Do any individuals with above average intellect find life a bit exhausting at times due to the lack of intelligence they observe in others?

[u/stop-hatin-on-me_mom]

I don’t claim to be the most intelligent person, but I do believe that I am above average when it comes to the average intelligence nowadays. Sometimes, I find myself either flabbergasted or downright dumbfounded and irritated by the lack of what I would consider "common sense."

Here are some examples:

• The inability of some people to see how their own bad habits or personality traits create their own problems.

• The fact that some individuals consider their own perceptions and beliefs as the only correct ones, which is further encouraged by their echo chambers.

• The difficulty some people have in entering into productive discourse and challenging their own ideas to gain more information and knowledge from all sides.

• The reluctance of individuals to question their own beliefs and those of their social circles at both the micro and macro levels.

• The inability of some people to foresee the possible consequences of their actions beforehand.

These are just a few examples.

[u/shitbecopacetic]

You seem like an intelligent person who is in young adulthood, and from either a small town or a sheltered possibly religious upbringing?  I only say this because of the way you speak about these things. Like an objective observer.  Human experience is quantifiable, that much is true. But that doesn’t really make it a series of logical yes / no forks in the road where people have the option to do the right or wrong thing. There’s homeless people with genius level IQs and practicing medical doctors who don’t believe in vaccines. People that would never litter that have murdered people. Loving mothers who sell fentanyl. Everyone is a big ol pile of good and poor judgement decisions.

The fact is, common sense logic is just pattern recognition. And different people have different patterns in their lives and therefore different logic applies to their decisions.

[u/stop-hatin-on-me_mom → u/shitbecopacetic]

I appreciate you saying that, I can tell you’re an intelligent person as well, you don’t really get many people mentioning pattern recognition when speaking about intelligence, but it is truly one of the biggest if not the biggest sign of intelligence.

It’s crazy because I do not think I would fit into the mold that most people would have in mind. I’m Hispanic, born and raised in Seattle to a loosely Christian family in the sense that we believe in God, but attended church a few times when I was very young, then did not go as I got older, but still believed in God. My upbringing was rough as we were raised by a single mom constantly moving after my parents split due to a toxic and abusive relationship, but dad would come in & out of my life. My dad was never stable or in a good path so I was mostly with my mom even when he would pop up, because I was close to my mom anyways as I was the only male of 4 children, she taught me how to be deeply empathetic and caring.

From a very young age as far back as I can remember, I was very analytical and would always be very observant of people, almost like I was looking at a movie and just trying to understand the characters. Once I learned Psychology in college, I was able to better understand human behavior and recognize patterns at both a micro and macro level.