Have you ever punched above your weight intellectually? Any interesting stories?

[noname223]

When I met that quantum scientist in this clinic I clearly punched above my weight. I got him on one thinking fallacy and I did not reveal to him that I am aware of inter-subjectivity. But the sole fact he thought I would not know about that showed that he considered me pretty pathetic intellectually.

Due to my autistic quirks and being severely bullied for being stupid at school I have developed this obsession about being seen as smart. I feel like a fucking fraud. I am an impostor with the impostor syndrome.

I try to educate myself but I think it is useless. I am like slug preparing for a marathon. And I am doomed to strive for intelligence and education till the end of my life. It is pretty empty, shallow and pathetic. I think I am pretty deep, eloquent and thoughtful but nothing more. In the end I am a faker. I would like to isolate myself from scrutiny in certain instances. The people in my self-help group have fallen for it and many of them consider me really smart. I think because I am quite self-aware. But in seminars I am just not good enough. I want to be exceptional but I am simply not. And it is obvious for anyone with eyes. Okay I am good at deceiving some but not the ones who matter.

Has anyone stories about such situations?

Edit: I feel like an equivalent to chatGPT I sound really smart but actually I don't know shit.

 

[pyx]

When I met that quantum scientist in this clinic I clearly punched above my weight. I got him on one thinking fallacy and I did not reveal to him that I am aware of inter-subjectivity. But the sole fact he thought I would not know about that showed that he considered me pretty pathetic intellectually.

Due to my autistic quirks and being severely bullied for being stupid at school I have developed this obsession about being seen as smart. I feel like a fucking fraud. I am an impostor with the impostor syndrome.

I try to educate myself but I think it is useless. I am like slug preparing for a marathon. And I am doomed to strive for intelligence and education till the end of my life. It is pretty empty, shallow and pathetic. I think I am pretty deep, eloquent and thoughtful but nothing more. In the end I am a faker. I would like to isolate myself from scrutiny in certain instances. The people in my self-help group have fallen for it and many of them consider me really smart. I think because I am quite self-aware. But in seminars I am just not good enough. I want to be exceptional but I am simply not. And it is obvious for anyone with eyes. Okay I am good at deceiving some but not the ones who matter.

Has anyone stories about such situations?

i feel the exact same way. i developed empty eloquence after striving to improve my education after highschool by any means necessary. i was also bullied for being deemed unintelligent, which in fact i was. i know nothing

one of my friend's knows a guy who is very intelligent. he was very curious intellectually and seemed to have a very thorough understanding of mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology, computer science, etc. i remember when i was with a friend of mine who was trying to explain the correct procedure for getting rid of alcohol in your body. he was explaining it in a very convoluted way which i could not understand. the guy i mentioned not only understood his convoluted explanation perfectly, but showed his thought process in a very articulate manner. it was like you understood that he reformulated the problem in his mind very quickly in the spur of the moment, and was thus able to extricate meaning from what seemed to me word salad. no matter how hard i try to articulate my thoughts in a clear manner, there is a limit to how quickly our thought processes can operate. he was naturally a very good problem solver with a wide array of interests.
i tried discussing philosophy with him one night when we were drunk. i was clearly punching above my weight. he had very rational arguments that used a lot of his knowledge of computer science to make a very compelling case. in the end i don't think i conveyed myself very well, and probably misunderstood his argument, even if initially i thought it to be wrong. but aside from that i haven't had many interactions from more intelligent people, as i don't attend university myself. it would be nice to have a point of reference for where i stand intellectually, but the fact is that i'd probably end up being considered inadequate by many people there.

 

[Dr Iron Arc]

Almost everybody I've ever interacted with is smarter than me so I don't see this as such a special occasion when it happens.

 

[DarkRange55]

Hmm…

 

[Forever Sleep]

You probably wouldn't call in intellectual because my field is creative... But yes, I've performed dismally in skills tests in the past and (understandably,) haven't got the job as a result.

 

[DarkRange55]

Yes, but I'm not sure if those stories draw any intrigue here…

 

[noname223]

Yes, but I'm not sure if those stories draw any intrigue here…

I would be curious about it.

 

[noname223]

Yes, but I'm not sure if those stories draw any intrigue here…

I would be pretty interested in that story. If its too private you can PM me about it.

 

[Lady Laudanum]

I'm a blue collar worker, dropped out from university, and came from a fucked up situation at home. I have tattoos and piercings, and I hang out with bikers, gangsters, etc. People in my age range who had a sheltered upbringing and now have cushy jobs sometimes see me as stupid or beneath them. It doesn't bother me though. I let people think what they think because I have nothing to prove to them.

I have a couple of examples. There was once when someone who was in medical school had a disagreement with me about interactions between alcohol and a certain drug, after someone at a party overdosed and we had to call an ambulance. I don't work in healthcare but I still have a valid EMT license, and I still remember what I learned during training. Sometimes people try to talk to me like I'm 5 years old when it comes to certain subjects that they think I don't know about. Sometimes they're right that I don't know about the subject, but assuming that I'm dumb is uncalled for.

Frankly, I don't have the time and energy to prove that I'm "not stupid," because if I was "actually stupid" then I wouldn't have been able to become financially secure and have my life mostly in order, with all the odds stacked against me. They don't know me and they don't know how much fucked up shit I had to deal with, so their opinions don't get to affect me.

 

[DarkRange55]

I would be pretty interested in that story. If its too private you can PM me about it.

Haha you're such a gentlemen

I thought I had faded into obscurity around here because sserafim seems to consider me dead

 

[derpyderpins]

I'll give an observation to contribute to the thread. I was in a highly-ranked STEM program and a highly-ranked law school. LOTS of people in STEM just seemed to be above me in terms of intellect, and I loved it. Lawyers, to me, tend to be really good at being productive but not nearly as impressive with their processing.

I also have to give my standard line: don't underestimate people, though. Plenty of "uneducated" people have a lot to contribute intellectually.

Haha you're such a gentlemen

I thought I had faded into obscurity around here because sserafim seems to consider me dead

lol I wish I could comment so bad.

 

[DarkRange55]

I will add this -

Don't look down on people for whatever job they do. Honestly I hate it when people do that. When they infer intelligence or knowledge into one subject because no matter how smart you think you are there's somebody doing some menial labor task somewhere thats more intelligent than you are somewhere in the world. It is what it is. I mean when you have a highly complicated job like you're an astrophysicist, yes, I can infer your intelligence from that. Or you're the best neurosurgeon, I can infer the raw horsepower underneath your brain. And I can guess it when I'm speaking to you but I honestly don't know. Because I've met some people that are not that good with their oration but they're very intelligent people. But a lot of times you can infer by the way they speak. But it's like there's just this elitist credentialism that, "I do this so I must be smarter. I'm a vaccine scientist so I have to be way smarter than a plumber." And its like yeah but you might not be. See thats the thing.

One of the smartest people I know is a building mechanic. He has two degrees in computer science and biochemistry and has had countless different jobs. He's basically a genius, but his dad was a genius savant plumber actually…

I would be pretty interested in that story. If its too private you can PM me about it.

Honestly, I can probably think of quite a few examples just off the top of my head. I'm sure I mentioned this a million times before, but I definitely consider my mentor to be decades ahead of me.

There definitely is a couple stories that really come to mind a very specific instances. Maybe I will actually post those I…

For the other thing, I honestly don't know what happened . I think that during my hiatus she may have lost interest in talking to me, which is totally fine. I suppose that's just the nature of life. But just seems kind of odd since we're both still on here but whatever I don't think too much about it, just wanted to make a joke



… do you think she's reading this?

 

[DarkRange55]

Dunning–Kruger effect - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org