CyclopsSummers wrote:
Pobbles wrote:
Yes, but as I'm not the sharpest stick in the bunch I feel it appropriate to question the intelligence of those who would label me 'smart'.
I think it's my response that intimidates.
I'm much the same way. It's not so much that I'm 'smarter', as it is that there's a disconnect of interests between me and most people I meet- and those interests all happen to have something of an 'intellectual' label. Couple this with my already standoff-ish attitude, and people are not all that keen to sit with me during the lunch breaks. I'd love to chat with some of them, but the interests just don't match. I also prefer to use a rather formal register of speech.
It does usually spark the 'what exactly is intelligence, anyway?" conversation. Others label me as smart because I'm perceived to have excellent general knowledge and usually a larger vocabulary than most of the people I speak to. I point out that my computer has a dictionary and a file browser that makes the speed and quality of my recollection look very primitive in comparison, yet nobody thinks my laptop is intelligent.
If I were genuinely intelligent, I'd be drawing conclusions from the things that I have learned and solving real problems, like cancer, or astronomical puzzles.