Stupid.

Contrary to what I've said in the past, I'm not stupid. For the most part that's a bit of an act; keep expectations low, avoid disappointing people. But people who know me keep telling me I'm smarter than I think.

Stop with the false appraisals already

Of course I respectfully disagree. Not only am I not as smart as I think I am; nor am I as smart as they think.

But there's a middle ground there. You don't have to be a genius to be merely smart, and you don't have to be stupid to discount claims that you're a genius.

If you're among those who think I'm an idiot (surely more numerous), you can skip this if you want. Odds are you aren't even reading this anyway.

Despite (or perhaps because of) my not being stupid, I'm a big advocate of simplicity.

Arkham's Razor. Get it?

Smart people have it rough; If you're smart, you know this already. Not only are you distracted from the big picture by the details, but you're distracted from the details by the big picture. You can see what's going to happen before it does roughly 50% of the time; the other 50% of the time you don't know what happened because you were busy formulating theories based on information that's about 6 hours out of date.

You also spend a lot of time defending your ideas in the face of other smart people who disagree with you. If you're lucky, you engage in meaningful debate with those people; if you're distracted by either big or little pictures, you dismiss them as ignorant and/or stupid.

This is not to discount the disagreements you have with actual stupid/ignorant people. They're probably just less common than you think. Even smart people have a hard time articulating from time to time, especially when they're really passionate about something.

Not a word. Except R.I.P.

In a nutshell, "stupid" might be one of those words we need to retire if we can't refrain from applying it to people. Can't speak for everybody, but I'm trying to save it for ideas and behavior, rather than the people behind those ideas and behavior. It ain't perfect, but it's less dehumanizing.

That's all. It's something that's been on my mind for some years now. I hate catching myself calling someone "stupid" when all I mean is "wrong." And for all I know, even that might be a harsh or erroneous appraisal of the situation.

After all, it's just opinions. As my brother put it, "OF COURSE I think I'm right. Isn't that what an opinion is all about?"

Thanks to FFantasygrl and all the other Photobucket-ers for the garnish.