[POWERSBOOTHEFAN]

Now I REALLY feel stupid.

:(

[Olog-hai]

Shows that the Princeton professors ain’t worth the money they get, if all they spend their time on is nonsense riddle questions that have no relevance to actual life. How about finding a way to teach physical chemistry so that everyone can understand it or something?

[Navy Patriot]

I’m safe, I have never been stupid enough to subscribe to the New Yorker.

[lurk]

I’ve got some educated liberals in my family tree. I’m not sure they have the sense to wipe themselves.

[petitfour]

Just wow. Why did I read that? Not only did I read it, but I read it to my husband.

[Swordmaker]

It DOES have pertinence to our situation today. It’s why smart people can believe the twaddle that is “global warming” or think that despite the repeated failure of socialism wherever it has been tried, it will work if only the right people are put in charge. It’s the failure to STOP and think before making a decision, the use of a “feeling” about an answer instead of actually checking the actual facts or doing the calculations yourself (hockey stick, anyone?), and the failure to use REAL scientific method to examine any question and be equally willing to toss out cherished, long held beliefs, as well as to accept the hard to swallow strange ideas that challenge them when the newly discovered FACTS require you to do so, and to not keep sweeping either under the rug!

[Bob]

In a lake, there is a patch of lily pads. Every day, the patch doubles in size. If it takes 48 days for the patch to cover the entire lake, how long would it take for the patch to cover half of the lake?

Your first response is probably to take a shortcut, and to divide the final answer by half. That leads you to twenty-four days. But that’s wrong. The correct solution is forty-seven days.

That answer is only half correct. While it does take 47 days to cover one half the lake, it takes only one day to cover the second half. :=)

[mamelukesabre]

One of my favorite college professors was a stocky old white haired bohunk who specialized in structural foundations of high rise buildings. He liked to say...

“Higher education is a curious thing. It is a process which professes to broaden the mind but in actuality does exactly the opposite. The human mind can only know so much. You are forced to specialize. You begin to learn more and more about less and less. Stay in academia long enough and eventually you will know absolutely everything there is to know...about absolutely nothing.”

[firebrand]

I love the cartoon. Did you ever see such clueless-looking professors? The one on the right looks particularly doped-up.

[moonshot925]

I LOVE math riddles.

A=2
B+P+F=24
A+B=Z
Z+P=T
T+A=F
F+S=Q
Q-T=7

What are the values of Q & T?

[BigEdLB]

LOL I was qualified for and joined Mensa, but it was overwhelmingly a bunch of pink yappers getting together to find minutae to agree about, and when I was there, diss on Pres Reagan.

[Berlin_Freeper]

You can be smart, but you can’t be both.

[HangnJudge]

The problem with this introspective approach is that the driving forces behind biases—the root causes of our irrationality—are largely unconscious, which means they remain invisible to self-analysis and impermeable to intelligence. In fact, introspection can actually compound the error, blinding us to those primal processes responsible for many of our everyday failings. We spin eloquent stories, but these stories miss the point. The more we attempt to know ourselves, the less we actually understand.

The Eye cannot See Itself
Reason cannot study Itself

For this is Given an External Perspective
Ask to See through God's Eyes
He will Open Yours

[Romulus]

The real story here is that there are two kinds of stupid: the common, “state of nature” variety and the superficially educated variety. In the latter case of course the impossibility of stupidity among the elect of the cognitive elite is an article of faith.

[Running On Empty]

marking

[Cyclone59]

and the number one reason that some really smart people are stupid is.....

They will stay home on election day because Romney is not conservative enough or too liberal for them. Wake up and smell the coffee - would be better off with McCain right now? YES - NO QUESTION!

I’ll take a light republican over any amount of democrat - PERIOD. A light republican has flashes of brilliance where as a democrat has flashbacks and thinks that skittle pooping unicorns exist.

[wintertime]

The bat costs a dollar more than the ball. How much does the ball cost?
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

This is a **very** simple algebra problem.

Solution:

Bat + ball= 110 cents
Bat= ball +100 cents

Therefore using substitution of Bat with ( ball + 100 cents):

ball +100 cents + ball = 110 cents

2 balls +100 cents= 110cents
2ball = 110 cents -100 cents
2 ball= 10cents
1 ball = 5 cents

[Revolting cat!]

I hope the author reads this thread. Everyone is smarter than the author, the New Yorker, and the psychologists who conducted these experiments. And everyone is smarter and contemptuous of everyone else.

Everybody is stupid in his own way, said Leo Tolstoy, I hear.

Everyone can know no more than three or four things, said someone else, I forget who (that would be the fifth thing to know for me.)

[bmwcyle]

How much grant money did we waste on this study?

[Daffynition]