[soneca]

Yes, he clearly states he thought that the student group that thought he was stupid were stupid. And later that the only people that would think his test thing was stupid would be the incompetent ones.

So his thesis is also that stupid people assume that intelligent people are stupid. He considers himself more intelligent than those people.

I wonder if he would be as willing to look stupid in front of people that he considers as intelligent as him.

It sounded to me like he was saying: I am willing to look stupid to people that I consider inferior (dumber than me).

[pksebben]

I read this more as: "stupid is an important step in the process of fostering smart". It's someone's unwillingness to look dumb that stalls them at the gate.

I think this is the impetus behind the whole 'crawl, walk, run' thing. If you're always hot to trot and pushing an image of "I know everything already and I don't need to ask basic questions", you're never going to build the foundations of understanding necessary to construct more complex understandings.