[paulajohnson]

"If I have a friend who squanders their money while I save and build up wealth, are they stupid?"

No, they are probably "helpless". If they actually have a more fulfilling life then they may be "intelligent".

The distinguishing feature of "stupid" people in this typology is that they are the ones who cause grief to others with no gain to themselves. This is not the same as being unintelligent; the intro to the article points out that nobel laureates are just as likely to be stupid as anyone else.

[kdamken]

Seems like such a strange way to define stupidity to me, and why I wasn't a fan of how the paper defined things. Why does it depend on causing grief to others?

I think the CPU analogy is more apt. Some people have faster processors, some have slower ones, but what actually matters is what you do with it.

I know "smart" people who are living at home with their parents doing nothing with their lives, and I know "stupid" people who own successful businesses. That's my problem with the terms, and why I think it depends way more on what you do with your circumstances, rather than the circumstances you were born into.

[Chris_Jay]

What alternative names would you propose?

[kdamken]

I don't have a good solution. I just know I don't like how the article defines stupid/intelligent, and that "stupid/smart" have a lot more (often hurtful) connotations than what they really mean.

But then you have the problem of going down the PC rabbit hole where you can't say anything about whether someone is smart or not, and have to live in a pretend world where everyone is the same intelligence even though they're not. So that's no good either.