Everybody is at least somewhat irrational; unfortunately the majority are also pretty stupid too. (Unless you are using stupid to mean retarded, ie IQ < 70) Most people generally seem to class stupid as anything more than about 30 IQ points below theirs.
I don’t think that stupidity as >30 IQ points below one’s own is entirely correct. I definitely have many grades of stupidity with which I categorize people. For example, earlier this year, I was placed in a regular (as opposed to AP) government class. Now the average IQ in that room was about 110, so in truth, there weren’t very many truly stupid people. However, I classified most of the people in that room as stupid by your definition. I joked to my friends that there were 3 intelligent people in that class: me, the teacher, and the TA. However, there were also ~5 people who were actually stupid. There was one guy who couldn’t read the textbook, he had to be told what every fifth word was. He had a 4th (maybe?) grade reading level. So while I kid myself that those other kids are stupid, there are people who really are stupid.
There are also several other classes of stupidity. There’s small child stupidity—they’re dumb, but I don’t hold it against them. There’s just a little bit stupider than me stupidity—we get along fine, but I won’t bring up our relative SAT scores. Then there’s (for when I was younger especially) adult stupidity—these people who are given authority over me, who sometimes are charged with teaching me, are less intelligent than me.
Then, of course, we get into the stupidities of insanity and lack of cached thought. I look down on religious folk, regardless of IQ. Also, perfectly sane and intelligent people can be difficult to deal with, as they haven’t been exposed to the knowledge you have. This comes up when making metaphors and allusion mostly.
Everybody is at least somewhat irrational; unfortunately the majority are also pretty stupid too. (Unless you are using stupid to mean retarded, ie IQ < 70) Most people generally seem to class stupid as anything more than about 30 IQ points below theirs.
I don’t think that stupidity as >30 IQ points below one’s own is entirely correct. I definitely have many grades of stupidity with which I categorize people. For example, earlier this year, I was placed in a regular (as opposed to AP) government class. Now the average IQ in that room was about 110, so in truth, there weren’t very many truly stupid people. However, I classified most of the people in that room as stupid by your definition. I joked to my friends that there were 3 intelligent people in that class: me, the teacher, and the TA. However, there were also ~5 people who were actually stupid. There was one guy who couldn’t read the textbook, he had to be told what every fifth word was. He had a 4th (maybe?) grade reading level. So while I kid myself that those other kids are stupid, there are people who really are stupid.
There are also several other classes of stupidity. There’s small child stupidity—they’re dumb, but I don’t hold it against them. There’s just a little bit stupider than me stupidity—we get along fine, but I won’t bring up our relative SAT scores. Then there’s (for when I was younger especially) adult stupidity—these people who are given authority over me, who sometimes are charged with teaching me, are less intelligent than me.
Then, of course, we get into the stupidities of insanity and lack of cached thought. I look down on religious folk, regardless of IQ. Also, perfectly sane and intelligent people can be difficult to deal with, as they haven’t been exposed to the knowledge you have. This comes up when making metaphors and allusion mostly.
I hadn’t thought about it that way but that 30 figure seems about right!