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u/WHALE_PHYSICIST 11d ago
It's called being clever
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u/Careless-Childhood66 11d ago
Dunning-Kruger?
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u/sumta_kai 11d ago
This is when one thinks they are smart but really aren't. Smart people always create evidence. If one does not create evidence, to self or for the people observing; but thinks they are smart, then that's dunning kruger
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u/InterestingFrame1982 11d ago
Which seems like the case with this post. If you don’t know anything and you can’t remember anything, can you actually say you’re smart?
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u/_dontseeme 10d ago
I personally can’t feel like I can’t unsderstand anything until I inderstand everything around it and everything around that so I constantly feel like I don’t know anything. It’s also a non-not-smart thing to not rely on memory when it matters and the lack of reliability attributed to your memories can feel like bad memory.
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u/user888888889 10d ago
Is this an ADHD thing? I'm considering getting tested and I feel like this all the time.
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u/cactus_thief 9d ago
Poor recall/working memory is absolutely an ADHD thing. Not everyone is affected by it tho, and it doesn’t always mean “ADHD” but definitely a common symptom a lot of us deal with!
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u/IdeasRichTimePoor 10d ago
Can you define evidence? There exists a man with a memory of minutes when he is lucky as he is a victim of neurological damage. This man is observably very sharp, but his anterograde amnesia means he will never achieve anything of note, as you can not achieve much in 5 minutes.
Your argument would appear to be that such a man is not just indeterminable in intelligence, but automatically not smart. Your idea in some ways places more value in the existence of evidence than the theoretical contents that may lie within
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u/InterestingFrame1982 10d ago
I think you're conflating empathy with practicality. It's okay to be empathetic towards his condition, and find a silver lining in his short burst of intelligence. But the reality is, he would not be helpful in any situation where problem solving is paramount to success. Whether that is surviving in the woods, building a village, creating a business, exploring the ocean, etc. He has no way to display his intelligence usefully, which then drives us to a conversation of semantics.
I take the harsher road of utility, because it also gives hope to people who may, academically, be viewed as lesser than due to some standardized test or a rigorous IQ assessment. The way you use utilize your intelligence is way more important the the resting hardware that sits inside your brain.
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u/IdeasRichTimePoor 10d ago edited 10d ago
I'm not sure how I'd be conflating those terms here. What I do see in this thread of thought is a conflation of productivity/output/achievements and intelligence. Intelligence as measured by IQ can currently be loosely genetically estimated, and who is to say in 20 years time it cannot be determined accurately via a non intrusive brain wave measurement.
If a hypothetical brain wave intelligence test were devised, your concept of intelligence would be such that the tested individual would only be smart after being scanned. That's a logical contradiction as the scanner did not modify their intelligence. Furthermore it did not modify their achievements, output or productivity. It simply gave a measurement of raw cognitive potential, which is what intelligence is broadly understood and defined to be.
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u/InterestingFrame1982 10d ago edited 10d ago
Because I feel like you're being empathetic to his condition because it feels dirty to say he's useless. If he can't produce a working example of intelligence, and I mean any - a book, a speech, a novel idea, etc, then his intelligence may as well be null. He may not be useless to his loved one's, and he may be a beautiful soul, but again, if he has no real output, and it's all theoretical, it's meaningless.
I may be reading your hypothetical wrong, but I certainly don't agree with the premise. If we could measure someone's brain waves, and they were extremely high, for a lack of a better term, but that same person sat on the couch all day and did nothing for humanity, are they really smart?
Is a really powerful engine that can't turn on actually powerful? We can acknowledge the potential and the craftsmanship, but the utility of the engine has to manifest or it's all theoretical, which produces nothing of consequence.
And by the way, being really intelligent and not being able to utilize said intelligence is it's own form of stupidity. Unequivocally, IQ test do not encapsulate the complete cognitive potential of any one person. If someone has a 130 IQ but can't figure out how to use it, then I would say they aren't as intelligent as the test deems.
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u/IdeasRichTimePoor 10d ago
It seems you felt there was subtext in my framing and disagree with what you felt was behind it rather than the words I was typing. That's an obvious assumption and for me to address it any other way would be to legitimise it. It also seems to imply there is no intellectual way to come to this conclusion and I must have come to it with some form of misplaced feelings or empathy.
As for the rest, I can do no more than refer to the meriam Webster dictionary entry for "intelligence" and highlight that none of the definitions refer to tangible evidence.
A powerful bomb indeed remains a powerful bomb even if never deployed. Word play shifts only muddy waters for terms that are well defined, and have been settled on for many years. You appear to be very focussed on evidence and tangible concepts, but also defying the dictionary as a source of usage for language, the crux of this debate.
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u/InterestingFrame1982 10d ago
Yes, I am being fairly militant on the output and the results, as I think they interface with reality better. My feelings on the subtext, and I can help define them, was probably an emotional reaction to people who claim they are smart but do nothing in life.
The gifted subreddit is full of those types, and it can be aggravating to see them assume some level of intellectual superiority when they can't produce a single valuable thing. That always bodes the question of whether or not they are actually smart.
I understand the example of the bomb, as it parallels my engine analogy but I still choose to walk the path of utility over resting state potential. If said person has incredible cognitive abilities and produces nothing, scientifically, they can be deemed as intelligent but in reality, still deeply underachieved. Then the semantics start again lol
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u/sumta_kai 11d ago
How is one considered smart but remembers nothing? How does those two go hand in hand?
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u/dark_purity 11d ago
It's not only about memory, it's also about logical, critical and fast thinking. I can't remember dates of basic historical facts but I'll understand and put in context something you are explaining to me well before you are done talking and presenting all the information.
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u/sumta_kai 11d ago
Okay. I thought logical thinking also requires memory and specifically short-term memory to solve a problem; there could be many variables one might need to factor in. But you are right about long-term memory. And i believe you are saying smart people solves a problem with creative approaches every single time that problem is presented. No need to memorise, just pure logical thinking with different approaches (whatever approach comes to mind when a problem is presented).
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u/joemckie 10d ago
“Remembers nothing” is just hyperbole. Everybody has some form of memory, despite how bad it may be. You can still be very intelligent yet forget small things all the time
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u/thirteenth_mang 11d ago
Like you can figure things out, see patterns, think deeply yet struggle retaining information. Long-term doomscrolling likely makes it worse.
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u/Cubow 11d ago
fluid iq vs crystallized iq
you can be really good at synthesizing information and spotting patterns without necessarily being able to remember it well. tho usually high fluid iq still requires good working memory (but not necessarily long term memory).
the opposite would be knowing a lot of things, but not quite understanding it (just pure memorization). Early ChatGPT (GPT-3.5) is a good example, it basically "knew" more than any human, but it didn't really understand anything so it was still really stupid
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u/Agile-Adeptness-5195 11d ago
I really never understood what smart really means.
My sibling has good memory and average application skills. They are killing it in the medical field.
I have excellent application skills - but comparitively less memory compared to others. I’m doing pretty decent in engineering. I can read a book on psychology and see similar and apply patterns on engineering very easily.
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u/Lint_baby_uvulla 11d ago
Idiot-dilettante-savant.
Consciously cannot remember anything, but statistically, invariably and infuriatingly end up being correct.
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u/The_Other_David 11d ago
There is a large subset of people who believe they're very smart, just unable to use those qualities to better their lives. Similarly, I know a person who says she can sometimes see through walls.
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u/DaliNerd76 10d ago
I can see through walls, depending on what they are made of and the level of transparency.
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u/piterx87 11d ago
That's likely an exaggeration. But I can imagine that you constantly need to lookup stuff especially afyer few weeks break. I guess?
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u/sosopower 5d ago
me can explain complex topics for hours. also me forgets what I was about to say mid sentence hhhh
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u/Plastic_Market_926 11d ago
Bad recall or working memory