I don’t mind stupid people.

There.

That’s probably not the sentence you expected.

I don’t believe everyone is equally intelligent. I don’t believe everyone possesses the same capacity for reasoning, analysis, pattern recognition, or intellectual curiosity. We don’t say everyone is equally athletic, equally musical, equally attractive, or equally talented at mathematics.

But apparently intelligence is where we’re supposed to start lying.

I won’t.

Some people are smarter than other people.

And some people are stupid.

The stupid ones don’t particularly bother me.

It’s the stupid ones who think they’re smarter than me that irritate the living fuck out of me.

In Jamaica, We Have a Word

Dunce.

It’s wonderfully efficient.

Growing up Jamaican, I became accustomed to a kind of bluntness around intelligence that I don’t encounter quite the same way in America.

Somebody will tell you they’re dunce.

Other people will tell them they’re dunce.

They may laugh about being dunce.

Everybody understands the situation.

I’m obviously generalizing. Jamaica contains arrogant idiots just like every other country, and America certainly contains intelligent people perfectly capable of recognizing the limits of their knowledge.

But there is something about the American insistence on pretending everybody is exceptional that fascinates me.

Everybody is brilliant.

Everybody is gifted.

Everybody has something they’re the best at.

Maybe.

Or maybe some people are just average.

Some are below average.

That’s what average means.

I don’t understand why this is controversial.

I Can Like a Dunce

Here’s the funny part.

Someone doesn’t have to be particularly intelligent for me to like them.

You don’t need to impress me intellectually to be funny, kind, interesting, loyal, entertaining, talented, hardworking, sexy, or simply pleasant company.

There are plenty of ways to have value.

What I find appealing is accurate self-assessment.

If you’re not book-smart and you know you’re not book-smart, fine.

If you’re terrible with numbers and know you’re terrible with numbers, fine.

If you don’t know anything about a subject and say, “I don’t know anything about that,” beautiful.

We can proceed.

You don’t need to diminish yourself.

You don’t need to bow before me.

You don’t need to walk around announcing that I’m smarter than you.

Just don’t climb onto an imaginary intellectual pedestal and start talking down to me when you don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about.

That’s when I get irritated.

Because now you’re not merely stupid.

You’re too stupid to know you’re stupid.

That’s advanced stupid.

The Dead Don’t Know They’re Dead

There’s an old joke I love.

The dead don’t know they’re dead. It’s only difficult for everyone else.

The same is true of stupid people.

That’s obviously an oversimplification, but God, does it capture the experience.

There’s something uniquely irritating about watching somebody confidently explain something they barely understand.

They haven’t researched it.

They haven’t questioned their assumptions.

They don’t know enough about the subject to recognize how much they don’t know.

But confidence?

Oh, they have plenty of that.

And then they look at you as though you’re the dunce.

That’s when something inside me starts twitching.

Not because someone disagreed with me.

I’ve met people who disagreed with me and made me reconsider what I believed.

I’ve met people smarter than me.

They’re rare.

But I’ve met them.

And when I encounter somebody whose mind genuinely impresses me, I don’t resent it.

I fucking love it.

There is something almost intoxicating about meeting somebody who can show me something I didn’t see.

I respect intellectual horsepower.

Including when it exceeds mine.

What I don’t respect is a lawnmower revving its engine and thinking it’s a Ferrari.

Yes, I Think I’m Smarter Than Most People

We might as well deal with that.

I do.

I think I’m smarter than most people I encounter.

Maybe you think that’s arrogant.

It probably is.

I’m comfortable with that.

I’m not going to perform intellectual insecurity so that other people can feel better around me.

I know what I’m good at.

I research things obsessively.

I notice patterns.

I question information.

I enjoy pulling apart arguments.

I change directions when evidence convinces me that my original hypothesis doesn’t work.

And I have encountered enough people over nearly five decades to have formed an opinion about where I believe I fall relative to the population around me.

Quite high.

There.

Now nobody has to diagnose me in the comments.

I’ve saved you the trouble.

There Is an Obvious Problem With My System

I am the one doing the ranking.

I know.

I have my own definition of intelligence, and that definition happens to value many of the things I believe I’m particularly good at.

How convenient.

I see the circularity.

I understand the possibility of bias.

I understand that I could underestimate someone.

I understand that someone I consider stupid could walk away from an interaction thinking exactly the same thing about me.

None of this causes me the existential crisis people apparently expect it to.

Because recognizing that my judgment is subjective doesn’t require me to conclude that my judgment is worthless.

Of course I’m evaluating the world through my own mind.

What the fuck else would I use?

What Would Make Me Change My Mind?

Evidence.

That’s the part people might miss.

I don’t need to remain intellectually superior to everyone around me.

If somebody demonstrates that they understand something better than I do, I’ll recognize it.

I’ve done it before.

There are people whose intelligence intimidates me.

I enjoy them.

I admire them.

I want to know what they know.

What I won’t do is assign intellectual equality where I don’t perceive it simply because hierarchy makes people uncomfortable.

We accept hierarchy everywhere else.

Some athletes are better.

Some writers are better.

Some musicians are better.

Some surgeons are better.

Some mechanics are better.

Some people have extraordinary spatial intelligence and can build things I wouldn’t know how to begin constructing.

Human abilities vary.

Why would intelligence be magically exempt?

Humility Is Useful When It’s Accurate

I’m not demanding that everyone have low self-esteem.

False humility irritates me too.

If you’re brilliant, know you’re brilliant.

If you’re excellent at something, own it.

If you’re better than me at something, you don’t need to pretend otherwise.

I’d rather deal with somebody who accurately says, “I’m very fucking good at this,” than somebody performing modesty while secretly waiting for everyone to reassure them.

What I value is calibration.

Know what you know.

Know what you don’t know.

And understand that competence in one area doesn’t automatically transfer to everything else.

A person can be extraordinarily skilled professionally and still have terrible judgment.

Someone can have degrees covering an entire wall and still reason badly outside the narrow area they studied.

Someone can struggle academically and possess extraordinary practical intelligence.

I don’t confuse credentials with intelligence.

I watch how people think.

Maybe That’s Arrogant

I’m sure someone reading this thinks I sound insufferable.

That’s okay.

Someone else is probably diagnosing me.

Also okay.

And somewhere, somebody is reading this thinking:

Who the fuck does she think she is to decide who’s intelligent?

Me.

I’m the person living inside my head.

I’m the person deciding whom I respect, whom I admire, whose advice I trust, who challenges me, and who makes me wonder how they’ve managed to survive this long without wandering directly into traffic.

Of course I make judgments.

So do you.

You may simply use prettier language for yours.

I know my assessment isn’t infallible.

I know I’m biased.

I know my confidence in my own intelligence influences how I evaluate everyone else’s.

I’ve examined the flaw in the system.

I still think the system works pretty fucking well.

So No, I Don’t Mind a Dunce

A dunce can be delightful.

A dunce can be hilarious.

A dunce can be talented.

A dunce can know things I don’t.

A dunce can teach me things.

A dunce can be someone I love.

Intelligence isn’t the admission price for my affection.

But if you’re a dunce, don’t climb onto a soapbox, look down at me, and start explaining something you don’t understand with the confidence of a Nobel laureate.

Because now you’ve added arrogance to ignorance.

And worse, you’ve made me notice you.

You could have been peacefully dunce in the corner.

We could have had a lovely afternoon.

But no.

You wanted to be Einstein.

And now we have a problem.