Do you know dumb people who pretend they're smart?

[72doug2,2S]

There's plenty of conjecture on the God thread. I reckon I've even used that word once.

[Deschodt]

What's that quote again ? It's better to shut up and have people think you are stupid than open you mouth and have them know for sure.....

[strupgolf]

We have a weekly sales conference call which should last about 20 minutes, but goes on for one hour. BUT, the sales manager, who is new to our business, tries to sound smart, but comes off dumb. He cant say what he wants without using "ummmmm" probably 200 times in an hour. "I want to UMMMMM, say to all of you,UMMMMM, that sales are UMMMMMMM, and UMMMM we should UMMMMMM, look for all UMMMMMM, possibilities. God, give me a break.I am going "nukking futs"

[DARISC]

Anyone notice there are a lot of people being "thrown under the bus" nowadays? Why not "in front of the bus"? Or "at the bus"?

Thankfully, very few cases of petard hoisting these last several hundred years.

[72doug2,2S]

Originally Posted by DARISC

My innate tendency gravitates toward an erstwhile proclivity, not to mention a current propensity, to percieve in what you proclaim, a modicum of veracity of which the current culture seems sadly bereft, seemingly oblivious to the useful analogy of applying the scientific rule of Ockham's razor to language, rather yielding to the base ease of ineptly wallowing in hopeless obfuscation, ergo the sad and convoluted state wherein such an overtly lenghthy word as "abreviation" is used rather than "shorten".

Regarding kowing dumb people who pretend they're smart, I can only reply that I believe I know myself better than anyone.

I, on top of having attended a plethora of schools prior to high school matriculation, also had many subastute teachers.

That's a rather glib response. I once had a plethora of sweaters.

[Rick Lee]

Must also add that said co-worker watches nothing but "reality" tv because she says she needs to decompress after all the stuff she reads. Uh huh. Let's see, my office has subscriptions to WSJ, Wash. Post, The Hill, Politico and Nat. Journal and PR Week, all of which I read almost daily. I don't recall her ever asking me to pass the paper along when I was done with it. And somehow, all that reading just makes me want to read more or watch the news or at least anything other than "reality" tv. Well, she must have done something right to get into Columbia. But I've just not seen any original thought or attempt to follow complex issues on her part.

[onewhippedpuppy]

Originally Posted by Kurt V

People that return to college to get any degree seem to get caught up with the whole "I'm getting smarter" trip and just want everyone to know about it.

I went back to school, and will happily admit that I am a ******* moron.

[Tishabet]

Originally Posted by Rick Lee

And how do you guys like someone who ends every spoken sentence with "et cetera"? Arrrgghhhh!!!

My fiance's first language is not English.

Your fiancé is female, making her a fiancée.
In the United States, punctuation is placed within the quotation marks, even if the punctuation is not part of the quote.
...who ends every spoken sentence with "et cetera"? (correct in the UK)
...who ends every spoken sentence with "et cetera?" (correct in Fairfax, VA)
utilizing the kings english good is key!

[Rick Lee]

I have no idea how to get that accent mark above an "e" when typing on a BBS. And since I was asking a question, I believe the question mark belongs outside the quotation marks. But again, I'm not trying to appear smart. I'm just whining about those who do so and fail miserably.

[Tishabet]

Originally Posted by Rick Lee

And since I was asking a question, I believe the question mark belongs outside the quotation marks.

Not in the United States... check your Strunk and White.
In the interest of full disclosure, I used to work as a Production Editor for a custom textbook company, so I have an eye for these things. Most of our books were small run custom textbooks for a specific course at a specific college. For instance, we produced a lot of Western Civilization 101 books for colleges where that course is required for all Freshmen.
I often edited the 2-3 paragraph introductions that the professors would write to introduce excerpts from Plato or Walden or some such thing, and the total inability to grasp sentence structure and punctuation on their part was astounding. These were often professors at schools like MIT, Stanford, etc.
Outside of my narrow scope of talents, however, I admit to being a complete maroon.

[David]

Originally Posted by azasadny

Inconceivable!!!

You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

[Shaun @ Tru6]

[Dan in Pasadena]

Didn't read all the posts in this thread, but i can tell you my opinion,

The wise many knows he doesn't know much. He surrounds himself with the best talent he can and listens to their advice. Pretending you're something you're not is the fastest way to prove yourself a fool. "...speak and remove all doubt" 'Ya know?

[FrayAdjacent911]

Dumb people? How about incompetent people? It's been studied:

Ever encounter someone who thinks they know something??

Have you ever encountered someone who acts like they know it all about something, yet are really dumbasses? I'm sure you have. Well, a couple blokes at Cornell did a study, and found that it's a psychological phenomenon!

The Dunning-Kruger effect is the phenomenon whereby people who have little knowledge systematically think that they know more than others who have much more knowledge.

The phenomenon was rigorously demonstrated in a series of experiments performed by Justin Kruger and David Dunning, then both of Cornell University. Their results were published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology in December, 1999.[1]

Kruger and Dunning noted a number of previous studies which tend to suggest that in skills as diverse as reading comprehension, playing chess or tennis or operating a motor vehicle, "ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge" (as Charles Darwin put it). Specifically, they hypothesized that with regard to a typical skill which humans may possess in greater or lesser degree,

-Incompetent individuals tend to overestimate their own level of skill,
-Incompetent individuals fail to recognize genuine skill in others,
-Incompetent individuals fail to recognize the extremity of their inadequacy.

If they can be trained to substantially improve their own skill level, these individuals can recognize and acknowledge their own previous lack of skill.
They set out to test these hypotheses on human subjects consisting of Cornell undergraduates who were registered in various psychology courses.

In a series of studies, Kruger and Dunning examined self-assessment of logical reasoning skills, grammatical skills and humor. After being shown their test score, the subjects were again asked to estimate their own rank whereupon the competent group accurately estimated their rank, while the incompetent group still overestimated their own rank. As Dunning and Kruger noted,

"Across 4 studies, the authors found that participants scoring in the bottom quartile on tests of humor, grammar, and logic grossly overestimated their test performance and ability. Although test scores put them in the 12th percentile, they estimated themselves to be in the 62nd." Meanwhile, people with true knowledge tended to underestimate their competence.

[VaSteve]

Originally Posted by Rick Lee

Paul, alert the mods. She has hacked your Pelican account. I swear this is her writing. But she just called me on her cell and was in a cab in Atlanta. So maybe someone else hacked your account.

I'm getting the willies....I'm working with a girl who's going to Prauge on vacation tommorow....she's going solo....we're in Atlanta right now.

If you want to see garbage speak, come to management consulting. Better yet, the clients that hire us, sometimes even worse.

[VaSteve]

I hate in when people misuse the apostrophe. Mostly it occurs because Word underlines things it doesn't like. Inserting an apostrophe makes it all better. I put together a page explaining this to all my project teams.

[legion]

Like when someone uses an 'apostrophe' instead of "quotes"?

Could be a mainframe programmer thing...

[Tobra]

Originally Posted by sammyg2

Brevity?

Dude, its the soul of wit

Originally Posted by legion

Are you channeling Superman?

Supes wishes he ever came up with a rejoinder as witty as that

People don't really bother me much, even if they are morons who think they know what they are talking about. I fortunately am in a position where I can pretty much choose who I interact with on a daily basis. I had a patient who was commenting about my family, we had been talking about my son's wedding. She persisted even after I asked her several times to change the subject. That was the last day I saw her, she is a dumb/pseudo-smart person. My ex-wife is too, good lord it was painful to listen to her fat drunk ass when she did her multiple page speech at the boy's nuptials.

Whenever my brother is feeding you a line of BS and has you fooled, he will say, "It's true, studies have been done," and you know he is full of crap.

Overall, good thread, the 'hawk made me laugh out loud with his Supermanchanneling powers

[Danny_Ocean]

Originally Posted by Rick Lee

This is a pet peeve of mine. A co-worker, who went to part-time status to get her master's at Columbia (must be smart, right?) is always throwing huge SAT words around and using horrible spelling, grammar and punctuation in company emails. She's the kind of person who subscribes to Atlantic Monthly or The New Yorker, not to read them, but to have them on her coffee table. When my boss asked us on email for some history on an account, her reply began "My conjecture is.....". She constantly uses words that clearly demonstrate she either has no idea what they mean or how they are correctly spelled or both, like "per sais." She uses "it's" when "its" is called for, "less" when "fewer" is called for and "amount of" instead of "number of". Man, when I was in prep school, any one of my English teachers would have rapped my knuckles for this stuff. It just leaps off the computer screen and screams "Idiot" to the reader. And how do you guys like someone who ends every spoken sentence with "et cetera"? Arrrgghhhh!!!

The wealthiest, most successful person I know can't spell to save his life (it is painful to read his e-mails...fourth grade level mistakes), can't walk and chew gum at the same time, and almost burned down his home trying to kill cockroaches with a propane torch. He has ruined more than one car by running low on oil/coolant and once used a buffer covered with sand (when he set it face-down on the driveway) to polish his car.

He's worth close to $20 mil, self-made.

So much for spelling = brains, huh?

[DARISC]

Itnretesnig (to smoe):

No maettr how bdlay one slples a wrod (as lnog as the fsrit and lsat ltetres are kpet crortelcy psoitoiend) it ins't all taht dcfiicfilt to fgurie out waht is bneig siad.

Hwoveer, i'ts ualusly ertexlmey itrtaratnig!