Men Not as Smart as They Think

So when the results of this study came out, I’m pretty sure I heard a collective, “Well, DUH!” from the world’s women. I wasn’t sure what was going on at first. I probably just figured Oprah Winfrey said something really well-duh’ish on her show or something. But then I read this story from Newsweek, and it all made sense to me.

I wish I could say I was not one of those men. Testing in high school showed that I had a very logical thinking mind, and that I tended to be logical “to the point of splitting hairs.” Even as a child, I tended to do things based on what seemed to be the most logical path. It would be completely illogical for me to lie about my intelligence.

However, I do have a rather clear memory of speaking with my wife (then girlfriend) back in 1995 about her having taken a test based on real I.Q. tests with supposedly corrected scoring to provide a relatively accurate I.Q. score. I proudly proclaimed that I had an I.Q. of, get this, 140. Yeah. I had never taken an I.Q. test in my life, but there I was bragging about being some kind of super genius.

In my own defense, I didn’t realize that a score of 140 is as high as it is. That, and uh… I’m a man. I really didn’t have a clue what the average I.Q. score was back then. Not very logical of me, huh?

Anyway, the test my then-girlfriend-now-wife took was out of a book she got at the local library. I was so confident in my self-rating (again, hardly logical) that I took the test as my then-girlfriend watched. In the end, I counted up my score with a whopping 127.

Did I learn my lesson? Hardly. I went around telling people I had an I.Q. of 130.

So what’s the point? Well, I would disagree with the Newsweek story. Only problem is I just got done proving that it’s true… at least in my case. Yeah, not very logical of me, is it?

However, there is one part of the story that I agree with: Men of average to below average intelligence tend to overestimate their smartiness by the largest margins. Well, yeah! Isn’t it always the dumbest guys that think they know everything? And can you blame them? They’re not smart enough to know that they don’t know anything!

Although, based on this famous quote from Socrates, if you realize your own stupidity you’re actually a genius:

True knowledge exists in knowing that you know nothing.

Yeah. Not very logical is it? Socrates thought he was pretty smart by realizing that he knows nothing. But if he knows nothing, then how does he know that? Because by knowing that you know nothing, you know something. It’s a paradox worse than all the crap they pulled in those Back to the Future movies!

I know nothing… except that.