I'm posting this here in large part because I don't want to lose the link, but also because I think it would be of interest to others on this board. My little brother sent me a link to an article: The Anosognosic’s Dilemma: Something’s Wrong but You’ll Never Know What It Is (Part 1). I've read part one, but not pursued the other four parts as yet (time constraints, particularly on days when I retrieve my e-mail, because the e-mail usually creates the time constraints). The gist of it is that the same skills you use to decide what to do are the skills you use to determine whether what you've decided is a good decision. That means if you are stupid, you'll never realize it on your own.
It was of particular interest to me, because I have noted that before and expanded it into other areas. I have wondered whether I might be autistic, and whether anyone would tell me if I were--because if you were autistic, how would you know? If you were an idiot savant, would you be able to recognize that about yourself? A recent episode of In Plain Sight had a witness with Asperger's Syndrome; did she understand that she was different from other people, or simply know that she had a talent for remembering and working with numbers?
Someone once asked one of the world's great physicists (I think it was Freeman Dyson, but it may have been Gerard O'Neill) whether when he was growing up he wondered why he was so much smarter than everyone else. He answered "Not exactly--I wondered why everyone else was so stupid." I never wondered why others were stupid, but always assumed that I was the norm and everyone else was like me. It wasn't until I was in college that I had any inkling that I had more than just a knack for taking tests, and it was half a decade later that I discovered I actually was as smart as my mother and my wife always said I was. (Not that being that smart is worth much in the real world; intelligence is a useful tool, but there are quite a few that are far more marketable, including marketing skills.)
The fact is, we measure the world by the yardstick of ourselves. We perceive ourselves as the norm against which everyone else is measured. We are the political moderate; everyone else is to the right or left relative to us. We are the normal intelligence; everyone else is smarter or dumber. We are the social norm; everyone else is gregarious or withdrawn. We are honest citizens; others are either compulsives or criminals.
That is not the reality. Objectivity is elusive, though. If you ask the five most reasonable people you know, they will probably agree with you--because you find them reasonable largely because they agree with you. If you take a general survey, well, half the people in the world have below median intelligence, by definition.
So how do you know whether you're as smart as you think you are, or simply unable to perceive your own ignorance and stupidity?
That is the elusive question.
--M. J. Young