[Closed] Intelligent people doing unintelligent things

I saw similar things with some of my chemical engineer work colleagues - these are people who could write out complex chemical equations, work out the process of electron transfer etc but then go and [b]use a calculator to work out their Excel spreadsheet then type the number in manually[/b].

We do this - Easier to validate a calculator than it is to validate an Excel spreadsheet.

Now, if only they would make a proper scientific calculator that doesn't have 2 hidden digits we'd be laughing.

While I could call out Mrs North (PhD) for her amazing dizziness (she's blonde, which explains everything), by and large my experience of people with the least common sense also tend to be those with the least intelligence.

Viz the boy at school who looked at the lorry driving down the road, waited patiently on the pavement and then decided - at the last moment - to cross. Wham!

(He survived it and returned to school after recovery. Was still dim when he came back.)

I think a Microbiologist. 5 day trip only one pair of jeans and a t-shirt. it was very warm and he would sleep in a different t-shirt and shorts

Nedrapier: The thing was they didn't bother with the toasting of the bread first, they just put slices of bread topped with cheese in the microwave and expected it to come out toasty...it didn't 😆

People make all sorts of assumptions about things they don't specialise in, and those that specialise will often have a more noticeable discrepancy between their area and more "common sense" things.

Doesn't mean I didn't laugh a bit when my (then teenage I think) loadsa A levels, 1st class computer science degree, older brother believed my (mean) younger brother that the correct technique to launch a BMX bike off the skate ramp little bro had built was to lean really far forwards as he took off. Concrete drive too.

brooess - Member

Trust me, I work in marketing

I'll admit to a recent moment of stupidity.

Needed to drill a hole in the bike store. Step ladders were upstairs, toolbox looked the right height.

All good until rather than me drilling into the wall, physics moved the toolbox backward and I fell forwards. Dropped the drill, hurt my wrist and nearly pulled the water heater off the wall falling into it.

Quickly checked there was no blood and made the area look like I could say, "nothing happened", when the other half asked what the almighty noise was.

Pretty sure we all do it.

One of the professors here (science department, Russell Group university) once had his shoelaces tied by a technician as he'd 'forgotten how to do it'. I also watched the same professor spend ten minutes getting out of a parking space that I can comfortably get a 20ft van in and out of in one pass.
An ex-officemate (PhD in microbiology) used to have two Yakults a day as 'I know they don't do anything but if I have two then they might'.

It's fair to say that by far, the smartest people I've ever met have been through work. Some of them have exceptional amounts of real-life abilities too, but some of them I really worry about!

The drilling story reminds me of my dad (who has held down a multitude of professional positions - Engineer, teacher, social worker).

A month or two back he got bored waiting for the guy my parents had paid to fit the tap to come around (booked for the next day of something, husband of a friend or something). He decided to fit it. First step? Turn off water? Oh no. For some reason he got started on the job, then went to turn off the water once it had started pissing out everywhere. Then discovered the stopcock was broken and had to get said husband of friend out rather urgently. It's not that he doesn't realise these things need to be done, he just sort of feels like he can't be arsed so puts them off until later in the job. This is but one example.

a lad i knew at college was studying mech eng.
he knew everything mechanically to do with cars especially how a front wheel drive system worked...how the brakes,steering and suspension all worked together. he could even describe how all the various components went together and in what order.

he didnt know how to remove a wheel though

One of them burns incense in the bathroom now and again and the way he does it is to light it with one of those massive boxes of matches, and then upturn the box on end and poke the incense stuck into the 'drawer'part to hold it.
Now, to me, that goes against all the general impression of intelligence that this gentleman otherwise displays, on quite a fundamental level...

I used one of those self checkouts. I couldn't find a STFU button. So just the once: you'll understand.

Senior Engineer colleague i was sharing a house with

First day in eg west africa find the house oven broken and he wants to have cheese on toast.

- toasts the bread. Puts the cheese on the toast - decides to lay the toaster on its side and puts the toast and cheese back in.

Thanks to afro engineering when the cheese melts the toaster trips out the whole compounds generators.....

Toaster never worked agai

I'm an IT/systems geek. I helped my mum the other day by fitting a few new slabs to her patio that had cracked. I had to cut one to fit around the drainpipe. I flipped the slab, placed it in the desired place and drew the markings on, so that you couldn't see it from the top. Made my cut and flipped it over... 😳

The OP's examples aren't as stupid as you may first think.

If the matches are safety ones then it's unlikely the incense ashes will set the box alight, they need to be struck against the other corresponding chemical on the side to light so there is some logic in it.

EDIT: poly beat me as I was typing, slowly 😳

Phone notifications can be a minefield so I can see how it frustrates people. Really annoys me when I get a new phone until I get it sorted a week or two later.
As for the till tracking, what do you think ClubCard, Nectar, Match&More etc are designed to do? If they know what you buy regularly then they know what to stock and what doesn;t need o be on offer to sell.

I do agree that people tend to have either common sense or high intelligence, rarely lots of both.

To me, intelligence is something which is an indicator of an individual's ability to apply thought processes to understand and problem solve within a broad spectrum of topics and activities. The assumption that engineers must be intelligent because they are able to apply knowledge to a task, is perhaps misguided. They may be able to do that simply because they've been trained to do so, within a relatively narrow framework. If they cannot apply their innate 'intelligence' to other tasks and concepts, including those which fall well outside of their normal sphere of thought and activity, then they possibly aren't particularly 'intelligent'. I've met plenty of people who excel in their particular field, but who aren't what I'd call particularly intelligent, because they lack the ability to act beyond their narrow remit of skill.

Does anybody remember the TV show Married With Children ? They tried to get Kelly through her exams, but in order to get the info in her head they had to sacrifice some other non-critical pieces of information. Like recognising the sound of the doorbell.

That is how some smart people operate !

[i]I've met plenty of people who excel in their particular field, but who aren't what I'd call particularly intelligent, because they lack the ability to act beyond their narrow remit of skill. [/i]

+1

And also properly chin myself by trying to remove a 6ft length of 3"x2" that was nailed to some plyboard by standing on the plyboard and lifting the 3x2 off in the direction of my glass jaw. When it went, it went.

Can we explore this phenomenon further. Specifically - whenever i'm doing something like this I always have a moment of clarity in which i realise how this is going to pan out, but that moment either comes just too late to prevent it happening or even worse - you just carry on and let it happen anyway.

Most recently trimming a small piece of plastic off a pipe to make it a good fit to the next piece, using a stanley. And spotting that having run the knife around the pipe, if it went through now then I was cutting towards and not away from my fingers. And then thinking 'well, i've got this far and it hasn't gone wrong......'

My dad is a dentist, spends all day poking, drilling and cutting in people's mouths with never a slip or an incident. Give him any sharp implement at home and watch him cut himself with it.

Oh how I used to laugh, until I realised it's genetic and I've inherited the same ability.

I know of a chap with a doctorate in structural engineering who failed miserably to put shelves up (L shaped brackets, not enough screws so put them in the bottom holes).

Oh and I don't use automatic checkouts or speak to Siri.

Last weekend, I spent more time than I care to admit waving my wet hands under a paper towel dispenser to try and get it to 'start'.

a lad i knew at college was studying mech eng.
he knew everything mechanically to do with cars especially how a front wheel drive system worked...how the brakes,steering and suspension all worked together. he could even describe how all the various components went together and in what order.

he didnt know how to remove a wheel though

Not that unusual. I can design you a oil processing platform and pretty well describe how it all works and operates. There's no way I'm stripping down a pump though. Wouldn't know where to start (well I'd start by looking for the manual with the instructions but you know what I mean). Besides I might get dirty.

Nedrapier: The thing was they didn't bother with the toasting of the bread first, they just put slices of bread topped with cheese in the microwave and expected it to come out toasty...it didn't

Aha. Yes.

Common sense. Only common past a certain point.

decides to lay the toaster on its side and puts the toast and cheese back in.

I still use a pencil and paper to write up calculations. Many of my younger colleagues are horrified at the thought.

My boss still does it too, it's great when it comes to checking his working because it's all there, long hand. But an utter pain in the ass when it comes to revising it.

So often I'll end up re-issuing his calcs either in excel, or photocopying and adding a sheet stating "inputs changed by a factor of 1.365, therefore output scaled by (1.365+1.365^2) as per equation (4)" if I'm out of time.

It's the ones still using slide rules that scare me, at least you can photocopy a nomograph!

Education is not necessarily a sign of intelligence.

A maths machine I know has no common sense. famous lines include "Do they kick in kickboxing?"

Reminds me of a lad at work (recently chartered surveyor).

Every year we go on a walking (drinking weekend). A few years ago on a very warm trip to Wales he randomly asks if sheep drink! About a minute later there is a water trough with sheep drinking from it. He's never lived it down and never will!

He's good at his job and can quote contract clauses etc but has zero common sense.

Bloke at school was pretty bright (I think his dad worked at CERN or something), but ruined it one day by asking the physics teacher if the reason that birds don't get electrocuted when sitting on powerlines is because they stand on one leg (i.e. that the power doesn't flow through them).

It took him a while to live that down.

Round these parts though (and I mean at work in the Cambridge Science Park) there are a lot of people that fit the 'special' category. Ridiculously clever, but don't have the common sense to do even simple, normal tasks.

I'm with engineer No. 2 with self-checkouts - if the price remains the same why not take the option that allows for a person to have a job ?

This is exactly the reason why I use them

The OP's examples aren't as stupid as you may first think.
If the matches are safety ones then it's unlikely the incense ashes will set the box alight, they need to be struck against the other corresponding chemical on the side to light so there is some logic in it.

This might be true for striking but safety matches (and indeed cardboard) could be lit by an ember no? Plus probably a million places more appropriate spring to mind to wedge an unattended burning ember on top of than a box of matches. 🙂

I don't know for certain about people who are actually intelligent, but I reckon I've only achieved competence in anything at all through concentrating or specialising heavily, largely at the expense of developing the general capabilities expected of an adult human being.

I expect that many people who are very good at what they do have traded breadth of knowledge for depth of knowledge in one narrow area. If you spend much of your life deeply involved in a very complex subject then I expect that much of what falls outside of it may present more of a challenge than it does to others.

Nedrapier your banking friend is he also a keen roadie and married to a Chinese girl?

Working in the IPO or once known as the Patent Office you met an incredible sub species known as examiners, the smartest cleverest people utterly devoid of common sense and interpersonal skills. Imagine a whole building of these poindexters 😆

This story is old but a good one :

http://www.songofthepaddle.co.uk/forum/showthread.php?2879-Funny-expanding-foam-story

When I worked in a bike shop folk like these were called "clever thick c**ts"

I suspect they knew you as "minimum wage nobodies" 😉