(no subject)

[aroraborealis]

[Poll #549208]

Comments

[dilletante.livejournal.com]

also, all of the children are above-average.

[aroraborealis.livejournal.com]

That is such a neat trick!

[jbsegal.livejournal.com]

Um... the problem is that this changes in context.

The outside world vs. people I respect...

[moominmolly.livejournal.com]

I compromised and answered for "people I work with".

[aroraborealis.livejournal.com]

That would make it too easy ;)

[dilletante.livejournal.com]

it kinda seemed like a trick question. i don't interact with "most people."

[ceo]

I answered as if both questions were about "people I interact with". Otherwise there are two variables, making the results meaningless.

[wolfkitn.livejournal.com]

okay, i'm finding the poll results to be highly curious. (taking it as a given that all the comments so far are from people who interact with each other at least occasionally and that there are more poll results than there are commenters,) the fact that that many people think they are smarter than that many other people amuses me.

i think a lot of this has to do with the nature of intelligence, and what a person thinks these things ("smarter than" and "(not) as smart as") mean. the accountant at work today spouted off this and that about numbers and percentages for benefits and time off and hours worked, and it flew over my head. does that mean that he's smarter than i am? in that area, of course! but (duh) that's why i'm not an accountant...

[moominmolly.livejournal.com]

If I were to re-answer the poll questions for people I *socialize* with, the answers might be different. But it's so hard to answer -- I think my skillset is different from that of most people I know socially, so there are areas where I feel smarter and areas where I feel less smart. Or do I mean knowledgeable? Or am I mistaking quick-thinkingness for cleverness for smarts? Plenty of people are much better planners and strategizers than I am. Who's smarter, the person who picks new ideas up more quickly or the person who can execute more complicated and advanced plans? The person who always has the right fact on the tip of their tongue, or the person who can collect information from nine totally disparate areas of knowledge and relate them together?

[wolfkitn.livejournal.com]

these were my points, exactly and better articulated, and with a well-decorated pregnant belly icon to boot.

(a-HA! clearly, *you* are smarter than i am...)

;-)

oops.

[wolfkitn.livejournal.com]

(i should have used this icon.)

[moominmolly.livejournal.com]

Maybe it means that people tend to value their own kind of intelligence more than the kinds of intelligence that other people have? Or maybe we're all just cocky.

[dpolicar]

I'm not finding it as curious as you (and others) seem to.

I'm smarter than most people. Yes, different people, different skill sets, etc., but still for all-round "think-fast, think-clear" intelligence I'm definitely in the top third of the population at a minimum.

I tend to treat others as if they were as smart as I am. This tends to cause some people to wander off and others to enjoy my company, just like anything else I might do; the net result seems to be weighting my friends towards the smarter and unintimidatable end of the spectrum, which works pretty well for me... I have very cool friends.

I suspect that both of these things are true of many of my friends, also, and the poll results seem to validate that.

[wolfkitn.livejournal.com]

i think it's one of those "depends on how you interpreted the question" kind of things. when i read it the way you did, your comment applies to me as well. reading it the way i did (initially), i found the poll results to be amusing and suspect when compared to the questions.

[snowy-owlet.livejournal.com]

This poll makes me think fondly of a man I went on a couple of dates with who stopped returning my phone calls, because my "talking like schoolteacher [was] intimidating."

Poor old thing. I wasn't interested in his brain.

[catya.livejournal.com]

i had interesting (to me) hesitancy about clicking on "not as smart as i am".

which may be tied into mostly treating people as if they are, regardless?

hm.

[ghislaine.livejournal.com]

As others have mentioned, this feels very context specific for me. I think of 4 realms:

Co-workers (as smart as I am)
Clients (not as smart as I am - on average)
Family (as smart)
Friends/social circle (I usually feel like most of these people are smarter than me)

[razil.livejournal.com]

Being easily confused, I just used two variables so I could get on with my day and not consider your deeper meaning all afternoon. For the first question, I answered for my friends/general social group/work folks.

Although I did hesitate on the 2nd question, I answered it for the world at large (well, at least the population of the States). And, although I would like to give the benefit of the doubt that everybody else is as smart and cool as those that I hang out with, their actions don't bear out that level of trust. So phooey on them.

[keyne.livejournal.com]

What she said.

[snowy-owlet.livejournal.com]

*nod nod* That razil, she knows a thing or two.

[dancingwolfgrrl.livejournal.com]

Although I intellectually think that in an IQ-sense, at least, I am probably above average, I don't really emotionally believe this. I did not, in fact, actually grasp that there *were* people who I was actually smarter (not "harder-working" or "more privileged") than until I was at least 18, and it still basically doesn't make sense to me in an "I can't imagine what that would be like" kind of way.

[psongster.livejournal.com]

I think that "the people I interact with" are, on average, a lot more intelligent than "most people." There's quite a bit of intellectual segregation in our society -- some of it self-chosen, some of it not.

That said, I have found that my particular combination of answers -- assuming that people I run into are about as smart as I am, when I believe/know that the majority of people are not -- can run me into real difficulties. If I use myself as a model of what other people are capable of and likely to understand ... if I do ordinary, run-of-the-mill projection ... I can be profoundly incorrect in my predictions. This can produce results that are awkward, or worse.

Like dancingwolfgirl, I thought that I was just harder-working and luckier than most people until I was in my mid teens, and the feeling still lingers. Sometimes that basic egalitarianism works to the benefit of me and the people I'm interacting with. Sometimes it doesn't.

❤η

[(Anonymous)]

I'm pretty sure I am smarter than most people in some ways, but there are lots of people who are smarter than I in other, desirable, ways, such as various social skills.