Ask Lemmy

If you haven't met a dumb person, you are the dumb person.

I was in this friend group (many many years ago) were one girl who always amazed me with her conclusions sometimes joined up. She was very kind so you can not dislike her but she didn't understand very simple concepts and were often lost in conversations that were a bit deeper than small talk. Everyone who met her for the first time always had at least one silent movement where they were thinking "why did she ask/say that?" and were unsure how to proceed (to not hurt her).

At my old workplace did I work with one woman that I think is "dumb" but I am very unsure in what way. I always had this weird feeling when talking to her, it felt like she didn't really get it but she didn't say much that would indicate it. Even tho she is older than I did it feel like talking to a child. It was a very weird experience. I didn't really talk much with her so I heard most things second hand but she could come to some weird conclusions about how to do her job. For example I often came earlier so I could leave earlier, so she did the same except I was actually working she did not, she were just sitting there for 1 hour doing nothing and assumed that was ok, as if we got payed to be there not actually work. When her boss told her off did she get stressful like a child and you saw she felt ashamed. She did this for many things and how she reacted made it seem like a child. I am unsure if she just tested us or if she actually thought it would be ok.

Otherwise do I not really meet "dumb" ppl. It is more about not having the knowledge or experience to know how to proceed or understand something. And some ppl are often in flight or fight mode when stressful problems arrive, so they do not think and come up with a solution that may be called "dumb".

I sincerely believe that one should make an effort to at least sometimes go out and meet different people. Sure, there are people who you don't want to meet, cruel, uncaring, hateful, and so on. But that is not based on intelligence.

I've met my share of not-so-bright people. No funny stories, I don't want to make fun of people for being "stupid" either.

But I've been in a sports club with some very intelligent and not-so-intelligent people, I'd argue that you can find a good cross section of society in there.

One guy seemed to have some kind of mental disability, and also quite a fan of alcohol, which didn't help either. He was being "mentored" by one of the older guys in the club, and he was, generally, doing an ok job at "life", given the cards he was dealt.

Another guy just wasn't that smart, in the traditional sense. Nice, friendly, hard-working, well organised, with a strong sense of right and wrong, with a wife and a child and all that. Thinking of it, he has a (presumably) happy family, while I have a college degree and am shit-posting on the internet in my underwear by myself. One of us is winning at life, and I feel it isn't me...

Then, I've specteted a class for a rather low-skill job in a not-so-nice city once. Not special ed, regular class for people who want to get a certain (rather low) post-high-school certificate. I've sat with some people, and they were on a visit to the town electricity provider, who was trying to teach them (on a high level) how a power plant works. With one guy I was sitting with, there was just no chance. The concept of how burning gas turns a turbine, which turns a generator, which makes the lights go on just didn't fit into his brain. Super nice guy, but that was just out of his reach.

I have met a fair share of people at college as well. There are some people who are kind of unable to think for themselves, regardless of "intelligence" (whatever that is). College is likely the first time they have to figure out things on their own, with nobody telling them how to do it. I remember deliberately giving people tasks that seemed trivial to me in some kind of TA role, like "we used this device $X in the past, but it is too heavy, can you google for something like $X but maybe only 100g max?" and they were completely lost. All they had to do was type things into the search bar, click links, and look for "specs" and "weight". I can only guess they had parents do everything for them.

A ton of pre-millennials really huffed the leaded gas fumes / ate the paint chips and it shows. :/

I would define one type of 'dumb' as people who upon learning they are making errors, refuse to apply any effort in improving. I have met lots. I am it sometimes too.

Another type of 'dumb' is ones that care nothing for others and cannot even foresee that caring broadly for and uplifting others is actually caring for yourself. I will also fail at this one often.

I've met plenty of 'dumb' people that function just fine in a familiar environment. You would never know in normal circumstances. The problem comes when something out of the ordinary happens. For instance, we had a shop worker with a learning disability. She dealt with all the common problems just fine, but if someone asked for something out of the ordinary, or for directions (this was pre-smartphone) it quickly becomes apparent.

Part of it is because IQ is unscientific and ignores variance in person's abilities in one task over the other.

It takes a person to fail at just about everything for us to declare them dumb.

So you might have been not in much of a bubble to begin with.

Ive known several MAGA people.

One in particular stands out, she was in charge of processing bills for our company, and she basically got all her propaganda from fox news. The company is/was a civil engineering firm (I no longer work there), we specialized partly in large municipal water projects, dams, water infrastructure, injection wells, large scale stormwater percolation, reservoirs etc.

During the big California wildfires (when firefighters kept not getting water out of the hydrants), the head engineer and the lead technical engineer held one of their once-a-month training lunches, and they decided to go over the California wildfires and the effects on the water infrastructure.

This lady stands up, and interrupts the lead technical engineer (who was going over flow/pressure/friction equations to show why hydrants ran dry when there was so much demand), to insist that the reason California is running out of water is that "Newsom drained the reservoir to protect some stupid fish" and other fox news idiocy. Spent a solid 5 minutes trying to tell a bunch of civil engineers a bunch of "information" about water systems that was so hilariously wrong that it was actually impressive.

That was a very awkward few minutes while HR tried to tell this lady that she needs to let the engineers actually learn how to do the job.

I spent 20 minutes (I timed it) on the phone diagnosing a tech support issue and instructing the user on how to fix it. It took about 10 seconds for me to realise that number lock was turned off.

The rest of the 20 minutes was trying to get the user to find and press "Num lock" on the keyboard.

About 10 minutes in, they actually found and pressed it. Apon noticing that nothing had appeared on the screen, they tried pressing it again, then announced it didn't work.

Somehow, just getting them to press the button one more time was not simple, as they now had to begin their logical left-to-right scan of the keyboard again to find this mysterious new "Num lock" button they'd never heard of before.

This person (on another call) would say the name of each key as they pressed it. They would say "Caps lock, A, Caps lock, Enter" when typing a single "A" on a line, but didn't know what "Caps lock" was and couldn't find it on the keyboard when asked to press it immediately after having said and pressed it.

A particular fellow student comes to mind who was slow to understand things, made a comparative lot of programming mistakes and so he took more time, but he also worked hard, stuck to a problem until it was solved, coordinated tasks well, and additionally brought positive spirits to any project group. I assume he'd score under 100 but I'd love to have him on my team if he applied with us today.

It's hard to know for sure though, since 100 is the average by definition and most people will be relatively close to it. Not like 97 or 103 makes a big difference. It's half the people you meet in public, like, (by and large) we all go to the same primary schools and supermarkets etc. Outside of those (so tertiary education, workplaces, online bubbles perhaps, etc.), there's still a substantial fraction who learned a lot and/or have a good work attitude and go very far in life amidst people who didn't have to work hard to get anywhere

It frankly seems strange to assume you basically never met anyone who is slightly below the average. From a statistics point of view, one might wonder if that's a dumb thing to say ;) (jk)

Yes, I knew someone when I worked in retail who was quite dumb, she was a super sweet person though.

I realized how dumb she was when we encountered a mouse in the back stocking area. It crawled under the door and out to the back of the building. She turned to me and said “I heard the reason mice can crawl under doors like that is because they don’t have any bones”

Me being a biology major with a big interest in all things animals and insects that loves to educate people tried to correct her. I told her about how all mammals have bones and that mice were just very flexible to be able to fit under the gap in the door. I told her about how we used to dissect owl pellets when I was in 3rd grade and put the little skeletons back together. She did not believe me and still thought mice just don’t have bones.

I do sometimes wonder if she ever finished nursing school.

TIL that dumb is defined as having scored less than 100 IQ.

Anyway, I've worked enough customer service to say with some confidence that I've met at least a few people who truly just exist and let the world happen to them with zero curiosity.

Education and employment level do not preclude stupidity. I too work in stem. I have had antivax colleagues.

“Of course I know him. He’s me”

I can't get away from the idiot. I have to see him in the mirror every morning.

As far as a funny story: My friends brother isn't very bright sometimes. My friends computer chair broke, one of the 5 metal supports that lead out to the plastic wheels snapped. My friends brother was learning how to weld so he tried to fix the support and in trying to test the strength of the weld he started bashing the seat against the floor and broke every plastic wheel... lol