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We are all flawed and incapable of perfection. Even the most intelligent people will have occasional “dumb” moments, and that’s okay.
However, some of these blunders recently became a topic of discussion on Reddit when someone asked, “What’s the dumbest thing you’ve seen an intelligent person do?”
One story involved a microwaved fork at a research institute. Another was about a doctor who placed his hand under a lawnmower while it was still running.
You may laugh at some of these responses and feel bad for a few others. But if there’s a key takeaway, no human is superior to another because each one’s skills and traits tend to balance out somehow.
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#1
Support Trump. I'm not saying this in a cheeky way, necessarily, but I have friends and family that will do mental gymnastics to justify supporting Trump despite a *vast* amount of evidence piled up against him. They will then turn around and believe anything they hear about Biden and family without a shred of evidence to support their position. It's baffling. I'm conservative, but the way Trump has hijacked my party with non-stop false claims is alarming. The way he is undermining trust in our electoral system just because his ego can't handle losing is scary. Smart people in my life falling for it really confuses me. Like *how*?! Maybe my assumption that they are able to critically think is vastly inaccurate.
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#2
I’m an ocean lifeguard - I was driving a truck on a beach that has unstable cliff faces, so part of my job is telling people it’s unsafe to sit under them. I pulled up to a man that was comically sitting on a fallen rock, directly in front of a sign that said, “DANGER FALLING ROCKS.” Warned him it wasn’t a safe area, and he kinda smirked for a second before looking around, and seeing that I was right. He got very, very embarrassed - turned bright red, head in his hands, visibly upset and very apologetic. I told him it’s fine, and that a lot of people don’t think about things like that. He said, “No, you don’t get it. I should know better, out of anyone. It’s not fine. I’m a geologist.”.
#3
My psych once asked me what caused my PTSD
As I was telling him, I started crying and shaking.
"Damn I didn't think the question would make you cry" he responded.
THREE PHDS AND YOU DON'T THINK REMEMBERING THE CAUSE OF THEIR PTSD WILL MAKE SOMEONE CRY???
#4
Last week I couldn't find my phone, so I looked down to the phone in my hand and started to try the Find My Phone thing when... oh.
(I swear I'm at least reasonably intelligent.).
#5
Just this week someone microwaved a fork in the office kitchen. I work at a research institute. Everyone in here has at least a master's in engineering.
Nathaniel He/Him Cis-Het 1 week ago
Working at a research institute? He was just researching the unknown effects of metal in a microwave. For science.
#6
My Dad is super smart. Like... He's a member of MENSA smart, has several patents he wrote when he was in his early 20's, once asked a flight attendant a bunch of weird questions about the plane we were on so he could do some crazy math equations FOR FUN. You get the picture.
But his smarts were no match for little toddler me crying because my toy pony stopped making noise after I brought into the bathtub. Dad panicked, figured he could dry it out.... In the microwave. He did not seem to make the connection that in order to make those noises it had to have electronic (aka METAL) parta inside it. So pony goes in the microwave and a few seconds later it basically explodes into flames. We were both in shock for a few minutes. Surprisingly I stopped crying because it was so unexpected and then Dad taught me about how metal doesn't go in the microwave.
#7
Buy a billion dollar platform and tell the main revenue stream to f**k off.
#8
My cousin (21) got the highest marks in his A levels and GCSE’s in england, he’s now in scotland studying at one of the hardest university’s to get into, one day he decided to hoover the lounge this is how it went:
*me walks in*
“what are you doing?”
him- “hoovering the lounge?”
me- “you need to plug it in first?”
he was pushing the hoover around the room without plugging it in and turning it on.
Nathaniel He/Him Cis-Het 1 week ago (edited)
That's nothing, lots of men fall penis first into the hose of a vacuum cleaner.
#9
There's a lot of guys who would never get laid if it wasn't for intelligent women who make bad choices.
#10
As a kid I saw my stepfather (a Doctor with several specialist qualifications who did two Masters in the same year on a whim) put his hand under the lawnmower to dislodge something....The lawnmower was still on. He didn't lose fingers permanently but had several months of recovery and skin grafting surgeries. He was academically brilliant but lacked a lot of practical life skills, clearly.
#11
This week I had to explain gravity to a group of people and they didn't believe me.🙈.
#12
My grandmother infamously tried to make an ice cream cake back when those were a new thing in the early 80s. She put ice cream on the cake batter…and put it in the oven.
My grandfather said it was tasty though.
#13
Someone with a Harvard PhD in biochemistry told me that it never occurred to them that different colors of Nespresso pods in their office meant different types or blends of coffee. It was just all coffee and sometimes the coffee was good, sometimes it was off, and sometimes it felt like it did nothing. It wasn't until they mentioned the last point to a co-worker, that the co-worker pointed out that this person was in the process of loading a decaf pod into the machines.
#14
A cardiologist I worked with was contacted by "Apple" about his computer security. He gave them access to his laptop and was working with the guy to set something up on there when I got suspicious and googled for him. I ran to his office to show him the apple website, saying they would never contact you by phone, and if you do, it's a scam. He immediately ended the call and shut the computer down. He had to make many phone calls and change MANY passwords as it was his work laptop. Thankfully, no harm was done. Proof that even highly educated doctors can be scammed.
Tiger 1 week ago
Honestly this happened with the C-Suite execs weirdly often at my last work. They’d get an email from a strange address saying “Hey this is (CEO’s name), I need you to do me a favour and pick up a bunch of gift cards and send me the numbers” (classic scam) and they kept falling for it 😂 I have no idea why they were making 300x everyone else’s salary.
#15
Computer tech here, traveling for work, I checked into the hotel. My room is on the first floor. I get in the elevator and press 1. Nothing happened. I press it again a few times. The other guy in the elevator says "Hey buddy, you're already on the first floor."
"Oh... Yeah."
I was really burned out.
Ace 1 week ago
In most of the world that's normal. Start at the Ground floor. up 1 is the first floor, up 2 is... you get the picture.
Tiger 1 week ago
In my head the ground floor is the first floor. As in, a 1- story building only has one floor. If it’s a two-story building, it has two floors. I wouldn’t call the top floor in a 2-story building the “first floor,” I’d call it the “second floor.” Why would it change if I added more floors on top? Just makes more sense to me that way.
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ChimeraBubbles 1 week ago
This is such a regional thing. In the UK it is ground floor, then first floor, then second, etc. If I were burned out and in a country that starts with 1 as the ground floor I would also be confused with the lift.
Fellfromthemoon 1 week ago
I don't say first floor in English, if I can explain it any other way. First floor=ground floor in the USA, many places: first floor= the floor immediately above the ground floor.
Julie S 1 week ago
This is one of the things I agree with the Americans about. The ground floor should be floor 1 the next floor up should be 2. Not the stupid way we do it in the UK. I always end up on the wrong floor because of this.
Nicole Weymann 1 week ago
I get what you're saying, but to me the European system is like "how many stairs do I take, how far above/below the ground floor is it?" It's like starting to count when there is anything TO count (you wouldn't say "I'm on the first floor" if there were no other floors)🤷
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Riley Quinn 1 week ago
Does this really belong here? How many of us have done stupid things when we're tired, stressed out, or when our minds are juggling a million things?
Epona 1 week ago
Came here to say the same thing. Other than the regional differences in what people call floors/storeys of a building, this one is just a matter of tiredness/stress, not legit stupidity
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Invisible Potato 1 week ago
i am a civil enginering, we count floors differently then other people. 1.Np, 2NP, 3NP etc, if its undergroud its 1pp or -1PP, there are no ground floors when we create a documentation for buildings. lots ope rich people who we rok for doesnt grasp this concept and say "its a 3 floor house" when its 5 (4 up, one down)
Aerial (Any pronouns/Canadian/Jewish) 1 week ago
One of the science centers in my city has a floor zero, just to mess with people. You enter on floor 1, and then floor 0 is the basement where the rotating exhibits go, but it's still funny.
Kat 1 week ago
Where I work, I walk from the street up a slope, to step into the elevator at -2 .... I have to stop at 2 to get dressed and then work on the 3rd floor .. many foggy mornings I still think 'I'll take the stairs. It's only 2 floors' ... And then sometimes I have to take another elevator to -1 that takes me to a tunnel under the street to a different building on campus. The tunnel has a slight upwards slope, but still takes me to -2 in that other building.. This place is designed to give you a hard time finding anything
#16
Physician got a flat on his high end Mercedes.
Mr Fixit decided to take things into his own hands, dismounted the wheel and got a ride to the tire store.
“I need a tire for my Mercedes.”
“Where’s the flat one?” They asked, presuming they could either repair it or get the specs.
“I threw it away, it was flat.”
Dumb**s threw the entire wheel and tire into a dumpster and it was gone when he returned. Car had to be towed, new OEM wheel ordered.
What may have been a $10 flat repair put his car out of commission for over a week and cost more than $1,000. This was in the ‘80s.
#17
I once had the great pleasure of getting to ask our very experienced master electrician who had decades in powering giant events but one day couldn't get his computer to boot:.
"Uh, Mike? Are you sure it's plugged in?"(it was not).
#19
My eye doctor walked into the wall once during an exam. My EYE DOCTOR 👀.
#20
Go down the entire anti vax big pharma bad rabbit hole. Threw away the free bowl cancer screening kit our government sends out every two years once you turn 50.
Now, she is undergoing chemo for bowel cancer. (Fixed major typo).
#21
My brother lit a firecracker, got distracted and put it in his pocket.
#22
I knew a many of people completely ruin their future by storming the capitol. Totally smart people. I talked to one recently after avoiding contact with him and he told me about his life since then. He cannot get a job at all no matter what the job is he cannot get it. He recorded it all on his phone so of course the FBI found him pretty easily. Took his phone. But the weirdest thing: he no longer owns a phone. He has like this nokia looking government provided phone that does absolutely nothing but call and text. Of course all messages sent and received are monitored. I literally don’t know how he’s supposed to advance in life like I don’t know if he will ever find a job.
#23
My friend was dropping me off home after a day of hanging out, and he tried to argue with me on which street that I live on.
Dude is an engineer.
#24
Bought balloons for a house warming party, blew them up by mouth, and didn't understand why they didn't float.
Granted, she grew up a Jehovah's Witness and wasn't around balloons a lot.
#25
I have a close friend, super smart, always had the highest average at uni, won multiple awards and stuff, and in conversations generally just either knows a lot about any subject at hand, or knows enough from other subjects to draw a probable theory about it. She's also kicking it in every other aspect in life- great girl, kind, humble, caring towards everyone, works out, eats healthy, is always learning a new language or skill, all in all an amazing girl. But I swear on my life, I have never seen anyone with a worste taste in men. Most of the guys she was attracted to/dated were losers, cocky bastards who think too highly of themselves, or just utter scum. I can't even explain it, to me the guys were walking red flags, a waste of a bag for bones.
Luckily, she finally found a decent, smart, caring, well-spoken man. I damn near cried tears of joy when she told me about him. They've been together for a few years now.
Space Invader 1 week ago
Sometimes I wonder if those are cases of what Terry Pratchett described as "jerk syndrome", where a woman is so grandiose that most people would not dare approach her because they think her out of their league, leaving only idiots to ask her out and her being grateful for it because she thinks others avoid her because she's not good enough...
#26
He coded a full on website in his notepad, then when he tried to copy it, he deleted everything by accident. guess he was shocked so he immediately closed notepad. then he realized he just ruined his last chance of undoing it.
#27
My mom, who was multilingual, said to me, “Watch out for that ice. It might be frozen.”.
#28
Believed she could cure her ALS by having her fillings removed because they contained toxic metals that caused the disease. Spoiler: it didn't work.
#29
Try to sand the underside of a fan belt while the engine was running. His index and pinkie finger are the same length now.
Korrie Broos 1 week ago
I had a friend with a Volkswagen Beetle Old model. The car would not start and she asked a male friend to help. He opened the FRONT of the Beetle and said to her that someone stole the engine. (for those who do not know the old Beetle the engine was in the rear of the car) She was so shocked and went to the police to open a case of a stolen Beetle engine. The police just laughed at her
#30
I had the most amazing friend he was super smart talented and rich. But was he a soft touch 3 times he married the same women each time with no pre nup because this is true love this time.
What do you think ?
Ali H M Salehuddin 1 week ago
Academic intelligence is different from emotional intelligence. And having one or both does not mean you are street-smart too.
Liz The Biz 1 week ago
Very true. My brother in law, academically, was a genius. He had degrees in maths, science, electronics, you name it, yet when it came to running a household he was clueless. I had to demonstrate and explain on more than one occasion how to perform the most basic of household tasks.
Load More Replies...
Keith Lancaster 1 week ago
My ex decided that he wanted to buy a washing machine and a drier. I was out at work when they were delivered. You have to understand that this guy was well educated by the way. When I arrived home he told me that he had rung the company he bought it from to arrange to have it collected as it was faulty. Turns out that he had tried to use the washer before having it plumbed in to the water supply.
Daniel 1 week ago
Knowing that absent-mindedness is a sign of high intelligence is a huge comfort when I remember the time I unthinkingly pulled onto a street and hit a car going by, destroying the whole side of the car. It was being driven home from the dealership by it's new owner. I think, if memory serves, it had 27 miles on the odometer.
Verena 1 week ago
A country consisting of 95% of the descendants of illegal immigrants throwing a fit over illigal immigrants - and ruining their economy, because todays illegal immigrants do the work the descendants do not want to do.
Jac Carr 1 week ago
Many of whom have illegal immigrant members of their family in the country with them; I wonder how they're explaining they voted to get them deported, mostly without realising the laws would apply to THEIR illegal immigrant family
Load More Replies...
Brenda Spagnola-Wilson 1 week ago
BFF is what I call "Sheldon smart" (from Big Bang Theory). She tested out of her freshman and most of her sophomore year of college. Total brainiac. Yet kept needing to borrow money. Actually believed the - I have checks, so I must have money - thing. Also thought her monthly food card on campus should allow her to take anything she wanted back to her dorm room. A classic case of never being shown how things really work. Once it was explained, she felt silly but got it
SleepyVampire 1 week ago (edited)
My mom is generally an intelligent woman. But back when that amazing show House first started airing, she was shocked when she found out Hugh Laurie was British and said she didn't understand how he was able to sound so different for the show. I pointed out that actors use fake accents all the time. She said, "Yeah, but that's faking an accent, that's not turning an accent off." I stared at her for a minute and then said, "He's...faking an American accent." I was shocked at what a dumb thing that was to say.
Ellie Ahmed 1 week ago
My husband has a PhD, and when we were first dating I found out that he thought Texas was the capital of Alabama. In fairness, we are Australian and his PhD isn't in geography, but still......
Daniel 1 week ago
Why do you think anyone in Australia should know state capitals? I can assure you that nobody in the US knows the capital of the Australian state you live in.
Load More Replies...
McTrash (They/them) 1 week ago
My neighbor (a pilot) saw a video of a bear fishing and when said bear ate the fish she said “ew! He’s just going to eat it raw?”
Bob Brooce 1 week ago
I once saw a guy who is an actual, literal rocket science have trouble opening the trunk of a car. It wasn't his car, but still ...
Ali H M Salehuddin 1 week ago
Academic intelligence is different from emotional intelligence. And having one or both does not mean you are street-smart too.
Liz The Biz 1 week ago
Very true. My brother in law, academically, was a genius. He had degrees in maths, science, electronics, you name it, yet when it came to running a household he was clueless. I had to demonstrate and explain on more than one occasion how to perform the most basic of household tasks.
Load More Replies... Keith Lancaster 1 week ago
My ex decided that he wanted to buy a washing machine and a drier. I was out at work when they were delivered. You have to understand that this guy was well educated by the way. When I arrived home he told me that he had rung the company he bought it from to arrange to have it collected as it was faulty. Turns out that he had tried to use the washer before having it plumbed in to the water supply.
Daniel 1 week ago
Knowing that absent-mindedness is a sign of high intelligence is a huge comfort when I remember the time I unthinkingly pulled onto a street and hit a car going by, destroying the whole side of the car. It was being driven home from the dealership by it's new owner. I think, if memory serves, it had 27 miles on the odometer.
Verena 1 week ago
A country consisting of 95% of the descendants of illegal immigrants throwing a fit over illigal immigrants - and ruining their economy, because todays illegal immigrants do the work the descendants do not want to do.
Jac Carr 1 week ago
Many of whom have illegal immigrant members of their family in the country with them; I wonder how they're explaining they voted to get them deported, mostly without realising the laws would apply to THEIR illegal immigrant family
Load More Replies... Brenda Spagnola-Wilson 1 week ago
BFF is what I call "Sheldon smart" (from Big Bang Theory). She tested out of her freshman and most of her sophomore year of college. Total brainiac. Yet kept needing to borrow money. Actually believed the - I have checks, so I must have money - thing. Also thought her monthly food card on campus should allow her to take anything she wanted back to her dorm room. A classic case of never being shown how things really work. Once it was explained, she felt silly but got it
SleepyVampire 1 week ago (edited)
My mom is generally an intelligent woman. But back when that amazing show House first started airing, she was shocked when she found out Hugh Laurie was British and said she didn't understand how he was able to sound so different for the show. I pointed out that actors use fake accents all the time. She said, "Yeah, but that's faking an accent, that's not turning an accent off." I stared at her for a minute and then said, "He's...faking an American accent." I was shocked at what a dumb thing that was to say.
Ellie Ahmed 1 week ago
My husband has a PhD, and when we were first dating I found out that he thought Texas was the capital of Alabama. In fairness, we are Australian and his PhD isn't in geography, but still......
Daniel 1 week ago
Why do you think anyone in Australia should know state capitals? I can assure you that nobody in the US knows the capital of the Australian state you live in.
Load More Replies... McTrash (They/them) 1 week ago
My neighbor (a pilot) saw a video of a bear fishing and when said bear ate the fish she said “ew! He’s just going to eat it raw?”
Bob Brooce 1 week ago
I once saw a guy who is an actual, literal rocket science have trouble opening the trunk of a car. It wasn't his car, but still ...
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