interesting, but i wouldn't consider them intellectuals by any stretch.

this includes the other types who speak/write in stilted/grammatically OVERcorrect/or non-conversational english (meaning, sometimes they try to sound like a book).

the absolute WORST are americans who think/act/speak/write like they are british.

tell us some of your tales of dilletantes, fops, and half wits.

and I resent your inference that those of us who write like there's a pole up our ass might be faking intellect. :spank:

Seriously: who ever admits being stupid? There has to be a better litmus test than self-evaluation.

I think it's one of those myths like the "noble poor"; not that there are no noble poor, but poverty generates at least the same share of assholes as wealth does. I believe that there are people who know they do not know everything, and I credit them with great intelligence. But somebody who tells me, "I don't believe I'm that bright" tends not to be that bright. IMH but Informed Opinion. :P

Used to ask others to read his programs to check for errors because he did not trust his own coding abilities.

This is the foundation of ego-less programming...

Von Newmann's contributions are endless:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_von_Neumann

well, not really.

he did realize that wisdom is contained in realizing what you don't know.

peace~

That is tuhe most irritating. I find in general, the surest sign of intelligence is as the dude in Miller's crossing said, "A little less you talk, a little more you listen."

BEing smart isn't knowing things, it's be able to have the mindset to relax, and listen, compute then come up with an opinion. Many people who claim to be smart just have ego and not much else. Hence the reason I stay outta GD.

Isn't "fop" a British term? ;)

but i cannot write my autobiography here.

It's either right or it is not.

Bloody 'ell.

being so concerned with being precisely correct when it is not needed, and in this case to an extent that it may seem intentionally done for pretentious reasons.

...equate to intelligence? I'm British and I'm a total fucking cretin.

We're like deer in the headlights. Try it sometime.

If I hear one more person say "Oh my Gaawwd, I just luuuuurve your accent" I may commit murder. My favorite such encounter was in my local WaMu branch last week. The teller said to me, after ascertaining my country of origin, "How come you speak with that accent? Do they speak a different language over there?" I barely restrained my urge to reply, "Why yes they do. It's called 'English'".

The man character dates a person with a mental handicap for weeks, and doesn't figure out that she is handicapped because she has a British accent and sounds so intelligent when she speaks.

I always thought people just liked the sound of the accent, I don't think I ever truly realized they assumed the speaker was more intelligent because of it. This has some fascinating possibilities for me: I'm going to completely slack off at work and see if people think I'm deep in thought about Really Important Things. I may even start inserting "indubitably" and "elementary" randomly into conversations. My workmates will think I'm Sherlock Bloody Holmes! Hurrah!

into my verbal communications.

:rofl:

there isn't anything high-fallutin' about that guy: every other word is fuck, oy, and cunt.

I used to work with a male RN that loved medical terminology and liked to use the big words to communicate simple, usual functions. He seemed to want to prove he was intelligent and came off as kind of boorish. He was always the person in a meeting that had a question when the rest of us were ready to bolt. And always the kind of question he probably already knew the answer to. (to which he already knew the answer) Yep, he always had some wordy multi-syllable question at the end of a discussion just to prove he knew what was being presented. I liked him better than most of our mostly female staff, the poor sap had a pretty big hurtle to jump working with the man-haters, we worked with. (with whom we worked) :P

I've found that if you don't use them, you lose them. What little German I learned in high school is pretty much gone...gestorben..

Communication is a dying art. Not that I communicate well, but I do enjoy reading the works of those who do. If that upsets anyone, it's their problem. :shrug:

I know a few myself and throw them in here and there. To tell the truth I'll bet that most DU'ers are smarter than average. I'll tell you what though, I'd hate to be judged by my spelling if we didn't have spell check. OMG.

And I want to have good English skills, so I'm always attempting to polish what I type.

It's just learning. If anyone gets offended, again, it's not my problem. Keep your own level of expression, as you said :)

Zaprasamy!

but in everyday usage, it serves no real purpose to make an exposition of 10 dollar words when 3 for .25 words will do. especially in business. people don't trust you if they think you are smarter than them.

and ultimately, the only real way to get money from people is to get them to fundamentally like you.

instead of saying "next to last"

because I don't know what it means.

you should DIAF. x(

Hardy har har.


However, for as long as I can remember people have commented upon my manner of speech. I've gotten "stilted" and "stiff" as descriptors and many times heard the question "why do you use such big words?"

Honestly, I don't know, but I know that it's not deliberate. That is, I don't make an effort to pick a bigger word when a smaller one will do; I simply use the words that present themselves to me in my head, and those are the words that get said.


I'll go so far as to claim that I'm not stupid, and I seem to have a knack (trained or inborn, I don't know) for analytical thinking. But does that make me smarter than that guy or that woman?



Beats me, but probably not.

and there are subjects that I'm rather clever in. I don't claim any more than that, though. :shrug:

complex to really measure of even understand fully. I can do what I can do, and can't do other things.

I don't like people who really try to impress you with their intellect. It's not necessary, and I usually don't care one way ot the other - I did nothing to get it, and I'm not overly happy I have it much of the time.

mark

but I tend to only show off at the things that I'm good at. :P There are plenty of other things out there that I suck at.

he uses a polysyllabic word when the word "fuck" will do.

show their ignorance by thinking that way. My experience has been that the truly intelligent people realize that they really aren't and understand just how much they DON'T know.

That's true intelligence.

:hi:

Not in web trends though, because I find them to be useless.

I never really acknowledge it much until i see someone tearing into others for their grammar or spelling. It seems to me that anyone who feels that they need to correct others (without knowing any background) can keep their intelligence. I would rather have compassion, patience, wisdom, caution.

:shrug:

that's a good way to look at things.

See, I like clunky yet euphonious words. "Euphonious." Yeah. Fuck off, "pretty-sounding." Ornamental articulation of my idiocy is all that keeps me going.

I live in a town where only about 10% have a BA/BS or higher. I agree that there are many smart non college graduates and that college doesn't guarentee that, but it is considered weird around here to be smart. Being smart around here is almost like being gay with many actual smart people being in the closet. I worry about interviewing for another job or graduate school someday because I have started to adopt their poor grammar and vocabulary, which differs from the grammar and vocabulary mistakes that I grew up with. I don't proclaim my intelligence around them or even that I am a college graduate unless they ask. Sometimes though I wonder if I should, though, since I do have a more privleged job at my company and people question behind my back as to why someone like me should have that job.

stupid people i've ever run across (but not always. i guess it depends on where they went to school and what they studied).

i've had more interesting conversations with people who had 8th grade educations.

there was a woman we called Our Queen of Malapropisms because she tried to use fancy words when simple ones would do and invariably wound up sounding like an idiot. My favorite was when she used the word "castrate" instead of "castigate"--"I don't know why he thinks it's okay to... to castrate me for doing that."

I also visited a friend of mine in San Francisco and when I got back to work was describing a day when I saw a wall of fog headed from just off the coast toward the city, and Her Highness said something like, "Yeah, the fog there is amazing sometimes, like a giant sausage rolling in to slap you in the face."

My first thought was, "Okay, it's nothing like that," followed by, "Did she really just say that? Wow, she has issues," followed finally by, "Wait. Is she hitting on me or something?"

She and my boss also used computer-industry buzzwords instead of normal English, which was slowly driving me insane:

"I'll talk to you about that offline." ("offline" = "later")

"I'd love to help, but I don't have the bandwidth." ("bandwidth" = "time")

"It has a compact form factor." (In other words, it's small.)

Did they think they were super-intelligent androids from the future or something? I dunno. :shrug:

and have no body hair?

Daddy said I didn't have to think.

before I could comprehend how truly ignorant I am.
I think curiosity is a vital motivator for learning.
I'm tired of willfully ignorant people who do
little more than regurgitate dogma and call it
intelligence.

And the more confused I feel. That being said, I think I'm decent at what I do (academia) except in mathematics where I'm a complete fuckwit.

I like big words in the proper context, but much prefer to use 'fuck' in my speech.

Also, I use British slang because I picked some up when I lived there and I quite like it.