When Smart People Say Stupid Things

[One for Sorrow]

A conversation I had yesterday, while some mind-numbingly dull documentary about turkeys was on:

Narrator: "And when the turkeys hatch..."

Otherwise smart person: "Wait, turkeys hatch? They come from eggs?"

:facepalm:

[vremya]

I would really like to know where the otherwise smart person thought they came from, if they don't hatch.

[Corona688]

My boss needed network drivers for a customer. I can't email a 30 meg binary, so of course I sent her a link to download it back where she had internet. She got the email and headed onsite... where she asked "Wait, I need a network card to use a link?" ...

[maddog]

A conversation I had yesterday, while some mind-numbingly dull documentary about turkeys was on:

Narrator: "And when the turkeys hatch..."

Otherwise smart person: "Wait, turkeys hatch? They come from eggs?"

:facepalm:

I literally laughed out loud. :lol: :tmlol: :lolfruits: :LOL:

#2222

[biochemgirl]

I would really like to know where the otherwise smart person thought they came from, if they don't hatch.

From the grocery store. I had a great uncle who was a farmer and used to tell the story about the city folk that came out to his farm one day. They spent the day looking at the animals but when it came time to have the fried chicken dinner they asked if it was from the same chickens they fed in the morning. When he told him that it was they passed on the chicken because they only eat the kind that comes in the packages from the store.

[godfry n. glad]

Then there was Andrew Sullivan, who, after the Taliban were forced out of Khandahar, created the von Hoffman Award as a mockery of Nicholas von Hoffman's prediction that the US effort in Afghanistan would fail following the fall of Kabul.

Smart people say dumb stuff all the time. They, just like so many others, occasionally make declarations before clearly thinking through their comments.

Of course, it could well be that some of them are not nearly as smart as we'd thought.

[One for Sorrow]

I would really like to know where the otherwise smart person thought they came from, if they don't hatch.

Live birth, apparently. :giggle:

When I gave him a "WTF, are you serious?" look and said, "Well, yeah, they're birds" he claimed that he didn't know because he didn't grow up on a farm or anything.

I was like, "But... they're birds!"

[One for Sorrow]

I would really like to know where the otherwise smart person thought they came from, if they don't hatch.

From the grocery store.

That could be it. Maybe he thought they're carved out of butter.

[LadyShea]

LOL, you have to grow up on a farm to know which animals are birds?

[The Lone Ranger]

The things some people don't know ...

I have, for example, had students express surprise to learn that Pine Cones come from trees, and that a Salmon is a fish.

[LadyShea]

Did they say what their original ideas on those items were?

[Dingfod]

Great thundering herds of salmon used to roam the pine cone studded prairies of North America, now they've been reduced to hiding in water.

[Watser?]

:giggles:

[Adam]

My boss needed network drivers for a customer. I can't email a 30 meg binary, so of course I sent her a link to download it back where she had internet. She got the email and headed onsite... where she asked "Wait, I need a network card to use a link?" ...

Network drivers are the pain in the assiest thing to fail. "No worries, I'll just get on the internet and downlo...fuck."

[Ensign Steve]

Network drivers are the pain in the assiest thing to fail. "No worries, I'll just get on the internet and downlo...fuck."

QFT

[Corona688]

My boss needed network drivers for a customer. I can't email a 30 meg binary, so of course I sent her a link to download it back where she had internet. She got the email and headed onsite... where she asked "Wait, I need a network card to use a link?" ...

Network drivers are the pain in the assiest thing to fail. "No worries, I'll just get on the internet and downlo...fuck." No joke. Only thing worse is needing CDROM drivers. (Ahh, Windows 98!) "hmm, the cdrom comes with a CD! All I need to do is get a shotgun, drive to Taiwan..."

But what's baffling is that my boss understood that the internet wouldn't work without a network card. The plan was for me to email her one to download to her flash drive, to use the next day. And she saved the link.

[lisarea]

Whenever anyone talks about people saying stupid things, I get VERY DEFENSIVE and assume that if you're not already talking about me, someone's going to bring me up eventually.

OK. So sometimes, there's just stuff you've never thought about before, or common knowledge things you've managed to miss entirely. My brother had a friend who made it to adulthood without ever hearing of the Three Stooges. I was in my 20s, I think, when some people started talking about tarps, and I was like, WHAT THE FUCK IS A 'TARP,' ASSHOLES?

Or sometimes, yeah, you've just never thought about something, and you might say something really stupid about that thing if you're not careful.

So, you know, what if you just never thought much about turkeys and the fact that they are, in fact, birds? Like you would know if you thought about it, and you'd probably never TYPE such a thing, but maybe you'd blurt it out before you could stop yourself.

Also, while it wouldn't apply in this case, sometimes people have areas in which they are just not innately intelligent. I used to be kind of embarassed about these until recently, when my bebe brother mentioned that he has the same kinds of stupid. They are:

I don't know left from right, and have to stop and think about it. So, for example, if I'm not wearing my watch (which I have memorized is on my LEFT), I have to do pantomime writing to see which hand I use (RIGHT). And if I'm walking along and a bicyclist comes up behind and yells "ON YOUR LEFT!" I don't move to the side, because if I try to on such short notice, I have a 50% chance of jumping in front of them.

Also, I cannot follow visual information easily. So signs and stuff made for children and people who cannot read a given language: I do not understand those. I have to consciously translate the picture into words. So you know that children's comic strip Tiger? I never could understand half of those.

And know why I hate the show Heroes super hard? Because I watched several episodes of it before I realized that that white guy with the dark hair was actually three different characters played by three different white guys with dark hair, and I was really confused until I saw some scene with them all together, and then I just got mad.

So yeah. This is because I am stupid. But those specific instances of stupid I share with my brother, Dr. Stupid the Scientist!

And also not directly applicable to the OP, but some people mix up words randomly. Like say, if someone said they didn't know turkeys laid eggs, because they were getting the word 'turkey' mixed up with the word 'chipmunk.' Or, you know, hypothetically, if some poor hapless person got the words for 'Vermont' and 'Oregon' mixed up a lot for no discernable reason, and would thus sometimes think that other people were saying wrong things about the wrong oceans and local cultures. But hypothetically, that person would probably eventually know to keep her mouth shut for a minute and sort things out before saying anything about Oregon or Vermont.

[wei yau]

I have the left/right kinda stupid, too.

I have to make an "L" with my thumb and forefinger to remind me.

[Ensign Steve]

I count on my fingers when I add and subtract.

[LadyShea]

Even kiddo knows how to make the L with his thumb and forefinger. Did nobody ever teach you that trick lisarea?

I suck at directions. Since leaving Colorado, where I had the mountains to guide me, I can't tell you if I am facing N, S, E, or W unless I imagine standing on a big map of the US and only then if I have a landmark in sight, like the ocean.

[mickthinks]

Yeah what liserea said. Ignorance, even when it's surprising, is not the same as stupidity.

Surprisingly, lots of people seem not to know that...

[Ari]

I occasionally get Left - Right mixed up, so I do the Thumb finger L in my head.
I also get blue and green mixed up and recently its been happening with purple and red as well.

But I never say stupid things. :D

[The Lone Ranger]

Did they say what their original ideas on those items were?

Not that I recall. In the case of Pine Cones, I was teaching an Introductory Biology class and when we got to the subject of Gymnosperms, I brought in some pine cones, to illustrate the differences between male cones and female cones. A student blurted out that he'd always wondered what those things were, and where they came from. (This was in North Carolina, where Pine Trees are a dime a dozen.)

In a different Introductory Biology class, I made mention of Salmon when talking about Osteichthyians (Bony Fishes) and showed a picture of one. A student expressed his surprise at learning that a salmon is a fish, and he seemed to have been completely serious. And this was in Washington State, no less.


In both cases, I discovered, the students in question were city kids who had spent little or no time in the outdoors. Apparently, it had never occured to the first one to wonder what pine cones were or where they came from. Somehow, the second one had managed to grow up in Washington without ever going fishing or otherwise encountering salmon in any form other than processed meat.


There's a big difference between ignorance and stupidity, as lisarea notes. These kids were shockingly-ignorant of things that seem to most of us as if they should have been common knowledge, but neither of them was stupid, so far as I could tell.

Cheers,

Michael

[Adam]

I used to have the East-West thing down when I was a kid, but at some point after becoming an adult I forgot it, and now I have to stop and think about it every time.

[chunksmediocrites]

If I turn twice I really have no idea what direction I'm going, and figuring out compass points takes me a while and a lot of thinking. I'm like a rat in that I have little trails to get from point a to point b and don't have a larger map, unless I've gone that other way enough times to memorize it.

I guess that's basically the internet and computer use for me too.

[godfry n. glad]

Even kiddo knows how to make the L with his thumb and forefinger. Did nobody ever teach you that trick lisarea?

Nobody ever taught me and I don't know what you are talking about.

I can make the L with thumb and forefinger on each hand. I'm curious as to how that helps one remember directions?

I'm amused when somebody gives me directions and they say something equivalent to, "As you are going down Main, turn right on 14th and go four blocks. It's on the right." I have to stop and ask which direction I need to be going on Main to be sure that I wind up where I need to be. It confuses them, because many people don't stop to think that a right turn from one direction is a left turn from the opposite direction and a person could be going either direction on the main road of which they need to turn right off.

When I suggest that they use "west on Main and turn north on 14th", where even the initial "west" would be enormously helpful, garners resistance and gets responses like, "Just follow the directions I gave you."

[LadyShea]

If you put your hands in front of you, palms out, with thumb and forefinger extended the left hand makes a correct L, the right hand will be backwards.

[freemonkey]

I have the left/right thing, too.


Somehow, the second one had managed to grow up in Washington without ever going fishing or otherwise encountering salmon in any form other than processed meat.

Eastern or western Washington, I wonder. I don't see how anyone could ever not know something about salmon if they spent any time in western Washington.

[Garnet]

The thumb and forefinger L thing doesn't work if you have trouble telling which direction the L should be. The proper direction for the L doesn't dawn on me from looking at my hands forming the letter.

However, my wedding ring on my left hand does the trick.

[The Lone Ranger]

If I turn twice I really have no idea what direction I'm going, and figuring out compass points takes me a while and a lot of thinking. I'm like a rat in that I have little trails to get from point a to point b and don't have a larger map, unless I've gone that other way enough times to memorize it.

I guess that's basically the internet and computer use for me too.

I'm fortunate in that I seem to have an excellent map and directional sense. As such, I never get lost. I can look at a map, figure out the direction I need to go and the general route, and then drive to a place I've never-before been, even if it's dozens or even hundreds of miles away. Heck, I drove from Washington State to Pennsylvania without once consulting a map during the trip -- until I got to within 10 miles of my final destination, that is, and needed to know the precise location of my destination, relative to where I was.

My friends in college used to love that. They'd sometimes ask me to come along with them when they went to the mall, because I could always take them right back to their car when they were ready to leave -- no roaming around the parking areas, looking for the car.

But by the same token, I simply can't give directions. That's because I tend to think along the lines of: "Drive thataway until you reach your destination."

Cheers,

Michael

[lisarea]

To be honest, though, some of my dumbs aren't ignorance, but more like some kind of aphasia or something. I am ignorant about sports, for example. because I do not care about it. But I know the difference between Oregon and Vermont. I just have to think about it for a second.

Or hey. This one's even more illustrative. I can't remember Medicaid/Medicare. I have to look it up every single time. And I have worked on several big projects that involved the need based one, whichever one that is. I designed a database that consisted in large part of Mediwhatever related data, and looked at the name of it written on pieces of paper and sitting on my desktop at least peripherally for several hours a day for probably a couple of months or so. I probably typed that name a thousand times. So I am or at least was probably more familiar with the details of that than most people. I just don't remember what it's called.

I suspect that maybe my word confusion is some kind of weird localized brain damage or something; but my visual translation issues are probably more generalized stupids. I lack basic abilities to translate visual cues into concrete information. It's not really ignorance, because I've tried. I'm just slow.

I suspect that everyone has their own little localized stupids, though, where they have difficulty processing certain types of information no matter how hard they try.

[Goliath]

I have no problem with left/right, but I am very directionally challenged. I've been in Kansas City for almost a year, now, and my mental map of the city is very, very small. And although I instinctively know that, when facing North, West is to the left and East is to the right, I am hopeless at determining which way I'm facing at any given moment (unless it's a) during the day, b) the sun is shining, and c) I know (at least roughly) what time it is). I don't think I'd ever want to drive a car without a compass--or, for that matter, a GPS unit--again.

I also have a huge ignorance of sports, but, like lisarea, that's more selective than anything else. For example, there are two major teams in Kansas City, one is called The Royals, and....I don't even remember the name of the other one. Anyways, I never reamember which one is the baseball team and which is the football team (and is there a basketball team? I don't think so, but I'm not sure...). When given a team name, I've probably heard of the name, but my odds of knowing which sport that team plays is probably somewhere around 50%.

[godfry n. glad]

If you put your hands in front of you, palms out, with thumb and forefinger extended the left hand makes a correct L, the right hand will be backwards.

That 'palms' instruction is critical...otherwise, I could do the 'L' the other way 'round....i.e., hold your hands out in front of you, palms towards yourself ('in'), and make the 'L', and you'll find the 'correctly formed L', in that position, is the RIGHT HAND.

This is just like the driving instructions I elucidated. The initial position is critical, and must be explicitly clear to the user, for the subsequent instructions to be useful.

[Naru]

I only started driving a few months ago (I'm 21), and thus, I do not know where anything is in my hometown. I can get to my job, my college, like two people's houses, and downtown from my house, but that's about it. And it took many tries for me to learn that much.

I am not nearly as useless in most other areas, but I have no sense of direction and can't find anything without a lot of effort.

[Garnet]

I have no sense of direction. None. I can look at the sun going down and my brain will holler, "North!"

Left and right aren't really problems for me, though. What is a problem is the way that certain numbers and letters are supposed to face. That's why making an L with my thumb and forefinger never worked for me.

I can't do kitchen math. (I know I just made Goliath cringe, again.)

Having said all that, I'm reasonably intelligent and I say and do stupid shit all the time. One example of that on this board was that I was successfully trolled by Jerome the Gnome. :stupidme:

Here's another stupid attack. I was once asked what the oldest state on the east coast is and without thinking, I answered New England. :duh:

I have cursed loudly, pounded on a keyboard and frantically wiggled a mouse trying to get that damned blank screen saver to go off and then realized that I had actually turned the computer off. :dopey:

I know I've explained the Circle Dance. * Garnet points to sig

I think that's enough, for now. I'm an endless fountain of stupid. :dumb:

[Demimonde]

I am Kilgore Trout. At least in the sense that I am able to have had conversations with a person, even life changing awesome intellectual conversations, and never remember that I ever met them, much less their name. Unless they are an albino midget.

[maddog]

I can't do left and right, I can't read music, I can't tell which direction mirrors go, and I can't tell analog time.

#2224

[Qingdai]

I think I might be Kilgore Trout too. I know about half of Portland, but damn if I can remember their names or why.

I have a decent sense of direction and can give directions in compass points while referencing extinct landmarks (you go north of where the Paramount used to be...)

[BracesForImpact]

Ugh, don't get me started on directions. I have a mental map learning disability that makes directions, patterns and puzzles anathema to me. I am the king of Mapquest and the day that came out was one of the better days of my life. I have no concept of compass directions unless I can see the sun, and my phone GPS is my best friend.

I can use landmarks to help me, but if I approach those landmarks from a different location so that the view is different from what I'm used to, I will easily be completely lost. I can get from point A to point B, and I can get from point A to point C, but if I need to get from point B to C I simply have to use a map, a GPS, or mapquest the route. That is, unless I've completely memorized the entire area that encompasses all three points, and even then there's no guarantees.

Puzzles that young children can quickly figure out can stump me for hours. A Rubik's cube can just about send me into epileptic fits. Word puzzles are fine, as is Tetris or Plane Geometry for some reason. It's a very weird disability. I was tested for it as an adolescent and I'm not even sure there's a name for it. It makes life difficult at times and can appear to make you look pretty stupid to others. It screws with IQ tests for me too since number patterns are a large part of the test. I always wondered what would happen if I took one that somehow took my disability into account.

[Watser?]

I can't remember any telephone numbers. At all. Some people get offended, like girlfriends or family members, but I can't help it. Although nowadays of course my phone remembers. It is just embarrassing if they ask for mine and I don't know.
Also Birthdays, another thing people might take offense over.
Numbers in general, really.

[BracesForImpact]

:yeahthat: :yeahthat:

[Ymir's blood]

I have a very hard time remembering names even when I remember the person. Mostly it only affects me after first meeting them, since the second time of finding out their name, I make a point of sticking it in my mind. Still, there are times when I can't remember the name of someone I've known for years.

[Legs]

One time I was talking about birthday/holiday plans and Widget asked me when HorseGirl's birthday was... okay not so bad because sometimes people forget dates, but they both have the same birthday. :giggles:

[freemonkey]

Yesterday I took my car for an oil change. When I got in my car to leave I found that the guy had pulled the hand brake way up high and I couldn't push the button in to release it. I had to go back into the shop to ask for help. The guy behind the counter asked, "did you pull it up while pushing the button? That is usually how they work."

I don't think I ever knew that. I have never pulled the lever up that high before (which is probably another stupid?) and so I never had trouble releasing it.

[Watser?]

Oh, another stoopid thing I frequently do: walk into a room and totally forget what I came there to do. Although that is more of a matter of getting distracted than stupid.

[Crumb]

Although that is more of a matter of getting distracted old than stupid.
:fixed:

[Watser?]

:hmph:

I have done that all my life. It is actually a sign of a superior intellect which can't be bothered with mundane things :ptht:

[Crumb]

:sly:

[Ex-zombie]

I have cursed loudly, pounded on a keyboard and frantically wiggled a mouse trying to get that damned blank screen saver to go off and then realized that I had actually turned the computer off. :dopey:



I have never done anything that silly! :blush:

[ceptimus]

I remember the Left/Right thing by imagining I'm driving a car or riding a bike on the roads.

This works well enough until I'm abroad and taking or giving directions. I tend to associate 'right' with the turn that means crossing oncoming traffic (we drive on the left in the UK) so when I'm on the roads in other countries I get my directions completely backwards unless I stop and think about them.

[maddog]

Directions, hmmm, yes. Where I grew up, the mountains were to the north. So wherever I am, if there is a range of hills/mountains, that is "north." And, because "north" is at the top of the map, there is no way for a stream to flow north, because water does not flow uphill.

#2231