Have you ever met an actual dumb person?

I used to date this girl that was beautiful, sex was incredible, but was dumb as a rock. I could and should've been better about not wanting a relationship with her, but it's besides the point now.

I really wondered if she was a functional adult. My favorite and most extreme memory is asking her to heat some water in the kettle, and 5 seconds later thinking "she won't be able". So I silently went to the kitchen, watched her try, fail, and turn around with a wet puppy face saying "I can't do it". There's nothing weird about my stove. Gas, a lighter or a match and that's it. Countless people did it before and afterwards, I don't even have a clue how she failed.

I've met more stupid people, and it normally ranges from "I don't want to hear anything from this guy ever again" to "how the fuck are you still alive?". Most of the time, people aren't actually stupid but simply lack education.

I've met plenty of 'dumb' people that function just fine in a familiar environment. You would never know in normal circumstances. The problem comes when something out of the ordinary happens. For instance, we had a shop worker with a learning disability. She dealt with all the common problems just fine, but if someone asked for something out of the ordinary, or for directions (this was pre-smartphone) it quickly becomes apparent.

A ton of pre-millennials <strong>really huffed the leaded gas fumes / ate the paint chips</strong> and it shows. :/

If you haven't met a dumb person, you are the dumb person.

I'm not sure I understand the question.

When I was an undergrad in the late '90s, I got a clerical job in the facilities management (FM) department.

The president of the university had a fleet vehicle as a perk of his job. It was a very nice car that was donated by a local car dealer but since it technically belonged to the university, all maintenance was handled through FM.

Late '90s meant that the stereo had a 5-disc CD changer. And the president's most frequent complaint about the car was that the stereo didn't work. Every single time he had that complaint, it was because there were at least two extra CDs stuck in the changer.

You had to really force it to get extra CDs in those things. And that happened at least half a dozen times that I know of.

The definition of dumb is very elastic.

There is one summer student who came to work at my software company. He was in a very specialized and elite program at a top-flight Canadian university. Both his parents were professors at this university.

One day he came to our boss, and said that his family always went to Europe for 2 weeks in the summer, and he needed time off. My boss explained that he had been hired because we wanted to do a special project during the summer, and it would be very difficult to not have him on the team for a significant part of it.

My boss asked the student when the vacation was going to start. The student replied, "tomorrow".

At first, my boss was angry, but then realized that the student actually had no understanding that this was an unusual and onerous request. That's about the time I started learning about autism (and later realized that I was somewhere on the spectrum as well, just not as far along it).

I work in mental health and I’ve definitely met patients who have low IQ scores. However, even without getting into clinically significant low IQ ranges, I can virtually guarantee you that you’ve met people who have sub-100 IQs. 100 is the average human IQ score. You haven’t gone through life this far without meeting people who fall a few points below it, just as you haven’t failed to meet people who score above it. A person with a 95 IQ is not going to be able to be distinguished from a person with a score of 105 by someone who doesn’t have substantial training in assessing IQ (and even then, most experts would have to formally test people to detect subtle differences like that).

Yes, I have visited the United States of America, thank you for asking

So, I am normally very skeptical about people yelling about bubbles...but I went from working in IT like you to working blue collar, and thus essentially went from being mildly smarter than most of my coworkers to being very obviously the smartest in the room barring infrequent encounters with others like me.

There are folks around me in blue collar work that are very experienced at what they do and wise in that specific niche due to their experience, but in general my overall mental capacity seems quicker and more flexible than most individuals I meet now, which wasn't showcased nearly as much when I was with other nerds in IT.

So yes, you're in a bubble. I had also been in a bubble for many years and had forgotten WHY I had fled to IT and nerd shit, and got a pretty pointed reminder.

Anyone here thinking that they've never met a dumb person probably IS the dumb person lol

Wait haven’t you ever had to go to like, the DMV or a Walmart, or a CVS at 11pm? I’m not saying the professions are filled with dummies but the cross section of public you encounter there is sure to have a few dummies.

Yes.

Ran into a person in a random discussion about hand sanitizer. This was well before covid. They completely believed that having clean looking hands was better than having dirty hands. IOW if you’re a mechanic and can’t quite get all the crud out from under your nails but had scrubbed you hands with cleaners and soap as best you could that this was far worse than not washing your hands all day.

No amount of reason would penetrate this stance.