[kderbyma]

It’s because everyone else is dumber than them…. So they constantly see avoidable mistakes and misunderstandings that could have been avoided…. Yet they cannot make the other people understand….because they think differently about it, and the people who don’t have that intelligence will not necessarily even be able to reorient their brains for the new information to be absorbed correctly.

I constantly get demoralized by stupid people….. it’s truly horrific. It’s a disability as far as I can see…I am disabled by others stupidity….

[emp17344]

You just sound like a misanthrope. If you’re so smart, why are you surrounding yourself with stupid people? Is it possible you’re not as smart as you think, and in fact, just as fallible as the rest of us?

[wat10000]

I am definitely a misanthrope.

How can I not surround myself with stupid people, though? There are so many. No matter where I go, there will be huge numbers of them. I'm surrounded by smart people at work. I can try to only socialize with smart people, but it's hard when a lot of socialization is determined by family. And there's absolutely nothing to be done about the general public on the street, working retail, etc. And worst of all: working in, running, or leading governments.

[voidUpdate]

To be fair, if you are significantly smarter than the average, surrounding yourself with stupid(er) people is the default, as the majority will be less smart than you

[ryanmerket]

or maybe they have spent time with some really brilliant people and they know they are not brilliant, but they also know they are not as dumb as the person they are talking to? they don't have to be mutually exclusive.

[JackSlateur]

I kidda feel like parent

But I am convinced that I am pretty stupid, which makes the whole situation even more painful ("ffs, I'm dumb and these people are even dumber!")

[rhubarbtree]

I recently encountered someone who spoke like this and I researched what might be the issue.

I came across narcissism. The idea that you’re smarter than everyone else. Comes from a grandiose sense of self importance. But the truth is most people are smarter than you in some ways and less smart in others, but you’re unable to see it because you’re in this black and white mode where preserving your ego relies on you being the smart guy amongst the idiots.

It’s very common in tech to see this. Maybe because we were all exceptional at maths when we were young and got the idea that meant we were super smart and this compensated for our nerdiness.

I worked with a bunch of physicists and every single one of them was smarter than me at maths and physics, I wasn’t even close. But they sometimes talked about politics and current affairs, which I’m very well read in. I didn’t say anything, but I was shocked at how little they knew and how overconfident they were.

None of those folks were narcissists, thankfully they were lovely people, but for sure it highlighted how poor people were at judging their own expertise in an area.

It’s so easy to dismiss people, criticising is easy, and so hard to see just how stupid you can be yourself.

[wat10000]

I don't think a bunch of physicists is the best example if you're trying to make the point that most people are smart but just in different ways. Physics requires and attracts intelligence, of course a bunch of physicists were smarter than you in some ways.

Try it with, say, a parole officer's case list, a group of high school dropouts, or people who have not touched a book in the past ten years. You'll certainly find things they know that you don't, but that's mostly going to be a matter of experience, not them being smarter in that area. No doubt the average petty thief knows more about shoplifting than I do, but I'm pretty sure I could learn quickly and become a much better shoplifter than them if I put my mind to it. And those groups will certainly contain some really smart people who just happen to have ended up in those groups, but that's going to be a small number of them.

[alphabettsy]

Are you sure you’re not conflating knowledge with intelligence?

[rhubarbtree]

Yeah no I don’t think intelligence works like that.

There’s not some core reasoning engine in your brain that is independent of your knowledge. The two are intertwined.

Some people are better at reasoning about politics vs maths, for example, because they have both the knowledge, skills, and experience to understood how such systems work vs a mathematician who does not.

[Rayhem]

> I came across narcissism. The idea that you’re smarter than everyone else. Comes from a grandiose sense of self importance.

This may be the colloquial description of how narcissism manifests, but it isn't even close to (and possibly completely opposite) clinical narcissism. The grandiosity isn't so much a belief as it is a "false self" put on to garner caretaking from others. It's not "I got all the toys as a kid, so I deserve more stuff!" but a failure to individuate from caregivers. "Mom (as a tool, not a wholly independent person) came when I cried as a kid, so I need you to lavish attention on me and make me feel better now as an adult. I can't see myself without external input; I only see myself as a reflection through you."

[rhubarbtree]

That’s interesting. So from this viewpoint what happens in childhood or afterwards for the kid to end up a narcissist?

[Rayhem]

Disclaimer: I'm just an...interested layman, but as far as I know we don't really know. It looks like there's both genetic and environmental components to it; your genes have a big impact on your "temperament" and more volatile temperaments correlate more strongly with cluster B disorders. But it seems like neglect, a failure to recognize a child as their own independent person (basically "my needs are your needs"), from parents/caregivers who are often themselves narcissists contributes pretty strongly, too.

The Little Shaman[1] has been one of the most comprehensive-yet-approachable resources I've found for understanding these kinds of high-conflict personalities. In particular [2-4] are pretty relevant to your question.

[1]: https://www.youtube.com/@thelittleshamanhealing/videos [2]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uJZeXxU7QTg [3]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TokWBgMQIZ4 [4]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e5Hq_xNxrOg

[LouisSayers]

Perhaps there are some people like you say that are grandiose narcissists and ALSO some people that are genuinely smarter than most others in the room and can see the obvious through the fog.

I think the frustration they're experiencing is more likely to do with a lack of control over their environment (including the lack of ability to control others).

[rhubarbtree]

Anyone who thinks they’re genuinely smarter than everyone else is almost certainly unable to self-reflect and understand others’ strengths well.

[dhqgekt]

Reminds me of Gell-Mann amnesia and nobelitis; cognitive biases in general.

[d-lisp]

I do know for sure that I am able to share my intelligence with anyone. Moreover I do enjoy it. I cannot conceive a lot of things more pleasant than making people smart. And to me that should be your responsibility to do so, as a gifted person.

You should cease to complain about other people being dumb, and just work on being understandable by anyone. That's a very complex job, as it may lead to what I'd call "extravagant analysis" (i.e. unfolding abstractions to the point you reach atoms or "implementations", [note, I do remember of a (joke) book titled "How to ride a bike" where the author explained literally everything you needed to know to be able to ride a bike, to the point it became absurd]).

Anyway, you should at least try it. Smart people often are terrible at explaining stuff because they don't need to do the work of diving into the atoms of abstractions, and because sometimes also language is not their primary tool to think about things.

Tldr; are you sure you are understandable ?

[c4wrd]

Perhaps you are miserable because you are reinforcing your brain to only look for the flaws in others?

> Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye?

[ryanmerket]

my whole life in a nutshell. except for when i worked at fb and reddit in the early days. and to some extent AWS in the early days.

[flaterkk]

make sure you're not the dumbest person in the room... no wait... make sure you're not the smartest person... somethin', somethin' right?