
Stupider Than You Realize - barry-cotter
http://www.overcomingbias.com/2009/07/stupider-than-you-realize.html
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lsc
I've found that your perception of how smart other people are goes up with the
quality of the education you receive.

Good schools have a filter to keep out the worst of the riff-raff; and once
you are out of school, most of us spend most of our time after school with our
peers. Many of my peers went to very good schools, and nearly all of those
people have a much higher opinion of humanity in general than i do, simply
because they have never been exposed to a group of average people. See, I went
to one of the worst high schools in the state, then I skipped college to get a
.com job, so my last interaction with the proletariat was unfiltered.

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grandalf
What's an example of how average people deflate one's expectations of
humanity?

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gnaritas
Watching people who can barely afford to eat play the lottery because they
think they might actually win.

Watching people who shouldn't be buying anything on credit judging the qualify
of a loan by the monthly payment.

Watching people base their entire lives around a book written by a bunch of
ignorant (by modern standards) pre-industrial men, and praying to the sky
weekly to make their lives better.

~~~
edw519
Watching people who think they're so smart that they can sit in judgment of
others without understanding them.

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gnaritas
I do understand them, I grew up among them.

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smanek
I was amazed to learn that ~15% of adults in America are functionally
illiterate. They can put letters together and sound out words - but couldn't,
for example, answer simple questions about a short text they just read.

Over 20% of American adults are 'quantitatively illiterate'. They are unable
to add two small numbers together - or parse a simple chart or table that has
numbers.

Only 13% of the adult population is proficient in reading, writing, math -
where proficient means being able to do simple things like compare viewpoints
in two editorials or compare the cost per ounce of food items.

That means ~9 out of 10 American adults are seriously lacking in their ability
to read, write, or interpret numbers.

<http://nces.ed.gov/NAAL/datafiles.asp>

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djb_hackernews
I was a volunteer tutor for a 5th grader for few months. He had the reading
ability supposedly of about a 3rd grader I was told. He could pretty much read
any word, but we'd crack a book, he'd point at the word, say it, then continue
to the next word. Punctuation meant nothing. He could have probably done it
for days. Part of my job was to stop him and ask him questions about what was
going on. Blank stares. I moved and couldn't tutor him any longer, but I don't
think I helped, which was frustrating. The thing is, he had been in the
program for years. And was undoubtedly going to passed to 6th grade, and
probably won't break out of illiteracy without an intensive program. Point
being, I don't think his situation is all that unique.

~~~
smanek
Wow, that is a little depressing.

Just out of idle curiosity - are you _the_ djb (qmail, cdb, etc)?

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markbao
Really? I've experienced the opposite, that people are smarter than I
initially expect. Is there an age trend here, perhaps?

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scscsc
I think people are as smart as they need to be. You don't need to be able to
summarize tabular data if you work at a fast food shop (e.g. as a waiter).

And it definitely has to do with the circles you hang around in. As a
programmer you're more likely to be in a rather smart circle.

~~~
lsc
dono. I've met more than a few smart people working in the service industry.
(I've hired a few, too, with good results.)

Personally, when I hire someone, I rate hobby experience as more desirable
than paid experience. I can give you paid experience. At least for SysAdmins,
I can train you in all the gotchas of production. But I can't make you like
it.

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xenophanes
One can't necessarily conclude from what people _did_ answer correctly on a
test what they _could_ answer correctly. Were they trying their best? Why
would they? It's boring and they weren't presented with any powerful reason to
really care a lot about doing their best.

There is a further issue of how long it would take people to learn these
skills, if they genuinely wanted to, and got helpful explanations. If someone
doesn't know a skill, but could learn it in 30min if he ever wanted to, then
that's no reason to call him dumb. I think to judge people you have to look at
how well they learn rather than what they currently know.

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larryfreeman
A common mistake among smart people (and everyone else) is to overestimate
people on some things and underestimate people on others.

I'm not sure what the article is saying beyond this.

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mooneater
You have to keep your personal bar set high, though not letting that
demoralize you, and not self-congratulate yourself too much when comparing
yourself to the "average" person. Just being in the top 2% or 0.2% of IQ, does
not guarantee success (sometimes quite the opposite!).

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stavrianos
I think it might be fairer to say that most people don't realize how _many_
stupid people there are. This drags the average down, of course, but most of
them aren't relevant to me. Hanging out with intelligent people leads me to
believe that people are intelligent, which is a) wrong and b) totally fine.
Because it holds true for those people with whom I interact, my mistaken
assumption is perfectly safe, and on the whole can lead me to make more
accurate judgments in most cases.

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pmorici
All of these questions could be categorized as testing "critical thinking".
Should we really find it all that surprising that a majority of people lack
such skills when a large number of jobs (dare I say most) only require skills
along the lines of rote memorization of a finite amount of information. I find
it scary how few people lack the capacity for independent thought. They just
wait for others to tell them what to do and then follow unquestioningly.

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joel_feather
Understanding a bar chart or a pie chart is something you learned at some
point. It takes a while to learn to inteprete these things.

Most people are not dumb. They are rather smart, but they focus their thoughts
on the things they have interest in. In other things, they do not pay
attention.

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DanielBMarkham
Stupid compared to what?

There are functionally illiterate people who make millions of dollars per
year. And there are people with sky-high IQs that collect subway cards and
remain jobless.

When you start throwing around words like "stupid" or "smart", you have to
provide some kind of context. For instance, I have a high ability to learn
languages. Yet I only know English and a smattering of French. To somebody who
speaks seven languages, I'm dumb. But to me, I just never developed that
talent. Whereas to me, the guy who knows seven languages and can't create a
web page is stupid (perhaps), etc.

Lots of people don't know or can't do things that I can do. Likewise, I don't
know and can't do a lot of things other people can. If I were to dwell on this
disparity, it would say a lot more about my ego than the human population.

~~~
scott_s
Sorry, I'm hung up on your high ability to learn languages. If you only know a
"smattering" of another language, how can you say you have a high ability to
learn languages?

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jgranby
Having ability to learn and having learned are quite obviously different. For
example, I was good at languages in school, and could easily have gone on to a
language degree at a good university, but decided to do law instead. 3 years
later and my French is very out of practice. It is (unfortunately) easy to
have a talent for something and fail to cultivate it.

~~~
scott_s
Again, how do you _know_ you have a talent for something unless you actually
do it?

Put another way, how do you know your abilities were actually above average if
you didn't follow through on them?

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DanielBMarkham
"Again, how do you know you have a talent for something unless you actually do
it?"

You do a little of it, then compare yourself against statistical norms.

For instance, I have a talent at playing the piano. I took lessons for around
10 years. At the end, I was able to compete against other people who took the
same amount of lessons and win a scholarship. Now -- I did not continue
developing that talent, so compared to say, a concert pianist, I'm a complete
musical idiot. I know enough to be dangerous. But of course, looking at some
guy on the street playing the kazoo, he's the idiot compared to me, etc.

Same goes with languages. Usually there are standard ways of teaching language
concepts. You apply the teaching for a small amount of time (say an hour or a
few days) and then compare with statistical averages.

It's not foolproof, but it's more right than wrong. That's how statistics
work.

This work-vs-talent equation works at all levels. I knew a guy who became a
supervisor for around 30 employees. Smart guy, knew his stuff, but he couldn't
spell. He, quite frankly, looked stupid compared to most of the people who
worked for him. So he took the time and boned up on his spelling. He was no
more stupid than I am -- smarter in a lot of ways -- but he just didn't see
the point in emphasizing spelling until later in life.

You're always stupid compared to something else. The word "stupid" doesn't
exist in a vacuum. There's always some subtext involved when you use it.

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10ren
_Point of view is worth 80 IQ points_

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iuguy
Stupider is not a real word. Using words like 'Stupider' or 'Stupidest' are
stupid.

~~~
anigbrowl
'is stupid'. Sorry :)

