WE ARE ALL FOOLS

We all know smart people who do stupid things. At work we see people with brilliant minds make the most simple mistakes. At home we might live with someone who is intellectually gifted but also has no idea. We all have friends who have impressive IQs but lack basic common sense.  

We all probably know someone who is intelligent but does surprisingly stupid things.

My family delights in pointing out times when I make really dumb mistakes. You'll never know who you are no matter how many people attempt to tell you that. 

What does it mean to be smart or intelligent? Our everyday use of the term is meant to describe someone who is knowledgeable and makes wise decisions, but this definition is at odds with how intelligence is traditionally measured. The most widely known measure of intelligence is the intelligence quotient, more commonly known as the IQ test, which includes visuospatial puzzles, math problems, pattern recognition, vocabulary questions and visual searches.

The advantages of being intelligent are undeniable. Intelligent people are more likely to get better grades and go farther in school. They are more likely to be successful at work. And they are less likely to get into trouble. Given all the advantages of intelligence, though, you maybe surprised to learn that it does not predict other life outcomes, such as wellbeing. You might imagine that doing well in school or at work might lead to greater life satisfaction, but several large-scale studies have failed to find evidence that IQ impacts life satisfaction or longevity. Which is to say having a high IQ is not core.

According to researchers "Most intelligence tests fail to capture real world decision making and our ability to interact well with others. This is, in other words, perhaps why "smart" people do "dumb" things."

The question "What's wrong with the world?!"  Is usually more of a statement of irritation than a question. But it can be treated like a question, and it is a good question.

Clearly something is wrong, at least with the human world. Even if you don't trust the news to tell you how the world really is, we all witness too much pettiness, unfairness, angst, anarchy, chaos, and dishonesty to say with a straight face that nothing is wrong.

The human world is so often portrayed as a noble battle between the stupid and the rest of us, each of us drawing our own smart-stupid line in some way or another between individuals, internet brouhaha, political fuss, religious, or sports team fandom/fanship boundaries and the rest of them, as we see them. Well, because stupidity can co-exist with smarts in the same person.

Perhaps every single one of us is stupid, just not completely. Clearly there are variations in what we can call "personal style," but nobody is so smart that they are not also frequently stupid, and vice versa.

This seems true with the line between smart and stupid, and each human mind. We are complex apes, with innate abilities to be both profoundly clever and powerfully stupid, maybe because its an inherent thing. This isn't a contradiction, just two complementary talents. This maybe why we often feel utterly smart when we witness some apparent evidence of our own intelligence (good grades, completed crosswords) and absolutely stupid when that second quality becomes more obvious (such as when it's your turn to tell the group a little about yourself).

We evaluate others even more willingly, with even less evidence, probably because we tend to assess a person's smart and/or stupid qualities moments after they've just impressed us with one or the other - We are all guilty of this.

Meanwhile, covertly, we all know that much of life consists of trying to hide the extent of our own stupid aspect, while highlighting the smart stuff so that others might think we are made of it through and through.

It's not hard to see that whether we deem someone smart or stupid has a lot to do with whether or not we identify with that person in some way - whether they sit in our own political or social radar, area of knowledge, or seem to be an outsider to them.

Despite our differing personal styles of intelligence and stupidity, humans are generally good at unraveling withheld problems with definite parts, but bad at doing things we're emotionally disinclined to doing. We're good at separating things into lists, labels, patterns, blacks and whites, and not so good at interpreting grey areas.

We're all complex. We're all a mixed bag.

I think the real takeaway from this reflection is that we could learn something from everyone and that no one is perfect.

My name is NNENNAYA UDEH, and I am perfectly imperfect.