2006-07-20 11:15:39 · 16 answers · asked by melon_rose 2 in Social Science ➔ Psychology
It depends on your sample of population. If you took a sample of people say who drank sewage every day and were half brain dead then out of that population, there will be some who are smarter and some who are not as smart. But compare them to a population of people who did not drink the tainted water, maybe we are genius and they are completely at the lowest of intelligence. In almost any population you will get an average of people. You will have some stupid people and some smart people and most people falling in the middle. In statistics, it's what is called a bell curve. Now you have to be careful in your population sampling because some times particular people can "skew" the results or throw them completely off. Say for instance in a population of you me and some people we know, we also have george bush and all of his buddies. Suddenly the curve shifts and we will look more stupid than we actually are. So we have to account for this sort of thing.
Also.. remember this, the definition of "intelligence" is easy to dispute. To say that an intelligent person is just a person who knows math and english seems a bit weak. What about people who are musically gifted? What about gymnasts.. or what about people who have street knowledge? An expert carpenter would not be accounted for as being intelligent if he did not pass the math and english exam. Though, he'd be the first one I'd hire for the job to work on my house over all the other guys because he knows what he is doing. What do you think? This is concept called Multiple Intelligence. So as you can see, this is a very complicated problem.. and it is all relative to statistical analysis.
2006-07-20 11:27:30 · answer #1 · answered by phishycoding 4 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Well, you see the correct answer would be neither. If you look at things statistically, and that is how smart/stupid are defined after all, by comparison with the average, most people are average, about 50% of them or so, leaving 25% to be smart (above average), and 25% to be stupid (below average), out of which of course, 5% are very very smart, and 5% ... well ... dumb.
However there is another answer, equally correct. If you are smart, then very many people will seem stupid, since they actually are stupider then you. If you are stupid, then probably you cannot realize that most people seem smarter then you :)
2006-07-20 18:29:28 · answer #2 · answered by Xtyn 2 · 0⤊ 0⤋
There is a low percentage of smart people. It seems like the percentage of stupid people is increasing and if it doesn't stop more than 50% will end up that way. But for right now I'd say that more than 50% are in the middle and not at either end of the scale.
2006-07-20 18:28:41 · answer #3 · answered by # one 6 · 0⤊ 0⤋
It depends on who you ask really.
Obviously if you ask someone who is in the bottom 5 % intelligence percentile, they will say that they think 50% of people are in fact smart.
However, if you ask someone who is in the top 5% intelligence percentile, they will most likely tell you the exact opposite.
The question is, does being more intelligent mean you understand the idea of intelligence better, and thus more intelligent people should set the standard, or do "stupid" people who know what being "stupid" is, set the standard based on lack of intelligence?
I mean, should we measure intelligence with genius's as the standard, or should we measure intelligence with stupid people as the standard?
Probably the people in the middle.
2006-07-20 20:01:07 · answer #4 · answered by cat_Rett_98 4 · 0⤊ 0⤋
How do you define the terms smart or stupid. The answers can be manipulated to suggest a myriad of reasoning. There are many very smart people in this world that don't have a lick of wisdom. This is a shame.
2006-07-20 18:23:52 · answer #5 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋
Stupid.
2006-07-20 18:34:41 · answer #6 · answered by hopflower 7 · 0⤊ 0⤋
There are only about 5% of people that are really smart.
2006-07-20 18:20:12 · answer #7 · answered by broj7400 3 · 0⤊ 0⤋
1 out of 10 people is smart. 1 out of 100 are very intelligent 1 out of 1000 are extremely intelligent and 1 out of 10000 are geniuses.
2006-07-20 18:19:30 · answer #8 · answered by SlapADog 4 · 0⤊ 0⤋
I love this question and answer site but it scares me that a lot of people seem EXTREMELY stoopid! But then again,it makes it all the better when there are some real thinkers out there even young people!Yay to them and to you for thinking......
2006-07-20 18:22:55 · answer #9 · answered by Juliette 3 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Man there are some STUPID people out there!
2006-07-20 18:18:24 · answer #10 · answered by dolphin2253 5 · 0⤊ 0⤋