Get Premium
Dark mode theme is available exclusively for premium users. Learn more about the benefits of subscribing.
No fees, cancel anytime.
Dark Mode 
No fees, cancel anytime 
Hundreds Of People Just Had To Share The Stupidest Things They’d Ever Seen An Intelligent Human Do, And Here Are 50 Of The Best Ones
Ever do something so stupid that you question how on earth you ever got as far in life as you did? Such as grabbing the knife right by the blade as you’re washing dishes, going swimming in the sea in the middle of the night, or maybe falling asleep on the bus when you’re 15 minutes away from your stop?
I swear, we humans are the biggest hazards to ourselves, capable of finding life-altering issues where there may not even be any. One person was curious to see how many of us have noticed people with above-average intelligence do the weirdest things that didn’t correspond with their IQ.
The AskReddit community was quick to respond, and so here we are! Upvote your favorite responses, leave your own in the comments, and make sure to check out this Bored Panda post if you’re craving more. Let’s get into it!
This post may include affiliate links.
#1
One of my best friends, who is now a surgeon, and one of the smartest people I have ever met. During his first year of med school he was visiting his hometown during a break in the semester.
We were at a restaurant catching up, he ordered a milkshake for dessert that came with a maraschino cherry on top. He excitedly ate it then said something to the effect of
"Man, I love maraschino cherries, I could eat a million of these. I always wanted to buy a jar, and eat it all to myself"
To which I replied with
"John, you're 24 years old. You own a house, have money in the bank, and are in med school. You're an adult, if you want to get yourself a jar of maraschino cherries, you can. We can hit up the store as soon as we're done here."
He spent about 5 minutes struggling to process this new found information. You could almost see the gears in his head turning. After this brief delay, he looked at me with the biggest, almost childlike smile and said "Let's go now!!!"
We paid our bill, then headed to the nearest grocery store. John the purchased the largest jar of maraschino cherries available, and started eating. Afterwards we went to a house party, where john refused to drink, but instead just kept eating from his jar.
Long story short, he ate the entire jar in about 1 hour. 15 minutes later he started puking neon red cherries for the rest of the evening.
To be smart and to be intelligent may seem like the same exact thing. However, according to Difference101, intelligence is the ability to learn, while smartness is the ability to apply what has been learned. Just because you’re carrying around a lot of information doesn’t necessarily make you a genius if you can’t then apply it.
However, sometimes we’re faced with situations where neither intelligence nor smartness does any good, and a pure sense of dumbness takes over. Such moments were described by hundreds in the online community of r/AskReddit after user SnooTomatoes1254 asked this: “What’s the best example of a smart person being incredibly stupid you’ve ever experienced?”
RELATED:
#2
Oh, I almost forgot about this one! When I was in my final year of physics at university, we had a professor who would get very irritated at the pull string for the projection screen, as it would dangle down in front of the whiteboard.
Every morning, he would spend a good couple minutes attempting to throw the weight on the end over the light fixture above the whiteboard, taking anywhere from 5 to 30 tries each time. All the students would give tips and encouragement, and this became a kind of inside joke for the class of how long it would take every morning.
Months go by, and one day near the end of the quarter, we end up with a substitute. The sub goes to the board and, without hesitation, grabs the string and hooks it over a thumbtack stuck in the cork at the top of the whiteboard...
The entire class literally gasped in unison! The sub whirled around, asking what happened, and the whole class just starts laughing. Eventually, someone explained what happened, and we all had a good laugh that an entire class of physics majors never even thought of that solution, let alone noticed that the tack had always been there for that purpose.
thatlesbiantacocat 1 year ago
Why does this sound like something that would happen to me . . .?
#3
I’ll use myself: I have skipped 3 grades, told I was gifted, all that jazz. Yesterday I looked at a streetlight for at least 10 solid minutes thinking, ‘jeez, the moon is orange tonight’. I was sober.
Intelligence as a whole is a very interesting thing when we take a second to think about it. Each and every one of us is better at one thing than another, and according to Howard Gardner, a psychologist and professor at Harvard University, there are eight types of human intelligence, each representing different ways of how a person best processes information.
They are spatial intelligence (the ability to think abstractly and in multiple dimensions), bodily-kinesthetic intelligence, musical intelligence, linguistic intelligence, logical-mathematical intelligence, interpersonal intelligence (the ability to interact effectively with others), intrapersonal intelligence (sensitivity to one’s own feelings, goals, and anxieties), and naturalistic intelligence (the ability to understand the nuances in nature).
#4
I worked IT at a university. We got a call saying a printer would not turn on. The particular person who called was a very steriotypical, " I have a doctorate I know all the things," kind of person.
Anyway, I get to the classroom and they show me the printer proclaiming they checked everything including the power strip, unplugged it, plugged it back in and all that. They were very irate and rude the whole time I was there. While I was looking it over they were getting more upset because they had already checked the power cables and they were fine. Without saying anything I unplugged the power strip from itself, plugged it into the wall then turned on the printer and just walked out.
Gustav Gallifrey 1 year ago
I once had to drive right across Australia's largest city to an adjoining regio to deal with a 'dead' printer, having been assured that everything had been checked including the power outlet ("of course!"). I walked in, glanced at it, turned on the power outlet, printer worked, i said 'it's ok now' and left.
#5
I was head of security at a major Cambridge commercial building, it was a melting pot of the best and brightest people working some for of the best companies in the world, the combined IQ of this place would put NASA to shame. However, they me send an officer to the train station with a go pro strapped to his head so that new starters could find their way via a literal step by step video because they kept getting lost. The train station was next door. The verbal instructions to get there were "turn left". They also struggled to use the revolving door, they got stuck in the lift because they had to press open to open the door, the list of these goes on for hours. The maintenance guy had a great term for them, he said they were "like lighthouses in the desert. Extremely bright but absolutely f*****g useless" and it fit too well.
#6
Our physics professor once had held a remote lecture without turning his Google Meet on. So he just spoke to the computer for 1.5 hours.
When we gain a deeper understanding of our natural talents, we have a better chance of figuring out how to achieve goals in both our personal and professional lives, and this is why this is so important to consider. Yet, in the middle of all these different types of intelligence stand two that we are most familiar with: street smarts and book smarts.
According to Ed Butts, a person who has book smarts is someone who is intelligent and well-educated academically, but less knowledgeable and capable when it comes to handling important or immediate decisions in practical situations common to everyday life or “the streets.” One is not inherently worse or better than the other; they’re just different ways that people learned how to problem solve.
#7
Buddy of mine was in med school on a surgery rotation.
He’s in the OR, handed a razor by the senior resident, and told to shave the patient as part of prep for surgery. Totally normal and common med student task.
He starts shaving away at the guys chest. The way he tells it, this patient was really hairy, so he had to go clean off the razor multiple times. He’s trying to do a thorough job. Gets half of the guy’s chest done when the senior resident wanders back over. Turns out the surgery was for an appendectomy and he was supposed to shave his f*****g stomach.
That poor guy woke up from surgery very f*****g confused about why half his chest hair was gone. And my friend got made fun of every day for the rest of his rotation.
#8
One guy I went to school with said that English is the true language of God because The Bible is written in English
#9
I'm a pharmacist. I have worked with fellow pharmacists who did not know that:
- Lesbians menstruate
- Women usually do not produce breast milk until after they have given birth
- Jehovah's Witnesses do not believe in blood transfusions
Regardless of all these bits of intelligence available to us, we still make some of the worst mistakes ever. Like putting cream in a carbonara—the Italians hate you for that. But there is a difference in the types of mistakes we make, or rather, what pushes us to make them in the first place.
The Austrian novelist Robert Musil presented an idea in 1937 that stupidity was not mere ‘dumbness,’ not a brute lack of processing power. Dumbness, for Musil, was ‘straightforward,’ indeed almost ‘honorable’. Stupidity was something very different and much more dangerous: dangerous precisely because some of the smartest people, the least dumb, were often the most stupid.
#10
I knew a girl studying medicine. We were talking about planes and how they work.
She asked me where the engine is, and I said “you know those big spinny things?”
She said “ohhh, I thought those were to blow the clouds away”….
Nicola Doyle 1 year ago
The "spinny things" is not the engine btw. The engine spins the propellers. Everyone has their own knowledge. A doc should know about the human body. Engineers are interested in "spinny things".
#11
Not mine, but related to me by my boss about 25 years ago. She was friends with a husband and wife who were brilliant academics, highly regarded with research positions at one of the top universities in the country. The couple wanted to have children but their natural biology/compatibility said “nuh uh, not gonna happen” and they decided to adopt instead, from a foreign country as very few babies are put up for adoption within Australia. The arrangements were that the baby would be flown in with a caregiver and handed over at the airport. All went as planned, no worries.
Later that night, my boss received a call from the distraught academic husband. “Louise!” (name changed of course). “The baby is crying and crying and we can’t get her to stop! We think she’s hungry, but she’s not taking the bottle!” The adopting agency had given them a few basics just in case, one of which being a tin of baby formula. “You’re a mother! Can you come over and maybe help sort out what the problem is?” “Of course!” replies Louise, and is there within 15 minutes (this being a fairly small city on international scales). The wife rushes up when she knocks on the door and escorts her to where the baby is indeed crying like there’s no tomorrow, and has been for hours. Nappy is dry, nothing else is obviously wrong, she probably is hungry. “Show me how you’ve been trying to feed her,” Louise asks, and the couple comply. Louise observes their process, and makes one suggestion: “You’re actually supposed to mix the powder with water before trying to feed it to the baby.”
#12
I've been waiting so long to tell this story.
Two members of my family are very highly intelligent, so I always thought.
I go to their house and they just installed an above ground pool that came with a pool COVER. Instead of using the pool cover they went and bought all these insulated pink foam boards (1 in thick, 4x8 ft rectangle foam boards) I just sat there and watched while they cut up all the foam into like puzzle pieces to fit in that ROUND pool.
I asked them why and they said it was to keep leaves out of the pool.
So every time they got in the pool they had to remove all the puzzle pieces, then clean the pool because tiny pink insulation was floating on top, and when they were finished for the day spend an hour trying to connect all the puzzle pieces they cut back into the pool. The original pool cover was by the pool in the bag it came in.
The dumbest thing I've ever witnessed in my life.
According to Sacha Golobis, a reader in philosophy at King’s College London, stupidity is a very specific cognitive failing. Crudely put, it occurs when you don’t have the right conceptual tools for the job, which results in an inability to make sense of what is happening, therefore leading to more than questionable actions.
He believes that stupidity is based on a lack of the necessary intellectual equipment and a sense of misguided innovation, which roots from groups or traditions, not individuals. After all, we get most of our concepts, our mental tools, from the society we are raised in! According to Golobis, once stupidity has taken hold of a group or society, it is particularly hard to eradicate—inventing, distributing, and normalizing new concepts is tough work.
#13
My father in law could construct a new bladder out of a piece of your own intestinal lining, if you had bladder cancer and needed a new one. He’s saved thousands of lives that otherwise would have been lost to renal, prostate, and urinary tract diseases.
He once told me that someone with a bright yellow car was intentionally hitting his Mercedes Benz. They’d hit his car and sideswiped it once while he was at the hospital. He had it fixed, it costs thousands of dollars. Then a few weeks later, the same bright yellow vehicle did it again, this time nearly tearing off his fender and leaving a huge yellow gouge down the side of his car. He took it to the body shop a second time.
His next time visiting the hospital, the parking attendant said “Hey doc, it’s nice to see you. But I have to warn you….security was here and they’re kind of upset about the fire hydrant you’ve hit twice in the last month. I tried covering for you but apparently they’ve got it on video.”
weatherwitch 1 year ago
I was about to say that surely he'd have felt the collision through the car... But then remembered my father who was an appalling driver who once reversed out of his parking space right into a car parked behind some distance away. He swore blind he'd not hit anything even though there was an audible Bang and the impact could be Felt through the car. He got out of his car and said oh there's nothing damaged but daylight showed a very different story. He did let the owner know but only because we made him! It was only when he passed did I find decades of paperwork from accidents, it really was his default mode of driving 🤦♀️
Nitka Tsar 1 year ago
Some disease making him maybe loose consciousness for a second or forget things?
Carrie Laughs 1 year ago
Doesn't sound like he should be driving whatever the reason!
Load More Replies...
Marja Berisa 1 year ago
I'm sorry, I don't understand. Did grandpa actually mistake the yellow fire hydrant for a car? To me that screams some kind of a brain tumour!
Sarah Stalder 1 year ago
Must've just caught a glimpse of yellow. I've backed into many things.
Phil Vaive 1 year ago
How can you not feel and / or hear your self hitting a fire hydrant with enough force to tear off your fender?? I call BS on this one
Florence O'Grady 1 year ago
I want to know if the father-in-law is still alive. If he can make someone a new bladder, why isn't this procedure taught everywhere so colostomy bags will never be used again.
#14
One time I was at my friend Claudio's apartment with his brother just hanging out and watching a movie. All of sudden I hear a *woosh* and see a big flash of light. I look over at Claud and his hair is on fire. We get it out quickly and I asked him what the hell just happened. He told me, "I was trying to listen to the sound the lighter made when I flicked it."
We were completely sober at the time.
lauralett50 1 year ago
Remind myself of when my brother Mike was playing around with a lighter and a handful of gunpowder. You can guess what happened. Took 6months for his eyebrows to fully grow back.
#15
I used to work at a chemical engineering plant. One day I was in the kitchen washing my glasses with a drop of dish soap and one of the lead engineers said I shouldn’t wash my glasses like that. I asked him why not and he responded that I will wash the prescription off…
Combatting stupidity will typically require the construction of a new way of seeing ourselves and our world. But that takes effort, time, and a complex organization of thought since, as Dr. Donalee Markus states, complex problems are dynamic systems with interdependent variables that may or may not be knowable and can change over time.
That’s enough ‘smart’ speak for one day. As you continue scrolling through this list, make sure you’re upvoting your favorites, leaving comments along the way, and sharing your own not-so-smart experiences. Have a good one, and see you next time!
#16
This guy who was literally a renowned brain surgeon, and written a few books. Seemed like a genius at first. But over time I heard more and more odd takes:
* The holocaust happened because of gun control. If the jews had guns, Hitler woundn't have risen to power. This is a guy that has done surgeries to pull bullets out of people btw
* Speaking of guns, he did not see why active shooters were such a threat. They could be dealt with by a group of people rushing them
* Prison turns people gay. Straight people go to prison and come out gay
* in 2015 he was concerned that that Obama would declare martial law and cancel the 2016 election
* Lots of things are like slavery. Abortion is like slavery because the mother is controlling the fetus' body. Ohamacare is a form of slavery and a ploy for the government to control your body. This person is black btw.
So yeah, those are just some of the odd views of Ben Carson
Heather Daugherty 1 year ago
he also said that joseph (the old testament one) built the egyptian pyramids to be grain silos. he must know people have actually been inside them...
#17
My father in law is very intelligent. He taught himself how to solve a rubiks cube without looking anything up and is generally a genius in math, logic, puzzles what have you. He believes dinosaurs couldn't be real because they would be to big for their skeletons to uphold their weight. He has lots of other really stupid ideas because he is so intelligent he thinks he can just reason himself into correct conclusions without doing research or adhering to the scientific process
#18
One of my closest guy friends is a chemistry major with a 3.9 GPA but bought a fake ID that said he was younger than he actually was
#19
My brother is very intelligent.
He lived at home when attending college. Most days, he'd take the bus. Sometimes if my mom didn't need her car, he would be allowed to drive it to school. Multiple times he drove the car to school, forgot, and took the bus home.
#20
Because we only eat ham once a year, at Thanksgiving with the turkey, and the two are packaged the almost same way, I've always thought ham was also a type of bird. No one corrected me until last year, when I was 20....
#21
My doctor. During the period of my life in which I was dating my ex gf my doctor would INSIST every time I saw him that I needed to be on birth control because it was responsible to be preventing pregnancy. No matter how many times I told him that I was in a monogamous relationship with a woman he would still keep asking. I guess it it just didn’t compute
Tess 1 year ago
Definitely have to watch out for all of those miraculous conceptions that plague those of us in lesbian relationships. Wouldn't want to fill the world with more Jesus's; accidentally causing chaos, and confusion, amongst the devout whilst they try to make sense of the all the contradictions.
#22
I don't know if I count as smart, but I did a very dumb thing a few years ago :( I'd just bought my first bike with a disc brake. Cycling to work I thought "I bet disc brakes get really hot, there's a lot of energy being dissipated in rather a small bit of metal. Hmm 10m/s, 100kg, maybe ahhh 5 KJ, but the heat would depend on the cooling rate and they are thin and in a 10m/s air stream. I wonder how hot they get?"
At the next lights I bent down and applied my thumb to the disc to check SIZZLE AAAAAAAARGH
Even stupider -- I'd bought a phone with fingerprint unlock a week before and with the ridges burnt off my thumb I could no longer unlock my phone sigh.
They grew back in a week or two and I could unlock again, interestingly.
#23
My female cousin thinking she had prostate cancer.
She was her high school valedictorian and was in her second year of college, with high grades. When I laughed at her she got very upset.
#24
Friend I went to high school with years and years ago. He has his PHD in physics and spent time working at the CERN hadron collider in Switzerland.
Despite all of this, he votes Republican EVERY. TIME. He has even bought into everything about trump and stealing the election. I wouldn’t be surprised if he has even bought into the Qanon conspiracy’s as well. I can’t help but just frown and shake my head every time I see him post some right wing garbage on Facebook. *How can someone so freaking smart be so freaking stupid*
Roman Hans 1 year ago
Meanwhile, Q says Democrats & left-wing celebrities eat babies, and only Donald Trump can stop them. In four years with him in charge, how many folks were arrested for eating babies? This is how we know his fans are idiots. They move on to the next part of the conspiracy without asking, "Wait -- so that first part was BS?"
#25
So growing up I used to think I was a once in a lifetime genius and to be honest my schools low standards helped. I realized that I was not when I met a real one my freshman year of college. Guy was 18 and studied physics at a pretty advanced level, composed music and played piano incredibly, and was writing a novel. Thing is, he was 18 and not quite mature enough for college. He never went to class because he thought he didn’t need to and once Skyrim came out he never left his dorm anymore. Smartest person I had ever met before or since and he failed out of college his first semester.
#26
My grandpa was one of the smartest person I knew. At his last years, he was a math teacher in school but he also had a degree in thermodynamics, electrology and was an engineer as well. He designed the electrical system in our local airport and before that he worked in the weapon industry. That guy was the most stubborn person I knew. He had an injury in his foot that he didn't say to anyone, until he couldn't walk properly and we figured out. I forced him to see a doctor and that injury, alongside with being diabetic (which means his blood vessels were at bad condition) cost him his leg and eventually his life cause he gave up. Smartest person I knew, died of stubbornness.
#27
Very early in my career, I was tasked with an industrial engineering project on improving efficiency on a high volume product line. I guarantee you've seen the product.
First, during a current state analysis, I determined that the company was losing around $0.08 per part shipped. We sold them for $0.29 each. That's... not good, especially when you're producing millions of these things each month.
I presented this to the executive management team. One of the VPs cut me off mid-sentence and said "Nonsense... we make it up in volume!"
#28
I had a friend with double degrees. One in computer science and one in Engineering.
One day I opened the fridge and he was standing there and he said, "Where does yogurt come from?" He genuinely had no clue.
#29
Me. I was applying to Cambridge & Imperial (for the Americans, this is like Harvard & MIT), and over that summer stayed with some old family friends for the first time in many years, for a wedding.
They had one of those plastic clip thingies you use to hold groceries closed (bread, packs of nuts, that sort of thing.) I had never used or seen one, somehow. I could not for the life of me figure out the mechanism to clip it. I kept trying to put it on vertically instead of horizontally (i.e. as a perpendicular bisector to the top of the bag, instead of aligned along the top of the bag.) This went on for a good 60 seconds.
The family friends' son who I used to go to school with just started laughing, said "pass it here Cambridge boy", and clipped the bag.
I laughed, and laugh now, but jesus christ did I have a quiet mental breakdown about my total and complete lack of basic common sense. XD
Bonus: beyond that, the following year I did go to Imperial. I met a lot of students there who were even worse than me when it came to practical common sense. Most notably including one to whom I had to explain why the microwave was sparking when they put butter, still in the metal foil, inside...
Everyone's dumb deep down inside :)
#30
I'm seeing it now! I don't want this to sound like I am disparaging a bunch of displaced people, but one of the people I know well is incredibly smart. When it comes to computer engineering, so far there is nothing he hasn't been able to solve. He is very well educated and one of those typical types that lives simply and only has a vague understanding of money. He really doesn't spend a lot of his earnings, lives with his parents and doesn't really have any major overheads, apart from when he builds himself a new PC or what not. He told us one day that he has around £600k in the bank just through unspent earnings like it was no thing. He had no idea he could buy a whole house with just his savings, no idea what we were talking about.
Well as it turns out, he has recently been dating a Ukrainian girl over the Internet. They have exchanged pictures and she does look amazingly cute. Almost too good looking. Without being a git, I would say in a perfect world this girl is a touch out of his league.
Well, he popped the question over Xmas to her and she said yes. They have never met physically, as far as I can understand not even video-called. We are wondering if this is a girl looking to be able to emigrate here via marriage, or if this is some sort of scam run by some bloke(s) who have other ideas. Why did he mention he had £600k to us? Well glad you asked. It was £650k. Yep, in the last six months while they have been dating, he's sent her £50k or so over the various expenses and other things she's had to get through. And he's about to wire her £10k to pay for a wedding dress and flights over.
Now, don't get me wrong. If this is a girl trapped in a war torn country, she's likely trying to get out alive and, well, I'm sure most people would do anything they can when faced with the horribleness that's going on in the Ukraine. That's about as politically as I would comment on it. But given he has only gotten pictures, apparently some of them a little risqué, some of them look really well staged. None of these things look like they were taken on a mobile phone. Unless of course this girl has accesss to a photo studio and can edit photos like a boss. Who knows. But there were also certain things that made me wonder too. Whenever he would talk about his nerdy stuff, mainly board and card games, she made out like she understood but to me it didn't seem to be more than something you could look up online and fake a knowledge on.
Well look, you know and I know that there is some sort of scam afoot. He's off today to start making arrangements at a registry office to be married. I have no idea where this will end up.
We have told him our concerns, he's taken them on board, but seems hell bent on proceeding. What can you do? One of the smartest guys I know and I think he's getting duped proper and royally. I don't know the parents to ask their thoughts on it, so that's not an avenue. And to admit, I am his boss. Legally there is only so much I can say before I get myself in hot water too from a HR point of view.
NotTodaySatan!! 1 year ago
As an HR Director, though in the US, if an employee opens a door, you can walk through. So if he shares personal information, it's perfectly acceptable to ask if he is open to some feedback.
#31
I have a friend, who is a straight A+ student and always overachieves on work.
I had to explain to that same friend once that Albert Einstein was not from the 14th century Renaissance.
ᶜʰᵃᵒᵗⁱᶜ ˡᵉᵍᵃˡ 1 year ago
1879-1955 according to google - well, u learn something new every day
#32
My best friend in high school had a little brother that scored 1550 or something ridiculous like that on his SATs. His parents were ecstatic when he told them, but their joy turned into disbelief when he said “Yeah, it would have been a lot easier if I would have remembered to bring a calculator.”
So they made him retake the test with a calculator and he aced it! The world was his oyster at that point. He was contacted by a bunch of Ivy League schools and offered full scholarships to several. He debated what to do, but in the end he chose rather poorly… he chose to go to the local community college so he could stay with his girlfriend.
#33
Friend of mine has a degree in Marine Biology. She sprayed herself in the face with my Bidet
#34
My sister has been driving her bf's truck for a year. We get in the truck to go somewhere, she says wait, I need to go in the house to get a paper towel to dry off the windshield. I say, why don't you use the wipers? She says, I don't know how. I ask, what do you do when it rains? Answer: I stay home.
Kraneia The Dancing Dryad 1 year ago
As someone whose work truck is completely different than my personal vehicle in terms of lights, wiper, etc. I emphasize. But I asked about stuff I was unsure about.
#35
I'll out myself here. I'm pretty smart. 1540 on the SAT, 34 on the ACT, graduated valedictorian in high school, graduated cum laude with a degree in aerospace engineering from college.
A couple years ago my sump pump quit working. I figured out it was a bad float switch. So I bought a new float switch, took it apart, replaced the switch, put it back together, plugged it in and tested it by raising the float manually. Everything worked fine. So I stick it back down in the sump hole to start reconnecting it. What I failed to do was unplug it before I stuck it back in the sump hole, so the float switch immediately tripped and it started pumping a stream of dirty rusty water right in my face and all over my utility room. After I got it shut off I sat there for a second blinking water out of my eyes and audibly said "molten_dragon you dumb**s" to myself.
#36
Wisdom and intelligence are two utterly different qualities. I've known people of normal or below-normal intelligence who have navigated through life quite successfully. In the meantime, I've also know some really smart people whom I wouldn't trust with a box of kitchen matches.
The best example I can think of was the son of my parents' best friends. This kid, as my mother liked to tell me all the time, had an IQ off the charts. Mind you, I was no slouch, but I was an A-B student, while Robert was an A+ student. But he was also just kind of a dullard, not the kind of person I'd want to spend time with. Or anyone, for that matter.
My mother would literally ask me all the time, "Why can't you make the grades Robert does? Blah blah blahbity blah." Because, Mom, I'm enjoying high school and having friends and dates and a life. And while I earned a scholarship to a good liberal arts college, Robert got into Princeton.
My mother was practically fetishizing Robert going to Princeton. Every single time I was home, I'd hear about Robert this and Robert that. How he was going to win a Nobel Prize, etc. etc.
Except that Robert earned his degree in secondary education. Mind you, school teaching is a noble profession. But if you're going to burn through a couple of hundred thousand of your parents' money at an Ivy League school, that's not the degree you really want to get.
Robert graduates summa cum cum cum and gets a job an some inner city school. And quits after a week on the job. Literally couldn't handle it.
His next move is to migrate to New Mexico where he becomes a shepherd. A freaking shepherd. A job that doesn't even require a high school diploma. And he still is a shepherd to this day, unless he's gone all Unibomber and is scrawling out manifestos and posting them on telephone poles around whatever backwoods town he lives in.
My mother doesn't compare me to Robert any more.
Oh, yeah. I almost forgot my brother-in-law. Smart guy, an engineer, who makes absolutely catastrophic life choices. Had a weekend special with a girl and got her pregnant. Met a different girl who had literally been thrown out of her house by her husband for cheating that very day and let her move in with him. Married her for long enough for him to pay off her credit cards, then cheated on him and gave him herpes. She left him for a doctor. And yet the guy says he'd still take her back, twenty years later. And I'm just getting warmed up with him.
#37
Well, my cousin who has two f*****g masters degrees in finance and economics, put his hand in still spinning lawnmower to help it blow out rest of grass faster. He lost a finger.
I asked why he didn’t wait till it stopped completely.
He said it was just in a hurry.
#38
In college a friend had a 4.0 and was set to get her bachelors in 2 years! Insanely smart. We’re driving around on night and I joke with our mutual friend driving and said “oooo Adult Novelty store lets stop in and browse a bit” to which the genius friend responded “ugh. I hate books” 😂😂😂 still cracks me up every time I think about it
crowspectre 2.0 (he/they) 1 year ago (edited)
NOOO BOOKS ARE SO GOOD DONT HATE BOOKS (I know this isn't the point but still)
#39
my friend in school was very tech savvy and was so certain he knew how to temporarily disable the school's child lock software so we could play games on school computers without anyone knowing. what we didn't expect is he downloaded an exe file off the internet from home, downloaded it to a pen drive and brought it to school and accidentally unleashed a trojan virus on the entire system. dude got suspended for 2 weeks and we couldn't get any work done for weeks afterwards whilst tech support tried to fix the problem lol
#40
Not *incredibly* stupid but surprisingly: I have found myself working for many engineers and unless you have a PhD they are 100% sure they are smarter than you. Reality is that they are great at planning/logistics but usually a*s at fixing problems but they never see it because they are so confident.
Just today I had to explain to an engineer that the reason his level said that a shelf was out of level was because the wall wasn’t level and he wasn’t setting the level square on the shelf. So it was level from side to side but not front to back and he had me drive all the way out to the site to show him how to operate a level.
This took 45 minutes. He was convinced that he could *see* it. Next his level was broken. Then my level was broken. Then he couldn’t see it so it must be level. MAGIC! 🤦♂️
#41
So I'm pretty smart, I'm in several advanced classes and whatnot. One time when my family was traveling for a road trip at night and the moon was very bright and had an orange hue to it. I didn't realize that it was the moon so I asked my family, "what is that big orange glowy thing in the sky?" They all burst out laughing and said that was the moon. Let's just say now my family won't let me live it down that I asked that.
#42
31y M. I did some time in prison a while back, and as you can imagine you get all walks of life. A guy I used to play chess and share the paper with was a college professor on the outside. Smart guy. He decides he wants to clean the big industrial fan in the dorm, solid iron warehouse job, you know what I mean. So he goes and takes it in the shower to clean it. Unplugged. Walks it back out to its mount soaking wet, dripping. Plugs it in, and yanks the cord. I was so stunned he was even doing it I half thought it was some prank or something. But no, that little jig he did was the real deal.
#43
I believe I'm smart, yet I managed to cut my own cornea with an empty garbage bag. Ophthalmologist had a good laugh.
#44
Most PhD candidates I’ve met are great at the book stuff, bad at the life stuff. Like not knowing how to use a can opener while making strides in microbiology.
#45
A guy I used to work with, Softly spoken but extremely insightful. He had a knack of understanding a situation and drilling down to the core of the issue.
One very snowy day in winter, he decided to drive his motorbike to work. His reasoning was the roads would be full of slow moving cars and he'd be able to scoot past them on his bike.
What actually happened was he found himself struggling to keep his bike upright with a lorry just inches behind him. He said, one slip and he'd of been under that lorry.
He drove his 4x4 into work the next day. Lesson learnt.
Ervin Conn 1 year ago
Where I work in upstate NY we had two visiting German engineers that rode dirt bikes all winter. They had snowmobile suits and off road knobby tires on the bikes. I don't think they ever had a problem.
#46
In casual situations, the otherwise smart pastor of a large downtown church with multiple services on the weekend would quip:
"My motto is - Get them in, get their money, and get 'em out!"
(He didn't seem to grasp how people stood there in disbelief when he said this . . .)
#47
One of my best friends at school was seriously clever - like 5 As at A level back in the day clever - and when she was taking driving lessons, the instructor said to drive over the roundabout (ie to the opposite exit). She actually began to drive OVER the roundabout.
#48
I know an A+ student who would always make the worst life decisions, including trying to rob a store by pointing a gun at his own head.
#49
My math teacher in high school. She scolded me for xeroxing my hand for fun because she believed I would get radiation poisoning.
Gémeaux jumeaux 1 year ago
X-ray/Xerox... so many x's... who said math teachers have to know words?!?
#50
Know more than a few Ivy League educated, gifted kid, former prodigies who don’t use protection.
What do you think ?
Two_rolling_black_eyes 1 year ago
I have to go with every economist since the Hoover administration whose tried to support the theory of trickle-down economics and/or the idea of the rational consumer. Its been 100 years since trickle down economics caused not only the original Great Depression but every other one since then. The "rational consumer" (people always make rational decisions to maximize their own personal utility) does not exist but all of modern economics assumes we aren't influenced by our little emotional lizard brain that just wants to get laid and prove grandma wrong about investing in NFTs.
Seabeast 1 year ago
When I hear the term "trickle down economics", it isn't money that I imagine trickling down...
Load More Replies...
Rico Mendez 1 year ago
I don't know if this qualifies, but some years ago I was getting ready to go to work. I put on my shoes and went to tie them. I froze because at that moment, for about 30 seconds, I completely forgot how to tie shoes. I still think about that sometimes.
Sonja 1 year ago
Smart people tend to forget that no matter how smart you are, you still can't know what you didn't learn and can't deduct if you didn't at least learn the basics. You could have the smartest person on earth, they wouldn't know how to use the loo if their parents hadn't potty trained them and they hadn't learned at least the basics sometimes. And being a professor usually means you're good at your profession, but that doesn't mean anything on any other topic you're not trained of
Anna Stephenson 1 year ago
I was in the north of my state, where crocs live, I saw a sign that said "Achtung Crocodiles!"........ I literally said out loud "I didn't know Crocodiles spoke German!?".......... I've been IQ tested and know for a fact I'm not an idiot!
That Bi Book Lover 1 year ago
I have a theory - the more booksmart you are, the dumber you are at general life. Evidence: me :D
Diolla 1 year ago
Yeah. I never had to make any effort in grade school, high school or college. Got to a point where I was kindly requested to stay home from college because my obvious boredom was disrupting the class. Graduated second of my year at Uni. Recently had someone help me put my car through a car wash for the first time. I had no clue how they work and have been washing my car by hand because of that until now. Am 56. And speaking of cars, I fail to understand how people can find driving enjoyable or relaxing. So much danger! So many things to pay attention to while driving! It's sooo complicated! Parking is difficult! Etc. etc..
Carrie de Luka 1 year ago
Side point but car washes can damage paintwork - if that matters to you or not!
Load More Replies... PattyK 1 year ago
College degrees, at any level, do not equal intelligence, or even education. Just about any fool can earn a college degree, even an advanced one. They know a lot about just one thing. The people who are intelligent and/or educated are those who read broadly; they learn about many things other than just things in their specialty.
Kambia 1 year ago
That's all I scrolled down to say, being successful in academia does not measure intelligence, it measures how good you are at regurgitating certain information at a certain time-point. I've met many "educated" people who have lots of qualifications and have no interest in the wider world, know less than the average person in terms of life skills and can't hold a simple theoretical conversation or debate even. Education does not necessary make you smart; curiosity does a better job at that and that is often a trait that one naturally has.
Load More Replies...
Sasy 1 year ago
All that time studying, being bookworms etc to get ahead can actually limit the time spent gaining life skills, street smarts etc. You can completely miss the outside world if you spend all of your time head down in text books. I think that those that do gap years are very smart, learning a bit about life before getting back into the education aspect of it. I also think that no one should be allowed to study for a teaching degree without having spent some time in the real world from high school to college, because they even more so can miss out on a lot of what life could teach them, before they go on to teach others.
Susan Stead 1 year ago
Administrative Assistants see this stuff every day. I have a permanent kink in my neck from shaking my head at all of the "smart" people I've worked for.
AndersM 1 year ago
My mum once owed a small hotel in Copenhagen near the university and Niels Bohr Institutet. From time to time these extremely intelligent people would come and stay. It was a hotel with no reception so they had to use two keys. One for the main entrance and one for the room. Oh man. If you knew how many extremely intelligent people who can't figure out which key goes in what door. And these people are fixing our brains and Inventing nuclear stuff. Made me feel more relaxed about myself. :-)
A P 1 year ago
My brother is a genius physicist. When we were younger, my brother replaced the water pump in his Capri for him. On the way back home, me, Dad, and second bro are following him. There's so much white steam pouring from the hood, it's enveloping the car. He literally had to turn his wipers on from the condensation. My second, not as smart brother had forgotten to refill the coolant. My genius brother drove it the remaining 5 miles home because he thought that'd be better than pulling over in the REST ARWA we were driving by. All this with Dad honking, flashing lights, etc. So went from a busted water pump to a cracked block.
Bill Allen 1 year ago
I read these and I think if the time I was on my cell phone talking to my wife. I was getting frustrated and she asked me what was going on. I told her I was searching all through my car looking for my cellphone. She paused for a second and asked me what I was using to talk to her. Then I have to listen as she tells all her coworkers what happened and roar as her whole workplace erupts in laughter. Lol.
M Calad 1 year ago (edited)
I had a bf (now ex, fortunately) who was both incredibly brilliant and incredibly stupid. It was mind-blowing. One example: he was in his mid 30 and he didn't know how to drive, so I started teaching him. Every time it rained while he was driving, he would get mad at me because I wasn't turning on the wipers for him (I used to do that for him when he was not yet so confident at driving). I asked him why he was expecting me to do it, to which he replied that this was a copilot's task. I asked him how people driving alone managed that, and he responded that people must always have a copilot to manage all the temp settings, wipers and such. He was dead serious. I told him that he had been in my car with me countless of times and he has NEVER done that for me. From where did he get that? He got silent (and even more mad). He had been in million of car trips before and never noticed that the driver manages everything. And this was for many other things. Incredible.
Mary Rogers 1 year ago
My sister is reasonably smart, but one time she got a gas leak in her car and appeared to have no idea that this was a fire hazard as she was in no hurry to get it fixed. Only when I pointed out how dangerous that was did she take it seriously.
Two_rolling_black_eyes 1 year ago
I have to go with every economist since the Hoover administration whose tried to support the theory of trickle-down economics and/or the idea of the rational consumer. Its been 100 years since trickle down economics caused not only the original Great Depression but every other one since then. The "rational consumer" (people always make rational decisions to maximize their own personal utility) does not exist but all of modern economics assumes we aren't influenced by our little emotional lizard brain that just wants to get laid and prove grandma wrong about investing in NFTs.
Seabeast 1 year ago
When I hear the term "trickle down economics", it isn't money that I imagine trickling down...
Load More Replies... Rico Mendez 1 year ago
I don't know if this qualifies, but some years ago I was getting ready to go to work. I put on my shoes and went to tie them. I froze because at that moment, for about 30 seconds, I completely forgot how to tie shoes. I still think about that sometimes.
Sonja 1 year ago
Smart people tend to forget that no matter how smart you are, you still can't know what you didn't learn and can't deduct if you didn't at least learn the basics. You could have the smartest person on earth, they wouldn't know how to use the loo if their parents hadn't potty trained them and they hadn't learned at least the basics sometimes. And being a professor usually means you're good at your profession, but that doesn't mean anything on any other topic you're not trained of
Anna Stephenson 1 year ago
I was in the north of my state, where crocs live, I saw a sign that said "Achtung Crocodiles!"........ I literally said out loud "I didn't know Crocodiles spoke German!?".......... I've been IQ tested and know for a fact I'm not an idiot!
That Bi Book Lover 1 year ago
I have a theory - the more booksmart you are, the dumber you are at general life. Evidence: me :D
Diolla 1 year ago
Yeah. I never had to make any effort in grade school, high school or college. Got to a point where I was kindly requested to stay home from college because my obvious boredom was disrupting the class. Graduated second of my year at Uni. Recently had someone help me put my car through a car wash for the first time. I had no clue how they work and have been washing my car by hand because of that until now. Am 56. And speaking of cars, I fail to understand how people can find driving enjoyable or relaxing. So much danger! So many things to pay attention to while driving! It's sooo complicated! Parking is difficult! Etc. etc..
Carrie de Luka 1 year ago
Side point but car washes can damage paintwork - if that matters to you or not!
Load More Replies... PattyK 1 year ago
College degrees, at any level, do not equal intelligence, or even education. Just about any fool can earn a college degree, even an advanced one. They know a lot about just one thing. The people who are intelligent and/or educated are those who read broadly; they learn about many things other than just things in their specialty.
Kambia 1 year ago
That's all I scrolled down to say, being successful in academia does not measure intelligence, it measures how good you are at regurgitating certain information at a certain time-point. I've met many "educated" people who have lots of qualifications and have no interest in the wider world, know less than the average person in terms of life skills and can't hold a simple theoretical conversation or debate even. Education does not necessary make you smart; curiosity does a better job at that and that is often a trait that one naturally has.
Load More Replies... Sasy 1 year ago
All that time studying, being bookworms etc to get ahead can actually limit the time spent gaining life skills, street smarts etc. You can completely miss the outside world if you spend all of your time head down in text books. I think that those that do gap years are very smart, learning a bit about life before getting back into the education aspect of it. I also think that no one should be allowed to study for a teaching degree without having spent some time in the real world from high school to college, because they even more so can miss out on a lot of what life could teach them, before they go on to teach others.
Susan Stead 1 year ago
Administrative Assistants see this stuff every day. I have a permanent kink in my neck from shaking my head at all of the "smart" people I've worked for.
AndersM 1 year ago
My mum once owed a small hotel in Copenhagen near the university and Niels Bohr Institutet. From time to time these extremely intelligent people would come and stay. It was a hotel with no reception so they had to use two keys. One for the main entrance and one for the room. Oh man. If you knew how many extremely intelligent people who can't figure out which key goes in what door. And these people are fixing our brains and Inventing nuclear stuff. Made me feel more relaxed about myself. :-)
A P 1 year ago
My brother is a genius physicist. When we were younger, my brother replaced the water pump in his Capri for him. On the way back home, me, Dad, and second bro are following him. There's so much white steam pouring from the hood, it's enveloping the car. He literally had to turn his wipers on from the condensation. My second, not as smart brother had forgotten to refill the coolant. My genius brother drove it the remaining 5 miles home because he thought that'd be better than pulling over in the REST ARWA we were driving by. All this with Dad honking, flashing lights, etc. So went from a busted water pump to a cracked block.
Bill Allen 1 year ago
I read these and I think if the time I was on my cell phone talking to my wife. I was getting frustrated and she asked me what was going on. I told her I was searching all through my car looking for my cellphone. She paused for a second and asked me what I was using to talk to her. Then I have to listen as she tells all her coworkers what happened and roar as her whole workplace erupts in laughter. Lol.
M Calad 1 year ago (edited)
I had a bf (now ex, fortunately) who was both incredibly brilliant and incredibly stupid. It was mind-blowing. One example: he was in his mid 30 and he didn't know how to drive, so I started teaching him. Every time it rained while he was driving, he would get mad at me because I wasn't turning on the wipers for him (I used to do that for him when he was not yet so confident at driving). I asked him why he was expecting me to do it, to which he replied that this was a copilot's task. I asked him how people driving alone managed that, and he responded that people must always have a copilot to manage all the temp settings, wipers and such. He was dead serious. I told him that he had been in my car with me countless of times and he has NEVER done that for me. From where did he get that? He got silent (and even more mad). He had been in million of car trips before and never noticed that the driver manages everything. And this was for many other things. Incredible.
Mary Rogers 1 year ago
My sister is reasonably smart, but one time she got a gas leak in her car and appeared to have no idea that this was a fire hazard as she was in no hurry to get it fixed. Only when I pointed out how dangerous that was did she take it seriously.
You May Like 50 Times Great Works Of Art Were The Perfect Canvas For The Funniest Memes (New Pics) 50 Times Google Street View Caught Pure Comedy Gold In Real Life "Is This Real Water?": 45 Of The Dumbest Things People Have Ever Been Asked
Greta Jaruševičiūtė
Mariia Tkachenko
Ilona Baliūnaitė
Related on Bored Panda
