Virtual Ignorance?

I may not be as smart as I think I am.

interesting thought, but I'm not sure I can agree... except perhaps in the case of sarcasm. I think two people conversing via video have the same problem of context, more perhaps, than the same two people conversing via text.

true, you have the added benefit of being able to see the emotional attachment to an idea, but you also have a case for that same visual reality to alter your perception of what is being said. is the other person female or male, what is their appearance, do they have perfect diction or rely heavily on slang? do they appear conservative, or part of a sub culture?

all those things and more can alter or perception of what is actually being said, and thereby the meaning and most definitely the weight attached to it. our own personal bias' begins to subtly alter the meaning we attach to what is said.... yet in text, the words stand alone, with only the emphasis the writer includes.

don't get me wrong; someone can be a good or poor salesman in text as much as in person.

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1 person has an IQ of 95
5 people have an IQ of 96
1 has na IQ of 125

in this case the average is 100, the median is 96 (no bitching about sample size, it's only an example)

not that it matters much, since IQ tests are environmentally and experiencentally (is that a word? is now) biased. doesn't mean they aren't useful in some ways, just biased.
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I think part of the problem with net communication is that we are used to providing context, because we generally rely on our surroundings to provide them. without that context we are prone to relate to it in our own framework of local custom, socialization, and personal experience, without regard to the possiblity of differing meaning or intent.

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people are stupid... person is generally stupid too, if you take their life in aggregate. oddly enough, a person can be smart about a specific topic, and people are always right in that case, in when they aren't

Pep's quote:

Pep (Poor spelling, other than in extreme circumstances, reveals inadequacies of concentration, competence and commitment; intelligence is almost irrelevant)

______________________________________________________

I was referring to this part of your post, as I disagree that poor spelling reveals inadequacies of concentration, competence or commitment.

And I'm not sure what you are saying here Pep in reference to dumb people and to whom you are referring to, so since you are not online, we need some moderation here please!

I'm not the one debating. I just posted the correction, is all.

You don't have time to "nit pick", but you apparently have plenty of time to rant about nitpicking.

Yeah, that makes sense.

If you don't like what you read, then don't read it; no one is forcing you to; honest!

Stop it with your common sense. It has no place here.

You can always tell when Pep gets flustered (like having to bite his tongue too much rather than post what he really wants) because then he starts messing up his spelling or punctuation.

But making ASSumptions and flaming people are what forums are all about.

Damn - you are right. LOL

Though the site that I read all of this on, did specifically say Average -- I did not go through all of their calcs to see if they are correct:

http://forums.secondlife.com/newreply.php?do=newreply&p=2261101

The example using Walmart gave me a grin though.

That was still page 1 for me -- I get 40 posts per page.

Yes, Yes, and Yes.

One of my old sig lines:

Some people are like slinkies, not really very useful, but they sure give you a smile when the tumble down the stairs.



Yes, that was bad.

But really, some people are more than useless, in SL and out. SL is no different than the rest of life in that it is going to have people that are stupid and ignorant and intelligent and everywhere in between. In reality none of that has anything to do with whether or not someone will have a tendency to make assumptions about others, but it *might* play into how much or little someone reads a different meaning into what others write.

And punctuation?

I think I remember reading somewhere that Einstein was once thought to be stupid (or maybe some other genius level guy) because he did poorly in school - he was too busy plotting the path of the fly across the ceiling, or something like that.



(geez, finally caught up - this thread moved quickly)

He shot John Lennon

http://www.lennonmurdertruth.com/

/me dons tinfoil hat

I will (sort of) agree with this. Although, while my spelling is by no means horrid, my sentence structure and ability to be coherent AND cogent is definitely flawed. I attribute that to the "inadequacies of concentration".

And what is the point of this post? I have no clue.

This doesn't seem to be the link for the Wal Mart example...But anyway I understood what you meant when you said "average" and I'm sorry about my nit picking - although I assure you that at no point did it make me feel in any way superior to you, Lil.



And it's really hard to judge the worthiness of other people. Just when I notice someone seems to be a bit lazy about thinking things through they prove to me how energetic they can be in other ways by going out of their way to help me carry my groceries or something.

Oh, that's a fairly common thing. It's very easy to bore the daylights out of a smart kid, in which case they appear stupid. Given enough years of boredom, the transformation may as well be real...

Some university colleges have enrollment criteria that effectively screen out all but the smartest 2 to 4% of the enrolling population; the net effect is that everyone there pretty much has 'genius' IQ as measured by the silly tests. Not that it matters one bit; these people still have the same petty drama and do stupid things. I've seen a lot of booksmarts manufactured by parental value systems, creating young people whose sole goal was to be top of the class at the great expense of all else. It's a heavy price to pay.

It's no wonder that stupid people out-reproduce the smart by a huge factor. I honestly think that too much book-learnin' really *does* eat up the afternoons one might have spent with the girl next door, learning all about life. Also, stupid people are generally comfy with being stupid - none of *them* throw themselves off the Social Sciences Tower roof with regularity for bad grades. Even taking into account the darwinistic forces of natural selection that apply heavily to the stupid on this earth, smart people still manage to keep themselves in the minority.

Maybe I'm unenlightened, but I do believe in stupid people. No denying it. I swear, my cat had more awareness and predictive cognition than some people I've known. Okay, maybe cats don't talk, but then again, my cat didn't carry on about celebrity gossip and smarmy tv dramas either.

Alright, back to the back-and-forth about grammar and suchlike. I'm getting some popcorn...

check out this book by Aidan C. Bell

That's just depressing.

Did I ever mention that I think you're one of the coolest people in SL? *hug* You rock.

Mmm hmm and they spent how many years in medical school? And you spent how many? Just checking...

From my experience inworld, most of the smart people stay away from the forums. Not to say there aren't smart people who DO post here...but most of the smartest ones I've met would never bother. Still, I like reading a fair bit of it. Maybe it's my popcorn habit...

I know you were being facetious, but I'd nonetheless like to point out that without stupid people, we wouldn't have the Darwin Awards. And that, my friend, would be a crying shame.

I might not know who Stephen King or even John Lennon is... But that shouldn't be an issue in this forum.

If this was a forum about 'Russian authors' I might assume that most people would know 'Dostojevskij' without me having to get into that.

Not everyone here is from USA or UK... I'm Swedish.
I don't write posts in here assuming everyone know about ABBA, Björn Borg or Pippi Långstrump... And if I should I wouldn't mind explaining...

Since this is a forum that is discussing Second Life - I assume that most people here know the most basic stuff about THAT. I cant assume anything else really...
And that has nothing to do with treating anyone as ignorant. Its a cultural thing since people from all over the world are residents in SL.

Forums is about communication. With that in mind the main issue for me is that people get what I mean... (wether I spelled it wright or wrong) Never mind IQ - thats just about logic.

In forums maybe 'EQ' (Emotional Intelligence) - is more useful...

It doesn't to me, but one person seemed to think it was pretty clear what was meant. The only time I'd come across "Candida" was in the song, and it was a name. Apparently, it is also the name of a disease in the U.S. so I looked it up and it seems that the disease is called "candidiasis" and not "candida". "Candida" is a genus of yeasts according to Wikipedia, and not a disease at all. Over here (U.K.) we call the disease "thrush" - I've heard of that, of course - and maybe it's just in the U.S. where "candiasis" is shortened to "candida" and used for the disease.

So, whilst the thread's title, and the date of the av's arrival in the forum, might well have been indicators that the name was a reference to the disease, it wasn't the wisest thing to simply assume it and, even if it was assumed, it was certainly not the wisest thing to post as though the assuption was correct.

However, we can't avoid making assuptions because we don't write every little bit of information, and we have to make some basic assuptions about what people mean. Usually our assumptions are correct, but not always.