To wonder why so many people are so inexplicably stupid?

[fanjofarrow]

I saw a comment by someone in another thread that said ''People don't think that a bank cashier is a banker, do they?'' and it has set me off on a Major League Rant (not aimed at the person who wrote that, but at people who DO think exactly that.)

My fella used to be a cashier at a bank for years before he got promoted. EVERY SINGLE DAY, without fail, he'd get moronic customers moaning at him for being a ''banker on a massive bonus''. He was a cashier on minimum wage, and even the bank managers didn't get the ridiculous sort of bonuses these imbeciles were on about.

I asked around and it seems that cashiers at various banks get this crap all the time.

What sort of moron really believes that a bank cashier is a millionaire banker? Why are so many people so dim?

...AND BREATHE!

Add message | Report | Message poster maleview70 Sat 16-Nov-13 19:08:27
Some people are just thick and there is not a lot that can be done for them!

To be serious for a moment, I think that is an awful attitude.

I come from a background where we didn't have books in the house, nobody read a newspaper other than the Sun, we never watched the news etc. Thank God I had teachers who thought that philo make act a bit thick but we can do something for her.

May not make

I have done well academically , I don't think that makes me intellectual. it just means I am good at remembering facts and I understand marking criteria.

I think there's a difference between 'thick' (don't much care for that word tbh) and ignorant.

I have more of a problem with people who are ignorant because they choose to be.

I think it is difficult to distinguish between those who are ignorant because they choose to be and those who have been given little opportunity to be any different.

I have a dear friend, not thick at all, but given to malapropisms. She visited a mutual friend in the hospital and asked him had they scheduled his autopsy yet. Stunned silence, then, "that would be angioplasty," he replied.

Oh I grew up the same. My gran was idiotic enough to think that black athletes (including people like Carl Lewis) ran fast because they had to run from lions in the jungle (her exact words). Even at that age of 8 I thought she was batshit crazy.

I grew up in the library. Thank god for those, otherwise I would have grown up completely ignorant.

I agree ohsodoff, I spent every moment that I could in the library as a teen.

I read a figure yesterday which said that 27% of Scots had never passed an examination or had any qualification of any kind. Not sure how that transpires around the UK as a whole, but it does seem somewhat disappointing in a country which has had for such a long time a good standard of free education for all.

Damn, have just had to Google Scunthorpe! Didn't have a clue where it was - not exactly sure why I should have actually

I think not being ignorant would include a desire to learn. Not everyone can know everything.

I really hate the word thick.

I think the big difference between people is not their IQ or their education, it is whether or not they have any intellectual curiousity. Anyone, no matter what their background, can be curious about the world and question and want to find things out.

Philo I don't think doing well academically makes one an ''intellectual''. I associate that phrase more with the Adrian Mole books than anything else - now, he really WAS a deluded character!

At the time of Hume Scotland was one of the most literate countries in Europe and and the centre of intellectual debate.

My best friend once said in a lecture (describing me) "she's so fucking clever but doesn't have an ounce of common sense"
Yep, that's me

I agree Pippil and what I love about the internet is that in this country it has provided a library for us all in the palm of our hands. So those that are curious and fulfill that desire for knowledge.

I don't even think that academic qualification are about intelligence. I am fairly average but have some quite impressive academic qualifications. I just worked hard at university and schools, have a good memory and the foresight to look up marking criteria before I do anything.

She visited a mutual friend in the hospital and asked him had they scheduled his autopsy yet. Stunned silence, then, "that would be angioplasty," he replied.

The people who I think are genuinely desperately thick are the ones who set fire to ambulances which visit their estate in an emergency, or who fire air guns at postmen, or who threaten the MWs who are trying to care for their pregnant wives and mothers.

Simply too stupid to understand the consequences of their actions on themselves and their own community (even if they really hate officialdom),

Philo This is going off on a tangent, but I started the thread, so I'll do it anyway. checks the 'thread starter's assumption of privilege' box

To me, academic exams often a test of memory, not ability or understanding.

I used to have this argument with my mum and her friends constantly when I was regularly sitting exams, even though none had taken any for well over 30 years at the time. In my mother's case, university level exams were easy for her because she had a photographic memory so could write everything she'd learned with minimum effort. That was not a test of ability or understanding; it was a very simple case of recalling and reciting what she'd read.

I had no problems doing well in exams, but a very intelligent and hardworking friend of mine, who is far brighter than I am, did. She is one of the smartest people I've met and eventually went on to get a degree from Cambridge; she's now a senior lecturer in her subject. It took her a long time to learn to take exams without having a total meltdown.

When she and I were at school together, she used to freak out about exams. She'd get so stressed that everything she had learned would go out of the window. Exams certainly were not a test of her ability, or of how well she understood her subject.

I think as a youngster I would have argued that exams are the best way, because of my own personal experience - rather like my mum, although I didn't have her photographic memory.

Once I saw how the stress of exams people who were more capable and smarter than I was, I saw it differently. (I know you said you're not fond of exams so please don't take this as a comment aimed at you, it's just a general observation.) I thought it was really unfair that I got better marks overall than the friend I mentioned earlier, despite her superior ability. Had our courses involved more assessment by coursework, I'm sure she would have outperformed me, or at the very least done as well.

TL; DR: Academic exams, IMO, do not necessarily demonstrate one's intelligence. We all know that there are different types of intelligence anyway.

PS: Ignore the ''you're not fond of exams'' bit, that was not meant for you!

There is a difference between being intelligent and well educated. My DH is intelligent but not educated. I'm better educated but more intelligent than my education suggests. My common sense does go missing frequently though!

I thought the two main dialects in Norway were boksmal and landsmal, one being spoken mainly in the west the other in the east nynorsk being an amlgamation of the two? ( asking pippil really, as she seems to know about this stuff)And I think the national language of Nigeria is English, but I havnt googled it yet!

YY to having a curious mind. Some people just don't. Some people are real foodies and can taste different flavours really distinctly, and others have a palate that can tolerate a diet of instant mash.

I'm in the Curious Mind box. I read and retain information and I always win at Trivial Persuit. DH however is much cleverer, but crap at general stuff. He was the youngest ever director of his very "old school" City firm, despite being forrin, and yet "didn't know what noise a candle made" and so listened to it, and set fire to his hair. I'm not fully convinced he's NT to be honest but that's another thread.

As for dim though, my UK office was astonished that the Republic of Ireland had a different currency and VAT rate and thought the Dublin office was just being awkward when they explained it was a different country.
And YY to customer facing roles! One if my team sold a blood analyser to a lab in a hospital you'd have heard of. Within weeks it blew up. So we sent an engineer to go and have a look, and he discovered that one of the medics (who shouldn't have even been touching it) was trying to get it to analyse urine, not blood, and pouring urine into it freely. And then had the nerve to complain about our engineer who had apparently exploded "It's a BLOOD analyser! It works on blood! If you piss in a toaster, that will blow up too!"

And the customer (another doctor) who publicly bollocked me for sending her a bag of replacement batteries. They were the flat round watch type, to go in a stack of blood glucose machines she had. She shouted at me saying "all these batteries are positive ones! There using a single negative one in this bag! For goodness sake etc etc" until a colleague pointed out that she just needed to turn the battery over to see the opposite polarity. Stupid cow didn't apologise!

at Slatecross' DH setting fire to his hair!! :) (Hope he was not hurt...)