When are you allowed to consider people just plain stupid

[Thaluikhain]

Generally, when someone's worldview or experiences means they don't know something you do, or disagree with you.

This can be either very overt (people who vote for X are stupid) or more subtle (all the problems with cultural biases in IQ tests).

 

[Imperioratorex Caprae]

Stupidity: The person who drinks bleach, gets electrocuted pissing on an electric fence, basically anyone you can posthumously give a Darwin award. Stupidity isn't knowledge, its blatantly doing something that would otherwise be so far in the realm of common sense of "DO NOT DO THIS."
Thats when I can call someone stupid. Blatantly ignorant of their own existence and how it affects others. But there's a wide margin of error between a mistake and stupidity...

 

[Vausch]

You don't know something because you were told the wrong information or just never heard of it to begin with? That's fine, let us teach you.

We've presented all of these facts and skills to you and you still don't grasp them? That's fine, not everybody can understand everything. We'll help you to understand at your own pace and if you don't get it, that's still fine.

You're denying that these well established facts are real without any supporting evidence to back up your claim, a conspiracy that has no logical way of being realistically carried out, or that something proven wrong many times over is correct? You're stupid.

 

[iseko]

A miss belgium candidate thought wwI was ten years ago. She said it on fucking tv. Some people are stupid because of what they say/don't know

 

[YunaX]

Intelligence is very relative. One person could have no idea what the current political parties are, but be a mathematical genius. Another could be terrible at book learning, but be very culturally aware.

Also, cultural knowledge is gained by exposure. If someone has never had a person or fact brought up in their life,how could they know it?

To say someone is stupid is to ignore the fact of exposure. Some people live in a bubble all their lives. Many don't have time to just sit down and learn everything, and even if you have time to, you won't know everything someone else does.

"Stupid" people in my opinion, are those who blatantly ignore things that effect their daily life, or who hurt or endanger others with their actions, even after being told the effects.

People who don't know some things are not stupid,they are lacking exposure.

People who know things but choose to ignore or erase them, are stupid.

 

[Thaluikhain]

I'd also add that willful ignorance, or being actively opposed to the truth can happen in otherwise very intelligent people.

You have people that believe in bizarre superstitious, or have irrational prejudices, but otherwise aren't what we'd call stupid.

 

[Kolby Jack]

I call people stupid all the time, but usually that is just a response to their stupid actions and I don't actually think they are an idiot. Everyone does something stupid sometimes.

No, I only truly think someone an idiot if they deliberately choose ignorance in the face of the truth. If proven wrong, own it, accept it, learn it, and move on. Don't cling tighter to your flawed perspective. In light of this there are a few select groups of people I automatically classify as total idiots: creationists, bigots, terrorists, cult believers, and children 18 and below. Fortunately, a lot of them naturally grow out of it over time. Unfortunately, a lot of them don't.

 

[Auron225]

You disagree with me => You are stupid

Kidding aside, I tend not to label people as stupid. One of my favourite quotes sums up my thoughts on it;

?Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.? ~ Albert Einstein

Someone could say to me that there are only 5 continents and I could think they are stupid. The conversation could turn and I could reveal that I can't name 5 American presidents, therefore I am stupid. I know how to define the integers using a relation on the natural numbers, but I can't stir-fry rice (vice-versa for everyone else in my family). Peoples knowledge and experiences are just different and it makes little to no sense to put everything on a scale. Even if we did; I'm sure everyone would be missing a few pieces of knowledge or basic skills lower down the ladder.

 

[WWmelb]

I once had to explain to an adult, of senior years to myself, that the moon did not in fact change shape.

that was the final moment for me with thinking that person was not stupid lol Was a long list before i finally gave up and admitted that.

 

[Ieyke]

I consider everyone stupid by default. You have to prove otherwise to me.

 

[RyQ_TMC]

I do occasionally get annoyed at educated people not knowing what I consider common knowledge, but after the emotional reaction wavers, I tell myself that there's probably a bunch of things they know and consider obvious that I do not. So it's often a "they're stupid!" in the first few seconds, then "well, they're probably not" a minute later.

There is, however, one situation when I am perfectly fine with considering people stupid. It's when people are ignorant about a subject being discussed, but act arrogant regardless. Because then it's not "they lack knowledge because they didn't have a chance to gain it", but "they lack knowledge and they are not going to gain it, because they firmly believe they already have it". Some of those people will even refuse to gain new knowledge through discussion.

So yeah, then they're stupid and I think less of them.

 

[Mangod]

Hi,

I while back I was at a party on campus and played a game with a group of students (psychology and economics I think)which involved guessing and describing famous persons. I'm a bit of a history buff, so I'm always tempted to go with historical figures. However those aren't always as well known as I'd expect. So I went with a figure that every educated (they were students at a good university) in the western world ought to know. I added Winston Churchill to the game, and some of the people I was playing with had no clue who that was.
I choose not to consider those people to be stupid, mostly because I wanted to remain social, but it made me think. At what point can you safely assume a person is stupid without being condesending.

Has the person in question been featured on What The Fuck Is Wrong With You? If they have, they can safely be written off as colossaly stupid.

 

[Auron225]

"Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid." ~ Albert Einstein

[HEADING=2]Heard you been talkin shit![/HEADING]

Haha!! Very nice! I apologize even-more-genius-tree-climbing-fish!

 

[ForumSafari]

You can only "non-condescendingly" conclude someone is stupid if they show no knowledge beyond surface-level on any topic whatsoever.

Pretty much in the same spirit as your post, if I were predisposed towards arrogance I'd be tempted to classify 'stupid' as anyone who couldn't troubleshoot common computer problems or write a few lines of something like Python.

Measuring stupidity by knowledge of arbitrary facts is a bad way to measure it, Wikipedia has 0 IQ but knows more than anyone on this forum.

 

[Yarrow]

My housemate didn't know what the holocaust was. If I'm arrogant to look down on such a person then so be it.

 

[lacktheknack]

Pretty much in the same spirit as your post, if I were predisposed towards arrogance I'd be tempted to classify 'stupid' as anyone who couldn't troubleshoot common computer problems or write a few lines of something like Python.

Python? Dude get on my level, it's C or nothing.

^another reason that knowledge of one topic is a bad way to measure intellligence

 

[ForumSafari]

Python? Dude get on my level, it's C or nothing.

^another reason that knowledge of one topic is a bad way to measure intellligence

Knowing a compiled language is nice but I think everyone should be passingly familiar with at least one shell language and one scripting language. Also

>not coding in assembly

it's like you don't even use a computer pleb.

 

[lacktheknack]

Python? Dude get on my level, it's C or nothing.

^another reason that knowledge of one topic is a bad way to measure intellligence

Knowing a compiled language is nice but I think everyone should be passingly familiar with at least one shell language and one scripting language. Also

>not coding in assembly

it's like you don't even use a computer pleb.

And I bet you don't even code using the Linux terminal's 'cat' function.

Troubleshooting is for wimps.

 

[ForumSafari]

And I bet you don't even code using the Linux terminal's 'cat' function.

Troubleshooting is for wimps.

Course not, I pipe /dev/random to a text file, wait 500 days and grep out the statements I want.

What's the matter casual, afraid to get on my level?

Spoiler

I'm actually in that horrible twilight zone where my most run programs in Userland on my laptop are Vim and SSH