> i know it’s not going to be a popular opinion, but yes most people are stupid.

No, most people are not stupid. Ignorant or unskilled about many subjects? Sure, but we all are.

Consider any speciality you like. There are those whom are Masters in it, fluent in its nuance and implication. And yet those same Masters are novices in most other domains. Are they stupid as well?

To put a fine point on it, consider this haiku:

  Fishermen can fish,
  But if you want a new roof,
  Hire a carpenter.

I wish the issue was that we all just have different specialties. I'm afraid that some people just struggle with everything.

> I'm afraid that some people just struggle with everything.

  Human progress is neither
  automatic nor inevitable...
  Every step toward the goal
  of justice requires
  sacrifice, suffering, and
  struggle; the tireless
  exertions and passionate
  concern of dedicated
  individuals.[0]

HTH

0 - https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/martin_luther_king_jr_164...

They might not be stupid, but at any given time people might be any mixture of: distracted, anxious, in a hurry. I pay full attention when I’m using work software during a 2-hour block of focused time, but I’m really not doing that when ordering a passport online while trying to get on the train to make it to the restaurant on time.

Half of all people are below average...

no.. half of people are below the median.. I know it's a bit pedantic but in a thread making fun of stupid people lol

Median is an average.

There are three generally used measures of central tendency:

- The mean: the "arithmetic average", sum of observations divided by count.

- The median: the central measure. The single value (or averaged pair) at the center point of an ordered listing.

- The mode: the most frequently occurring measure. Sort a set of values by frequency, and pick the most frequent instance.

Most people intend "mean" as "average", but that's not strictly the case.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Average

For our next pedant's corner post, we'll take on the distinction between descriptivist and prescriptivist definitions.

I have never, ever heard anyone colloquially use the word 'average' and mean anything except 'mean'.

I have heard it all the time for median. Average height, average wealth, ect.

But people usually are expecting mean in your two examples.

I think they mean the median. Median income in a group of people is usually smaller than the mean becomes of extremely wealthy outliers.

If someone says something about the "average person", they are not talking about the mean, they are talking about the median.

It's possible that median is a better measure of central tendency for those things. It also sounds like you're interpreting their use of 'average' as meaning median when you think that would make more sense, rather than asking them (and in fairness, I don't usually grill people on which measure they're thinking of when they say 'average' either). In my experience, people who actually understand the different measures of central tendency usually (on average, heheh) specify one explicitly. The rest of the population is probably only aware of arithmetic mean.

Intelligence is approximately a normal distribution so the mean and median are almost exactly the same.

Ha! It is, but “median” just doesn’t pack the same snarky punch.

> but yes most people are stupid

Which is why democracy is so terrifying sometimes

It's not that it's an unpopular opinion; "hurr, everyone (except me) is dumb, lol" is extremely popular.

But it isn't a good, useful, insightful comment.