But no; plenty of neuro-normal people are both smart and socially awkward. It's this: smart people receive a nonstop series of disapproving stares, and this gives them flop sweat whenever they try to talk to someone new. They know it's only a matter of time before they get the stare. Anxiety is high..
Why are they stared at disapprovingly? It's not because they're smart. It's not that they use big fancy words. Knowers of big fancy words rarely feel compelled to use them (that's something pompous people do, not smart people). And it's not because they want to talk about, like, Kepler. Intelligent people quickly learn not to mention Kepler in normal conversation.
The problem is that they don't say the usual things the usual ways, and this disturbs people who have collapsed into communicating via stock dialogs, where each party mumbles the expected line.
The current level of conversation is shockingly low, and sinking rapidly. Smart people can't keep up with this descent, at least not convincingly. It's not that they wish to elevate conversations with big words and Kepler talk. It's just that they have a devil of a time speaking canned lines. And if you don't do that, you're the odd kid at the playground, so you get punched in the face a lot, so speaking to someone new means flinching at the impending punch in the face.
That's what this is. It's not some egghead thing. It's not about being too smart for the crowd. Most can easily dial down to normal smalltalk, but not the utterly mind-dead grunting most of us currently expect. In the 1950s, regular people spoke brightly, in full declarative sentences, and listened to the response. Smart people fit in fine back then, and had much less social anxiety. But they can't gain fluency in the language of snarky thoughtless bullshit, which gets them punched in the face a lot, which makes them nervous trying to talk to you.
My Quora answer on "How to tell if someone is intelligent?"
No comments:
Post a Comment