<story><title>&quot;I have come to find out what it&apos;s like to be dumb.&quot;</title><url>http://waldo.jaquith.org/blog/2013/09/stupid/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>hellyeasa</author><text>Good god. What is this pretentious bullshit? This tone of this post was so incredibly ridiculous I had to create an account to ask why it was posted here or taken seriously.&lt;p&gt;This self proclaimed smart person, with heavy emphasis on the self proclaimed part (check out the incredibly smug About page) apparently needs Lyme disease to feel the plight of the oh so pitiful stupid people. News flash, half the population is dumber than average, stop acting like Lyme disease is a cute self reflection on intelligence.&lt;p&gt;I am not attacking your smartness, and please get well soon, but don&amp;#x27;t be a pretentious asshole. God. South Park&amp;#x27;s &amp;quot;Smug Alert!&amp;quot; episode perfectly encapsulates the culture of this place sometimes.&lt;p&gt;Over and out.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>toretore</author><text>I don&amp;#x27;t see anything pretentious about it. He&amp;#x27;s not bragging about being smart, just stating that he is what most people would call intelligent.&lt;p&gt;Intelligence can mean many things, but I like to think of it in terms of &amp;quot;brain power&amp;quot;; the amount of abstract thought you can hold and process, your brain&amp;#x27;s RAM and CPU power so to speak.&lt;p&gt;The term depression is very broad and probably encompasses numerous as-yet-undefined sub-categories, but his description is very much like my own experience: A dulling of the mind. It&amp;#x27;s like downclocking the brain&amp;#x27;s CPU and emotional coprocessor from 2Ghz to 200Mhz. Thinking became slow and required more effort, analytical capabilities pretty much went away and I didn&amp;#x27;t have the spare capacity to really enjoy anything. A song or a movie I knew I liked just didn&amp;#x27;t register because my brain wasn&amp;#x27;t capable of processing it the way it used to. Learning became uninteresting and a chore and problem solving became near impossible. In short, I felt really dumb. I knew I wasn&amp;#x27;t, but I couldn&amp;#x27;t &amp;quot;smarten up&amp;quot; however much I tried. Knowing this, not being able to enjoy learning, problem solving or experiencing something was the worst terror of depression.&lt;p&gt;The experience left me wondering about the immutability or genetic predeterminism of &amp;quot;intelligence&amp;quot;. If we broadly define intelligence as &amp;quot;brain power&amp;quot;, I know now that it can vary a great deal. I wonder how much of this brain power is predetermined through genetics and how much is affected by the environment. We know that diet plays a large role and that certain diseases affect the brain in this way. How much of a person&amp;#x27;s &amp;quot;dumbness&amp;quot; can be removed by changing the external factors? In addition, I think broader aspects of intelligence such as analytical abilities, memory and &amp;quot;abstract capacity&amp;quot; can be taught or improved through training. I know my own &amp;quot;intelligence&amp;quot; certainly has required lots of training through the years, not to mention the knowledge that plays a large part of it that had to be acquired.</text></comment>
<story><title>&quot;I have come to find out what it&apos;s like to be dumb.&quot;</title><url>http://waldo.jaquith.org/blog/2013/09/stupid/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>hellyeasa</author><text>Good god. What is this pretentious bullshit? This tone of this post was so incredibly ridiculous I had to create an account to ask why it was posted here or taken seriously.&lt;p&gt;This self proclaimed smart person, with heavy emphasis on the self proclaimed part (check out the incredibly smug About page) apparently needs Lyme disease to feel the plight of the oh so pitiful stupid people. News flash, half the population is dumber than average, stop acting like Lyme disease is a cute self reflection on intelligence.&lt;p&gt;I am not attacking your smartness, and please get well soon, but don&amp;#x27;t be a pretentious asshole. God. South Park&amp;#x27;s &amp;quot;Smug Alert!&amp;quot; episode perfectly encapsulates the culture of this place sometimes.&lt;p&gt;Over and out.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>pgsandstrom</author><text>Cut him some slack, he did write it while having Lyme disease...</text></comment>