Doctors are encouraged to communicate with certainty. Breeds? Selects? For arrogance. Other professions apperciate and display uncertainty. Most scientists speak of confidence intervals.

The most pretentious people I ever met are scientists. Mathematicians, specifically.

You are being unfair. Show offs are found everywhere, and all in all docs are not particularly worse than many others such as scientists, economists, CEOs, whatever...

I don't know, I think we are all smart. Every single one of us. There are a few exceptions, but nearly all human beings on this planet are truly "smart" compared to all other known, non-human beings.

Unless this is one of those "everything's weird and 'normal' is particularly weird" arguments.

If so I agree that "everything's stupid and therefore it's especially stupid to think anything could be 'smart'"

> nearly all human beings on this planet are truly "smart" compared to all other known, non-human beings.

This is like telling someone in poverty "well you're actually in the top 1% of worldwide income, and the top 0.1% of all-time worldwide income, so things are pretty great!"

It's true, but it's a useless thing to say.

In my experience it's usually very intelligent people who manage to display moments of epic weapons-grade stupidity - usually through sheer hubris.

People are smart. What they don't always have is good information or the ability to know what they don't know.

I'm very weary of "people are dumb" arguments because they seem to lead to "and that's why we should dumb down our product, remove their freedom and treat them like crap" with an alarming regularity.

Brings two things in mind:

- polymathy, don't specialize too much, it's good to walk in other fields

- listen, being able to discuss, see the situation from all parties POV, exchange well

It's indeed rare to find this, also, I tried being less stuck up and listen but you quickly get stomped on by less knowledgeable but more dominant minds, it's tiresome.

There are still differences between people.