#because if you are allowed to accurately assess yourself (both positively and negatively) you'll know where you fall short | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

caffeinatedopossum · 2 years

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Intelligence (a rant)

Being smart is actually really over rated because it just means that any conversation you have, you have to choose between correcting people or feigning ignorance. You have to mentally weigh the damage that letting people hold misinformation could bring in a variety of different scenarios vs how much that person *realllly* doesn't want to be wrong.

Like I noticed something weird and it's that all of my friends are really smart people that are utterly CONVINCED they're actually stupid. But they're my friends because they don't get defensive if they're wrong about things. That doesn't make you stupid, it makes you open minded.

Actually smart people are wrong about things all the time. Have you ever heard of the kinds of hypotheses scientists come up with before actually discovering something? Like before people discovered oxygen, they thought a substance called phlogiston (yes that was the actual supposed name) was present in all combustion. Now, we obviously know that's wrong but that doesn't mean the scientists that proposed the theory were dumb. They were just scientists.

#anyway rant about smart people because im tired of my incredibly intelligent friends #ragging on themselves over something that is actually a positive in my book #also I think its really hard for people to recognize that theyre smart because its not socially acceptable #behavior to tell someone that youre smart or even admit it if complimented. its something ive always found weird #like if you accept your positive traits youre instantly bragging and its not okay #but how else are people expected to accurately assess themselves?#everyone has good traits. even intelligence is an incredibly vague description for a wide variety of different traits #its like an umbrella term #idk the whole way society as a whole views ego and self is a little bizarre to me anyway #like it almost kinda... doesnt matter you know?#i have no reason to care if one person is smart and another stupid. or one empathic and the other not #because if you are allowed to accurately assess yourself (both positively and negatively) you'll know where you fall short #and where you don't #and i think thats important if people ever want to work together or help each other

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