What Do Stupid People Talk About?

I think Newlyweds will help you more than The Simple Life here, though, because of its candid slice-of-life approach to stupid.

Then they talk about how they won the Lottery.

that's my dad! though he's not an idiot.

So stupid people would talk about all the things other people do, except without ... um, the meat of smart.

29/06/2004
15:19
Re:

what a pile of gob shite. I so wanna be a critic or reviewer, then I could spend my days spouting off my own particular brand of opinionated gob shite.

as I have said, time and time again, and tirelessly say once more............why listen to the opinions of others when we all have our own..................and that is not going to change by hearing somebody else's - nor is yours gonna change somebody elses either!!!!

IP: 64.236.228.41

Nick

29/06/2004
15:29
So what you're saying then...

Is that ALL communication is pointless and no one ever grows, develops or changes?

Nice.

IP: 144.173.6.74

Karim

29/06/2004
16:00
Usually

The people who learn nothing from others' opinions are those whose matter least.

IP: 81.136.229.131

edo

29/06/2004
16:12
Re:

seriously, what does that even mean.

IP: 130.159.248.44

Nick

29/06/2004
16:15
I'll use big letters...

IF YOU NEVER PAY ATTENTION TO THE OPINIONS OF OTHERS, THEN YOUR OWN OPINION IS PROBABLY WORTHLESS.

IP: 144.173.6.74

Karim

29/06/2004
16:22
Granted

I missed out the word "opinions", but you know, it wasn't too hard to work out for anyone with the ability to read.

IP: 81.136.229.131

Nick

29/06/2004
16:25
YEAH KARIM BUT...

WHY READ OTHER PEOPLE'S POSTS WHEN YOU CAN JUST READ YOUR OWN, AFTER ALL YOUR POST ISN'T GOING TO AFFECT MY POST AND NEITHER IS MINE GOING TO AFFECT YOURS, EH, WHAT WHAT, THAT MARGARET THATCHER, WONDERFUL LADY, NO SUCH THING AS SOCIETY, EH, WHAT WHAT, ONLY INDIVIDUALS, ARE YOU A SHED SEVEN FAN, EDO, ARE YOU GOOOOOOOOING FOOOOOR GOOOOOOOOOOOLD?

IP: 144.173.6.74

Nick

29/06/2004
16:31
HEY EDO...

WHY BOTHER LISTENING TO SOMEONE ELSE'S SONGS, EH, CAN'T YOU WRITE YOUR OWN, YOU'RE NEVER GOING TO ENJOY SOMEONE ELSE'S SONGS AND NO ONE ELSE IS EVER GOING TO ENJOY YOUR SONGS SO YOU MIGHT AS WELL LIVE IN A CAVE EH, WHAT WHAT, THAT NIETZSCHE, NICE BLOKE EH, WHAT WHAT.

IP: 144.173.6.74

[No Name]

29/06/2004
16:37
Re:

Ok - so if you take what i said literally to the point that you have taken it to, i admit it does sound foolish - and even in writing it, I could see how what I said could be misconstrued - but my point is, people should think for themselves and have their own opinions, and the opinions of others shouldn't be used to justify their own. Why should a particular review of embrace be used to justify your own opinions which you've formulated yourself. There's no point - the whole point is that they're your opinions, your thoughts, no one elses, and as long as that is the case they don't need to be justified by the opinions of others.

If you want to listen to other peoples thoughts, maybe even agree with them, or if you so choose, take them as your own, then that's up to you, but my point is that we can all think for ourselves and we can all formulate our own opinions without the aid or help of others.

IP: 64.236.228.41

Karim

29/06/2004
16:43
Well duh

...of course we can, but if no-one clashed or agreed or loved or hated then there'd basically be no point in anything. Ever. Interaction is healthy, you know? Discussion and debate are the breeding grounds of creativity.

IP: 81.136.229.131

Nick

29/06/2004
16:43
THAT HELEN KELLER...

FUCKING MAGIC, COULDN'T SEE OR HEAR OR SPEAK OR ANYTHING BUT SHE STILL MANAGED TO GIVE BIRTH TO A DUCK.

In the following exchange, I appear as Martin. I've no idea who any of the other people are. (My brother, Darren, had posted earlier in the responses, tho he is not the Darren who posts here. This is just the tail end of the comments for the entry before I locked them.)

---------------------------------------

aimee is amazin

Posted by me at May 20, 2004 06:11 AM

jen n aimee run the show!!!!

Posted by the 2 of us!! at May 20, 2004 06:12 AM

HEY DARREN ITS AIMEE N JEN!! lol a showd aimee this after m/s n u can add things :-D mwuahahahah lol.
darren smells :-P

aimee n jen o.a.m!!!

Posted by aimee n jen at May 20, 2004 06:41 AM

OMGWTF!!1 U R ALL GAY K THX CYA!!!!1

Posted by martin at May 20, 2004 08:10 PM

no rely that wud jus b u

Posted by jen n aimee at May 21, 2004 12:48 PM

Apparently irony is lost on you folks. I think it's especially funny that you've been finding this comments page by doing a google search on "darren is so cool" when you probably don't even know who the Darren is who posted here. I don't even think you have any idea that this page is part of another site.

Take a hike, fuckers.

Posted by martin at May 21, 2004 01:43 PM

fuk u martin!! hey hey jen n ami!! wot yaz up 2?? soz a neva replyied a woz away wotchin a film! lol not as bad as uz :P!!!! lol ko
cya l8a
memba 2 keep ritin :P

Posted by darren at May 21, 2004 02:18 PM

fuk u u big gimp n a half!!
who cares if we found it that way. at least we'r not sad enuf 2 sit out n wurk out why ur on it. get a life n stop gettin wide 2 ppl u dont no!

anyway hey darren :-D lol nuthin much u? lol no bother :-P tok 2 u soon xxxxx

Posted by jen at May 21, 2004 02:46 PM

lol gimp n a half wot an insult jen :P u must be such a cool guy! ^o) ur prob bout 30 or summit livin wif ur maw. ya stupit prik!!!
so newayz jen.. samez reely. wb

Posted by darren at May 21, 2004 02:49 PM

"apparently irony is lost on you folks"
lol haha ur such a fukin sak!! lol a cant stop lafin at u hahaha

Posted by darren at May 21, 2004 02:52 PM

The reason I was able to work out how you got here is because it's my site... I can see it in the log file.

I'd appreciate it if you wouldn't use the comments on this site to send your friends semi-literate notes. As such, I think I'll turn off comments on this thread. Use the extra time to learn how to spell you fucktards.

Posted by martin at May 21, 2004 03:05 PM

"Hey, Charlie, you old son of a bitch, you trainwreck of a cunt, you gimp and a half, how's the wife and kids?"

This is a serious sociological inquiry on my part as well. I really want to know how the fuck AOL-speak happened.

I don't live wif my maw, but I'll be damned if it wasn't a dead on guess that I was bout 30 or summit. I'll be 30 in August! ya stupit prik!!!

I think Shalizi is awesome, but I do think he's pulling an RA Fisher / tobacco, which is to say that he's prob wrong, but is such a genius that he's capable of presenting an argument that matches his own ideology but is difficult to assail despite being false.

"But" "but" "but" forgive me, I'm three drinks in the bag and posting from my phone

And who can blame him, so many of the people who discuss individual differences in intelligence online are racist pieces of shit. Fuck them, but also g is real and strongly influenced by genetics . Shrug emoji

thx for that CS post

I graduated from HS with a 3.8 GPA and scored a 1330 on the SAT, then -- because of factors having nothing to do with "intelligence" as it appears to be being discussed -- flunked out of college with a 1.8 my sophomore year. There are lots of factors standardized tests can't take into account, obvs.

1330 is a fairly mediocre score, is it not?

Is it? (Or was it in 1987?) I have no idea.

(googles)

It appears the mean SAT scores in 1986-87 were 507 on the "critical reading" section and 501 on the math. (524/514 for white students.) My scores (checks) were 640 and 690. So above the mean, whether it's "mediocre" or not would I guess require knowing percentiles for that year. Which I'm not remotely interested in looking up.

1330, pssh, I did better than that when I took it in middle school :P
(for a gifted program like mh described upthread)

... but it's also worth noting that my parents bought me an SAT test prep book and made me work at it every weekend. I think the best I did on any of the graded practice tests that I took beforehand was a 12something, which shot up to a 1480 on the real thing, and then a 1600 when I took it again in high school. That was enough to earn me a full scholarship to university, which I immediately lost due to poor study habits and general slackassedness; now, ten years later, I'm still trying to finish my bachelor's degree. I spent many of those years viciously reacting againstn and tearing myself down, believing that my so-called 'intelligence' was less-than-worthless since it had failed to secure my happiness or my livelihood -- assuming said intelligence even existed at all, and wasn't just an illusory product of structural factors like class and race.

Weirdly, as I learned from recent conversations with my mom, a lot of the difficulties I ended up experiencing had been predicted in a special session my parents were invited to (after the test I scored 1480 on) about exceptionally bright children whose emotional development lags behind their cognitive abilities.

either way, one 'counterexample' can't prove or disprove anything. at best these theories claim to explain one third of variation in outcomes (graduating from college, in Phil's case), Phil just got pwnd by the other two thirds of senseless chaotic variation

the point C Shalizi was making is specifically about drawing causal inference from principal components/factors (with a heavy dollop of the elite statistician's scorn for dirty social scientists) he says himself it doesn't disprove the existence of general intelligence (if I tell you your clock is broken and your clock reads 12, I'm not telling you it's not 12)

the best proof that we all believe in "intelligence" writ large of some form is to close this thread and open a politics thread. it's impossible to call Donald Trump an idiot without the concept of a non-idiot. you really want to give up the ability to flippantly call people idiots on a message board?

xp ... and I'm still not smart enough to do things like type all that out and delete it before clicking "submit post"

xp lol I got pwnd because I am lazy and, as you said upthread, tried to coast without expending effort

same ;-)

but also, because i was hopelessly Internet-addicted and discovered ilx at age 17 >:(

"hey hey jen n ami!! wot yaz up 2?? soz a neva replyied a woz away wotchin a film! lol not as bad as uz :P!!!! lol ko"

I am over a decade late to share the following startling sociological insight, but in the early 00s I was friends on IRC with someone who typed like this all the time, and I confess I thought he was not exactly stupid as he was interesting to talk to and a good & imaginative musician, but "differently smart" perhaps

then he became the editor of a respectable-ish national magazine and it turned out that all along he could in fact spell and form coherent, concise grammatical sentences better than the verbose drivel like what I am currently spattering over the internets

to answer the thread question more directly, I am way less clever than all my acquaintances and I like not talking whenever I can get away with it lest people find out (also overcompensating with archaic words like "lest")

1330 is a fairly mediocre score, is it not?

7 short from being elite

i did pass irish and didnt have to attend classes, got a b2

honours: physics, economics, english, french, maths, history

wrote a really good essay for the english higher in particular

is this right is this what we're doing itt

1330, pssh, I did better than that when I took it in middle school :P
(for a gifted program like mh described upthread)

... but it's also worth noting that my parents bought me an SAT test prep book and made me work at it every weekend. I think the best I did on any of the graded practice tests that I took beforehand was a 12something, which shot up to a 1480 on the real thing, and then a 1600 when I took it again in high school. That was enough to earn me a full scholarship to university, which I immediately lost due to poor study habits and general slackassedness; now, ten years later, I'm still trying to finish my bachelor's degree. I spent many of those years viciously reacting againstn and tearing myself down, believing that my so-called 'intelligence' was less-than-worthless since it had failed to secure my happiness or my livelihood -- assuming said intelligence even existed at all, and wasn't just an illusory product of structural factors like class and race.

Weirdly, as I learned from recent conversations with my mom, a lot of the difficulties I ended up experiencing had been predicted in a special session my parents were invited to (after the test I scored 1480 on) about exceptionally bright children whose emotional development lags behind their cognitive abilities.

― bernard snowy

wanna take a break from test-score dick-measuring to say that my experience was similar (though my sat score wasn't anywhere close to 1600) and that all the self-undermining aside you _can_ do this. it took me a long time, but i did finally suck it up, do the work, and got past the hurdle where i freak out and say "fuck it" when things go wrong and sorted out the problems instead.

guys you are discussing your sat scores on the internet

answer to thread title

lol

ha! yeah, its a little too perfect.

but love to all you weirdos.

Every time I click on this thread, I have a flashback to freshman year of college.

thread is an episode of Saved By the Bell

I haven't read much through this thread yet because I can only imagine that it is bad and terrible, but every time it comes up to the top of sna I think:

https://vimeo.com/6306434

It is hard in this world to distinguish oneself. One grasps at whatever distinctions offer themselves, even if it is as trivial as having attained a perfect SAT score amid the general wreckage of your life.

When I feel like crying I start laughing, thinking 'bout...glory days.

Did so well on the SATs
Glory days
Now I drink to stop the DTs
Glory days
Glory days

I failed to mention my actual weighted GPA on the four point scale

it was 50

A teacher told my best friend in high school that he'd never amount to anything. My AP English teacher made a big deal at some school-wide senior awards convocation that people should watch out for my name because she expected big things. My friend went on to do SFX in Hollywood and is probably the most successful person from my graduating class. My English teacher didn't even recognize me at my brother's graduation a few years later, and I lost both of my hands in a threshing accident. Nothing means anything, man.

oh yeah that year I started to really flail in math class from not doing homework (and having what was probably the onset of my anxiety problems really starting to dig in), my mom practically cried after the instructor explained at conferences that I was doomed to life failure or something

I mean, just because I was in advanced math or whatever doesn't mean I'd automatically pick up study skills or understand why my comprehension was lagging. At the time I figured I was just a big fuck-up, but really there are a million things he could have done, from regularly collecting homework (he did it the day after the test) to actually talking to me

I'm gonna live forever, baby remember my name

Click on my post history to find out!

would be a good first post. damn.

the principal of my high school told me once that if i didn't watch out i might end up like my brother.

did the principal murder your brother

nah, he just meant being a loser living in my parent's barn with no electricity and driving a gremlin. i mean i did kinda end up like my brother but fuck that guy and his tough love.

I got ketchup on my SATs

are you sure that wasn't blood from when you stuck two pencils up your nose and tried to commit suicide

no, it was ketchup

why was there ketchup up your nose

wait. the scantron, or the exam book? which part of the test got the condiments?

scantron? cripes! when I took these tests it was always "use a number two pencil to completely fill in the circle next to the correct answer", unless, of course, it was the incorrect answer. what the hell is a scantron and can I see one in use in Tron: The Movie?

Oh same thing. The scantron was the machine that needed you to completely fill in the bubble so it could rapidly determine your "g factor" and predict your life

thenthe scantron was that devise which was wholly devoted to and adoring of number two pencil graphite. it had no eyes for any other substance, such as ketchup, which caused it to revulse with disgust and dock you precious "g factor" points.

have you ever used a scantron machine? it sounds like a machine gun.

my understanding is that machine guns are more Scranton than scantron.

why am I feeling dizzy, i think i need to lie d

ah dizziness. smart people don't get that.

FAQs

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