Munk said
"does anyone else get sick of girls picking the asshole??"

Hank said
I treat that as a sign that their intellect is not as impressive as they perceive it to be. Like I said, self-awareness is an essential quantifier for intelligence. How do we measure sapience in other species? The mirror test. Self-awareness allows one to recognize their individuality and creates the ability to perceive other creatures as separate entities and accurately compare them to oneself, or assume their viewpoint. It is the force that drives empathy, the greatest achievement in human psychological evolutionary development. It is also necessary to accurately judge yourself, like the magpie who recognizes that the bird in the mirror is a reflection of itself, and looks down at its own chest to see the dot that has been painted on it, observed in the mirror. Being able to create a mirror for your own personality and judging yourself, your capabilities, and your intelligence accurately, and having enough awareness and empathy to open yourself to input from other individuals (and being able to judge accurately), is the most resonating characteristic of a highly intelligent human. People like these militant atheists from the fedora brigade, who incessantly bash conservative Christians and insult their intelligence, have not tried to understand the Christian viewpoint. Making claims like "because I am enlightened by my own intelligence" shows a lack of self-awareness, since it is not their own intelligence that has allowed them to rationalize the non-existence of God or whatever, but the intelligence of prominent scientists and atheists before them. Humility and pride are both virtues but someone like that possesses neither and is guilty of hubris. By bashing the Christians and subjecting them to bigotry, they show that they also lack the empathy and awareness in others to engage in dialogue, making them just as guilty of being dogmatic and close-minded, which is exactly what they accuse the religious of. They could very well be smart, academically gifted, capable of powerful abstract reasoning or any other number of savant skills, but the essential characteristic of human intelligence, that which has made us a pioneering species, is weak in them.

Munk said
I'm a bit of a feminist.

Uskglass said
Oh god these guys are my favorites. I once saw one who said "Men are inherently more intellectual than women. But just because I'm superior to you doesn't mean I won't respect you."

Nortrom said
This thread gave me euphoria.#1 is probably not real, though. There are like 20 different versions of this image with similar quotes, all equally euphoric.

Uskglass said
I agree, but I think it's a little presumptuous to imply that none of these sad sacks of shit are "genuinely intelligent." The problem comes from the fact that even if you are an intelligent person, that's a very difficult trait to quantify or demonstrate. And when it's one of the few-to-only positive traits you have, people who are not particularly confident in themselves tend to put the nebulous concept of "intellect" on a pedestal. There's two ways that can go. The first is that you retreat into yourself and say "At least I'm intelligent" while the world spins by you, but it burns like hell every time you meet someone who is smarter than you, which is always bound to happen eventually, because in your head it means that they're better than you in every conceivable way. That's the path I took for several years early in high school, until I realized that insecurity is bullshit and I'm the fucking man.The other path is lashing out, deciding that intelligence, specifically your intelligence, is the most important trait and everyone who doesn't agree with you on everything is a fool and vastly inferior to you. Case in point, the fine gentlemen you see in this thread.

KuroTenshi said
...You punched him right?

Halo said
I disagree. I know in myself that there's a deep level of insecurity and need for the recognition (if not necessarily approval) of my positive qualities by my peers, and I do consider my intelligence to be both high and one of my more important traits. I'm also painfully aware that there isn't much to make me likable. Yet, I would and do relish the chance to meet people who are infinitely more intelligent than me. It's why I was deeply disappointed at not getting into Cambridge - the thing I was most excited about was that there, I'd be the bottom of the class instead of the top of the school, for once. It would have been a chance for an intellectual challenge, and though I knew I would have fully hated being outsmarted constantly, I also relished the idea of learning from and being inspired by these people. I've spent most of my life miles ahead of my peers, I highly value my intelligence, I'm pretty damn insecure, and yet I don't lash out or retreat into myself. And because singular anecdotes are never exactly solid evidence to the contrary, I'll note that I've met many people like this (again, not great evidence, but hey-ho). I think what you're saying is largely correct, as in those behaviours are , I just think that generalising it to such a high extent can lead to the exact sort of kneejerk shoehorning/categorising of people that you're criticising in Hank's statement that they all lack genuine intelligence.

Uskglass said
That's a very healthy outlook. I know people like you do exist, I was just mainly focusing on negative ways people might deal with it.

Hank said
Including bronies and other disgusting human vermin.