I might be less intelligent

[Rani G2]

Core belief:
Less smart, unintelligent, unclever, naive, childish

Everytime I wasnt able to understand something I believe that I am actually a bit lowminded.

It could be true...

 

[Tinyflame]

Yes @PURUSHA it could be true. by conventional measurements, or you could be by these measurements more intelligent than some, less than others (Einstein ;)). Or not shown the info or background info you need, or shown in a way that doesn't suit you) or it may be boring as h*ll material and hard to focus, or those 'teaching' you may be poor at conveying it, or sabotage you by conveying it in an inaccurate, difficult to understand, or intentionally incomplete manner. And/ or you may be good hands-on, +/or have emtional intelliegence. And/ or naivete or childlikeness may be creativity, and thinking outside the box. Etc. And if you want to learn and continue despite what seems like current obstacles, you are persistent and inquisitive.

Lots of 'ors'..

FWIW, you my feel 'low minded' by your standards, but nothing I've seen here seems to indicate as such.

 

[Deleted member 42957]

I believe this in myself to. I was always told not to ask questions so If I didn't understand something I couldn't ask. This carried on into work too. People talked with lovely language with beautiful words that I never did understand. My language is so simple and child like and when I read posts on here and how they are written I feel I'm so uneducated. My children know and understand so much about life and the world that I don't and I'm learning so much from them which is a tad embarrassing. I think this is also why I don't speak through fear of looking dumb.

 

[Iamsensative]

Everyday i really struggle with this. I think the same things on these post. People have this ability to express themselves in ways i never could or explain things that i barely grasp. But if you remind yourself were all different and beautiful in so many ways it helps. Our perceptions are screwed up and we need to be kind to ourselves..You are brilliant and beautiful in your own way.

 

[Mach123]

IQ and memory has the most to do with being judged intelligent. I am average I learned this in college. The thing I'm jealous of is people with great memory. You can do and be almost anything if you can absorb information and recall it and use it or write it down on a test. At the very high end people and social skills begin to get sacrificed. People who have it all become spies and CIA spooks because you can fool anyone. If you can't control your feelings it that is a large negative in functionality. It makes people seem less intelligent.

 

[Socha]

In my experience this is not particularly a PTSD issue but one of our performance- and achievement-oriented society in general.

I used to assume that anyone knows at least as much as I do about anything and sometimes I still do but what I discovered over the last few years is that unless me, most people have just the beautiful gift of keeping their mouth shut when they are completely clueless instead of asking one stupid question after another while doubting theirselves because they don't know anything about everything :rolleyes:. My obsessive need to ask all those 'stupid' questions made me realize how little all the other people know about most things. The only difference is probably, that they don't feel dumb because they know it's normal not to know anything or understand anything right away.
There are many students who put a lot of effort in using as many complicated words as possible because they think it'll make them look smart or will impress their profs. I was impressed too until I realized that most of them are using synonym websites for their papers, that those fancy words don't make the content any better and that the knowledge that is packaged in those papers is inaccessible for some people plus it's really annoying to read texts that are riddled with words you have to look up to understand the most certainly not so complicated context ;).

 

[Gamera3000]

I had to research intelligence as part of my master's thesis. You can only measure intelligence if you have a group of very similar people. So let's say me, my sister, and three of my four brothers. One of my brothers is autistic, which makes him (neurologically) a different "type" of person, with a different way of organizing thought. The rest of us would be somewhat similar and you could measure us against each other mentally. My one brother would be what is called an outlier and would mess up the whole thing for everyone. If we included him, because his thinking system is so different, he would be likely to test as way higher or way lower than what would be accurate. It would be like testing five circles and then one square. How much of a circle is the square? It's not a circle, so you can't include.

When you have a very large population, it doesn't matter that you have a few outliers. They average out. So it doesn't mess up your measurements of everyone else. It might matter to that one individual that they are being tested as retarded or genius, but to the country or world it's not a big deal- not worth changing the system. Which is why we still use intelligence tests.

If this is something that truly bothers you, I would encourage you to read up on how intelligence is measured and tested. It is eye-opening. Here's the wikipedia to get you started if you're interested: Intelligence quotient - Wikipedia

I could be wrong and I didn't look this back up all the way, but this part here:

Each successive edition has re-normed the test to compensate for the Flynn effect, ensuring not only that the norms do not become outdated which is suggested to result in inflated scores on intelligence measures, but that they are representative of the current population (Flynn, 1984, 1987, 1999; Matarazzo, 1972).

Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children - Wikipedia

I think that's referring to this thing that happened in early tests where they gave the tests they developed to groups of people and everyone scored "retarded" (the official term then). So they were like, oh, we can't say that regular white males are retarded, so they adjusted it until regular white males were getting 100 on the tests. They did not do that with women, non-whites, or any other minorities. So minorities always got lower scores on IQ tests, which played into the idea that white men were genetically superior. That's why when kids apply to college any kind of minority gets padding to their test scores before they are considered. Seems like it would be easier to correct the tests, don't you think? It's really fascinating when you start reading about it.

Anyhow, there's all that if you want it.

 

[Rani G2]

Thanks Gamera. Interesting to see how society creates predifined criteria to actually pinpoint what intelligence is. Humans are creative sometimes a little too creative to get what they want. To secure some people's power and right to exist.
As a child one teacher and a doctor asked my mother to let me take part in a IQ test. I was able to understand and analyze things in a different way than other kids. Even today, I am being told that I am intelligent, I have a good memory (mostly) but I dont believe them. I dont believe it, I feel that its all fake.

 

[Ronin]

Trying to understand something is a show of intelligence.

The stupid doesn't bother with that much effort. The smart does.

 

[Rani G2]

Sounds true Ronin.