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There is no objective criteria that defines who is "smart" and who is "stupid." Intelligence is a complex concept and can be difficult to measure. In general, intelligence is thought to include a range of cognitive abilities, such as the ability to learn and retain new information, solve problems, think logically, and adapt to new situations. However, these abilities can vary greatly from person to person and can be influenced by a variety of factors, including genetics, environment, and individual experiences. That being said, it is not fair or accurate to label someone as "smart" or "stupid" based on their intelligence or any other personal characteristic.
Also, you are not necessarily "stupid" if you are not curious. Not everyone is equally curious, and some people may be less inclined to seek out new information or experiences than others. Or you can be curious, but at the same time be an introvert, and that being said, you'll not show curiosity openly as most people do. That doesn't make you stupid. In fact, I would go further and say that it's not even necessary to show your curiosity to others to prove the opposite. IMO it's best to keep being yourself at all costs, no matter what people say.
Though I do agree with the importance of being open-minded and open-hearted as human values, just I don't see them as the only parameters when classifying someone as smart or stupid. This is a wide topic for discussion, so I would just say that I don't agree with classifying people as smart or stupid at all.
There are some really intelligent people who are very stubborn and close-minded. I don't know that there is much correlation with intelligence.
What are we talking about here--book smarts, street smarts, being smart with life skills and decisions? There are different types of smartness. Someone can be book smart but not street smart. Someone can be street smart but yet very stupid about decisions and life skills, for example, they spend money like water, constantly have car accidents, etc.
I don't agree that things like temperament or being "openhearted" have anything whatsoever to do with being smart or stupid. I think being smart or stupid is the result of a lifetime of experiencing life and learning what works and what doesn't and not making the same mistakes. If you continue to make the same mistakes in life then that's stupid, not smart.
I think some people view "smart" as situational and "stupid" as a catch-all, but I'm actually the opposite. "Stupid" doesn't mean you don't know anything; to me it means you have a hard time learning new things. Or maybe I'm saying that backwards .
My thing is, the ability to learn to learn something new very often comes down to temperament and curiosity.
I'll give you a fairly innocuous example. Relative to the rest of the world, I was a fairly late adopter of smart phones. In fact, I went basically the entire 2000s without a cell phone, my first phone was a Motorola Razr that I had for years. I'd gotten a raise at work and I decided on a whim to buy a smart phone (I'd been getting suggested to do so by ex-wife for years). I had no idea how to use it (I bought an iPhone) or anything about the Apple interface. But I spent time seeing what it could do, when I needed to figure something out, I Google'd and did my research and figured out how to use it.
I know some older people who still don't know how to use a smart phone because they don't want to take the time (lack of patience) to sit down and learn how to use it. It's not the most difficult thing in the world, but it may take a little time to get used to it. Many of them don't, so they stick to the flip phones of yester-year.
One of my life long best friends finally got a smart phone about a year ago. He is dumb as a box of rocks on a good day. He is a great guy but after several of us including his 30 something year old showed him how to use different options many many times he still has a hard time just using the phone part of the smart phone. The world is full of stupid people. Being stupid has nothing to do with being a bad or good person it just means they are stupid.
I couldnt disagree more with the OP. IMO intellignence is a spectrum of abilities. I'm good at math and spacial reasoning but poor at selling. Others may be terrible at math but be able to think clearly in high stress situations or may be able to write music.
Almost everyone is given something, even if it's only a small amount. Unfortunately most people dont work to strengthen what they were given but instead watch to much TV or play to many hours of video games.
A relative -- I won't say who -- accused me of using "large words" just to make him feel inferior. I said, "No, that's the vocabulary a good education gave me."
Location: Was Midvalley Oregon; Now Eastside Seattle area
13,070 posts, read 7,502,913 times
Reputation: 9796
It's all in the perception:
There is, stupid.
There is, smart.
There is, stupid smart.
There is smart stupid.
And lastly, smart and stupid
And runner-up, stupid and smart.
What do I know?
YSMV
Smart people make stupid mistakes.....but tend to learn from them. Stupid people make the same mistakes over and over...and learning nothing!
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