"What is the dumbest thing you've heard an adult say?"
Legend Has It, I Hope?
"She said mountains were created by men shoveling dirt."
"Really?"- Hail2ThaVee
One Or The Other Dear...
"It's just a fact in my opinion."- ShowMe_Your_Panties
“'Facts can be wrong'."
"'Only opinions can be always correct because it’s my truth'.”
'From a 28 year old woman."- dizzzzzzzzzzzzzz
We Can Learn A Lot From Our Children, But...
"Children don't need to be educated, they will tell you what they need to learn".
"Her 3 year son is running on the street, decides when he goes to bed and is very aggressive towards children and grownups.."- Placeboooooo
Quitting
"The more you drink, the less attached you'll get to it, thereby making it easier to quit'."
"Some dude on Discord in response to a post I made about quitting alcohol."- tuffguy1992
Drunk Cbs GIF by Paramount+GiphyWishful Thinking...
"'Things will get better for us when the baby is here'."- champsammy14
Someone Didn't Pay Attention In Anatomy
"After my dad got prostate cancer, an adult asked my wife how likely she would be to get prostate cancer and when women should get their prostates checked."
"It’s me."
"I’m the dumb adult."- WangHalen
At What Cost Though?
"Heard an engineering student say 'smoking is actually good for you because it makes you lose weight'."- UnluckyInflation4130
A Few Million Miles Off...
"Me and my grandma got to watch the sunrise on top of Mt. Haleakala in Hawaii."
"Off in the distant horizon we could see an airliner jet crossing the sun's path."
"She was horrified that the plane may have crashed into the sun."- darkshark9
Terrified To Know The Context
"'They don't need anesthesia; newborns don't feel pain'."- BitCritical1049
How Long Have You Got?...
"I work in retail."
"The limit of stupidity does not exist."- bbix246
Black Friday Thanksgiving GIF by NBCGiphyEasy To See Where He Got Confused...
"I was at work talking about how my rabbits had babies, a guy I worked with thought rabbits hatched from eggs."
"Because of Easter and Easter chicks and rabbits."- Cannibal_Cyborg·
Wrong On So Many Levels...
"Years ago I was able to visit the National Mall in D.C."
"As I was walking near the nurse's memorial, I heard a mother explain how the nurses were so brave in the Vietnam war."
"Then the child asked if we won the war.'
"She said yes."
"Then the child asked why we were fighting in Vietnam."
"Her response?'
"'Oil'."- pedantic_dullard
Maybe They Shouldn't...
"Planes don't fly in the rain."
"Work today proved that's false."- bpanio
GiphyWe've all had an embarrassing slip of the tongue every now and then that we deeply regret.
Do you have any examples you'd like to share? Let us know in the comments below.
Curious to hear examples of this, Redditor TheArchitect_7 asked:
"What’s a thing dumb people say that makes them think they sound smart?"
Some people just want reactions more than a back-and-forth interaction.
Attention-Seeker
"'You wouldn't understand.' Yeah, that's why I asked you for an explanation."
– Appropriate_Donkey18
Fancy Words
"I sometimes use big words that I don't really understand to make myself sound more ambidextrous."
– Alone_Ad1278
Looking At The Score
"The more someone emphasizes their IQ, the less smart I think they actually are."
– rmshilpi
Hackneyed Sayings
"Everything happens for a reason, nothing is actually 'free' as someone has to pay for it, both parties are the same, you may have book smarts, but I have street smarts, common sense isn't so common anymore, but that's how we've always done it!"
"An addition to the previous: 'We will send 40 billion to Ukraine, but we won't spend 40 billion to secure our schools!'"
– humorous_anecdote
Things can get wacky when dealing with someone who is cantankerous.
Futile Argument
"Something along the lines of 'You can’t prove it didn’t happen.'"
"A guy at work tried to pull this one on me. He believed one of those Animal Planet mockumentaries about a giant killer shark was real. When I told him it was all fiction and that there was no real proof of this kind of stuff, he tried to argue back about while he couldn’t prove it, I couldn’t disprove it either."
"There’s a saying about getting into an argument with a stupid person. This was my real world experience with it."
– WongoKnight
Status
"Do you know who I am?"
– FoxFourTwo
The Equivalent Of Winning
"Thinking that getting a reaction out of someone is the same thing as winning an argument."
– bcopes158
Please Define
"My friend once used the phrase 'By its very definition' while we were arguing about something...so I asked him what the definition actually was, while he fumbled with that a bit I told him to stop using weasel words."
– groovyinutah
No Kidding
"'it all depends on how you look at it.' yeah thats f'king obvious."
– psychpopnprogncore
We all love a good malaprop.
Or Intents
"For all intensive purposes"
– p38-lightning
It's Moot, Really
“Mute point”
"Cracks me up every time."
– Ed_The_Bloody
Sometimes, editing yourself a bit in discourse with those who are intellectually out of your league is better than trying to keep up with them in an attempt to win their favor by articulating something you know nothing about.
I would explain better, but you wouldn't understand.
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I want an IQ of 180. But all the studying in the world won't get me there. Sadly... tell me about being brilliant!
Lost
The One Where Estelle Dies Episode 15 GIF by FriendsGiphy“Intelligence is like four-wheel drive. It just lets you get lost in more remote places.' — Garrison Keillor"
No-Faithlessness5311
Mastery
"The smarter you get, the more you realise you don't know."
Crafty-Ambassador779
"I've noticed there's something weird with this, though. If someone hits a certain level of mastery in one area, they seem to think they can easily be an expert in all areas."
"As an example I used to be a professional carpenter that did work on mostly high end builds. The amount of Doctors and Engineers that were suddenly master plumbers, finish carpenters and electricians and 'knew' more than me after a few days of research was infuriating."
TheIowan
"facts and logic"
"They have no effect on dumb people's opinions."
theboomboy
"Persuasion (like teaching) is definitely a separate skill from intelligence. You can throw around 'facts and logic' all you want, but humans aren't robots. And what you/they consider factual and logical, may not be so."
ncnotebook
"I’ve found that people don’t like to be persuaded by logic and facts if they don’t have any logical facts to back their stance to begin with. They much rather go off hysteria and what they believe rather than what reasoning led them to that belief."
Vaxtin
Crushing
"Our school system (Australia) isn't built to deal with them. It crushes bright kids down to everyone else's level. The usual solution is just to give them extra work to do on top of the assigned work, when they finish that too fast. But to a kid, that's a punishment. In this way achieving beyond a certain accepted parameter is quietly discouraged."
theexteriorposterior
fools and fanatics
hocus pocus halloween GIFGiphy"They are full of doubt compared to people who are not smart."
F**k-Reddit-Mods69
"The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts. -B. Russell"
Paddlesons
So brains don't automatically equal brilliance and happiness... Who knew?
I Know what I Know
Think Season 2 GIF by NBCGiphy"Being smart enough to know you're right while dealing with people too stupid to know they're wrong is soul crushing."
Stryker2279
"smartness"
"There's different levels of 'smartness' and different smart people go about life in different ways. But, I think universally young prodigies are typically isolated. They are at a level far above children their age, but are far younger than the people that match intellectually with (lacking life experience). Either way, a young prodigy can't connect with either group."
Firamaster
Potential
"They don't always find ways of living up to their potential."
Immediate_Aioli342
"To add to this, they're often told they should live up to their potential simply because it exists. The number of times myself and some of my current MSC colleagues have been told we are wasting our potential by not being physicians is soul crushing."
"And demeaning because it implies that pursuing anything other than the hardest, highest paid disciplines is a waste of you, regardless of what makes you happy. Truly sad to see smart people in careers or lives they hate because they did what other people told them they should do."
TinyBabyAlli
I should probably go back to therapy...
"Expectations. Never learning to study until it is too late. Being forced to learn outside of your age related interests. Being terrified of failure. Not being able to balance ambition and said fear of failure. Once again, expectations. My mother put so much pressure on me at such a young age I couldn't handle it. I have done well for myself as an adult, but will never be able to live up to those expectations set by her and others. I should probably go back to therapy."
Putty119
Levels
Praising John Goodman GIF by The Righteous GemstonesGiphy"There are different types of intelligence. Being good at physics doesn't mean that you should manage people."
oliverismyspiritdog
Well I'm glad to only have average level intelligence. Who needs the stress.
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"What is a subtle sign that someone is really intelligent?"
The minds of really smart individuals never stop working.
Resourcefulness
"They draw wisdom from multiple sources. Wait but that might be more wise than intelligent... But I guess those two tend to be seen together a lot."
– Puzzlehead-Engineer
Inquisitive Minds
"They are curious about everything."
"To be intelligent you need to be knowledgeable and you cant be knowledgeable if you are never curious."
– soup54461
The way highly intelligent people interact with others is slightly different.
Social Adaptability
"They can switch up the way they talk to match the person they're talking to without sounding condescending. They listen to how others learn and explain it in that person's language of understanding."
– Wynonna99
Talking On Level Ground
"Talking to people as if they're intelligent at their level and without being condescending or even letting on that it's lower than their level."
"I used to work with a doctor - Tom Howard - and the day I realized he was a genius was the time he guessed every single condition a patient of mine had based on minute piece of information about him."
– Yoodei_Mon
The Humble Professor
"No joke. The smartest professor I had in engineering school was also the most humble. She was an astounding human being. By week 2, she knew everyone's names by heart in the intro engineering course. In College. With like 180 students. Later, in upper division classes, people would occasionally ask some really stupid questions."
"Like, it happens... you get so deep into some fluid mechanics derivation or something you forget something really basic. People would ask a question like this and everyone would be thinking like; 'Wow, how did you even make it this far?' but then... it's like she would spot the flaw in their understanding so perfectly, and then respond with such clarity and wisdom that the person asking the question would look less stupid and the whole class would be enlightened."
"And here's the thing... I pride myself on being really good at that exact skill. I tutored a lot of people. I was easily one of the brightest amongst my peers. But that woman was on another level. It was mind-blowing."
"And it wasn't just her intelligence, but her organizational skills, discipline, consistency.... And yet... she was so humble. She was quiet and physically quite small. But she just exuded competence and immediately commanded every room she walked into. I've never seen anything quite like it."
– EngineeringNeverEnds
A Positive Effect
"When they explain something they make you feel intelligent."
– gwoshmi
When In Doubt
"They know when their knowledge ends and say something to the extent of 'I don't know and anything else i say on this topic is ignorant speculation.'"
–blutoboy
Some with impressive IQs may deal with questions in the following ways.
Reaction To Delayed Responses
"'You really think about everything don't you?' - a doctor, to me, after he asked me a question and I took longer than 2 seconds to answer it."
"No, I just pull something out of my @ss every time and those extra seconds you waited for me to answer were purely to irritate you for my own enjoyment."
– Imakegoatnoises
The Really Good Questions
"They can ask really good questions."
"Edit: to anyone not understanding what mean, I’m talking about people who ask 'really good questions,' not just any questions, really good ones. I don’t know how one would achieve this skill(I know I haven’t)."
– milkmanbran
Taking Pause
"They spend time thinking before asking a question."
– ParkMan73
"Some of the smartest people don’t comment at all."
– metric-poet
I agree with many of the comments saying a really intelligent person knows how to cater the conversation towards another person's level of understanding.
They do have the impressive skill to convey something in a way that can easily be understood. Some of the most venerated professors at my university were like this, and their classes were always the hardest to get in to.
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