grrrr - vent alert!

[cybermule]

I don't mind that someone is forgetful.

I mind mildly that they cultivate it as some sort of sign of their unique and mighty genius. (*)

I mind a lot when they forget to pass on an important telephone message (**)


(*)Personally I think that it makes you a bit of a waste of space if you're so clever that you continually lose any means of communicating your brilliant ideas to the rest of the world (or at least, that's the kindest explanantion I can think of). But we don't always know what will be useful in the future, and we can afford to support extra people, so it's OK.

(**)If you constantly brag about how smart you are, yet how quixotically and amusingly forgetful, for goodness sake put some sort of compensatory mechanism in place. All you have to do is write down the message straight away, dammit! I'm mildly forgetful, so that's what I do, and I don't constantly imply that I'm a genius.

Comments

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[unsane1.livejournal.com]

Reminds me of an interesting article. Tried to find it but for once I couldn't coax google into doing my bidding.

Anyway, it was a scientific study about how people who are dumb generally are convinced they are smart. And people who are smart usually know their intelligence has limitations.

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[unsane1.livejournal.com]

Dear god, being unable to find that article was driving me crazy. I pride myself in my skills at always being able to re-locate something I've read long ago, using google.

I'm happy to announce, after far too much searching, that I finally found it: Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One's Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-Assessments.

[quercus.livejournal.com]

Thanks - that was a really interesting read.

16th percentile thinking they're 66th percentile isn't the quirkily average thinking they're lovable Einsteins though, that's idiots just managing to drool in the right place on a few of the answer boxes. I loved the invisible lemon juice story (too much invisible ink making as a kid ?).

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[cybermule.livejournal.com]

Yeah - the lemon juice story was so funny, and it's a good article all round. Statistically I guess it's inevitable that even random drooling should occasionally hit good results!

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[cybermule.livejournal.com]

Yes - thanks for tracking that down. It was excellent. And yeah, to me, being smart is partly defined by knowing that you're not perfect in intellect - if you think you know it all, then you've severely hampered yourself.

Meh.

But then, so does thinking you're dumb or incapable. Reminds me of some Buddhist tenet about not comparing yourself to anyone, better, worse or equal. The exact words elude me :)