Intelligence is knowing a tomato is a fruit.
Wisdom is knowing not to put it in a fruit salad.
this post was submitted on 06 Apr 2026
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Showerthoughts
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A "Showerthought" is a simple term used to describe the thoughts that pop into your head while you're doing everyday things like taking a shower, driving, or just daydreaming. The most popular seem to be lighthearted clever little truths, hidden in daily life.
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- Both “200” and “160” are 2 minutes in microwave math
- When you’re a kid, you don’t realize you’re also watching your mom and dad grow up.
- More dreams have been destroyed by alarm clocks than anything else
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This is the reason every table top RPG since the 1980s has had intelligence and wisdom labled as different stats.
I would say that those are separate qualities: if someone had their memory erased, they could lose their knowledge and understanding without losing their intelligence or wisdom. (Intelligence isn’t unrelated, though—it’s what produces understanding from knowledge.)
Most people I know were 'educated' using multiple choice testing.
Great for people who can memorize things, but really doesn't require you to figure out how things work.
I was once studying with a fellow who is highly intelligent. We were quizzing each other on anatomy. All his questions were straight out of the book.
I asked him a question, "name five organs that are parts of two or more body systems."
Because that wasn't specifically mentioned in the book he was thrown.
Memorization only works if you know what the questions will be. Granted over time that is the case. Thats one annoying aspect as not only does it favor memorization but it also favors those who were able to find a good set of the questions one way or another. That is the case with regular tests to though as A+ tests get disseminated and people can memorize the "best" answer. One of the classes where people did horrible and thus I did great (at this point classes were hard enough that everything was on a curve) was an immunology course. The professor changed the questions and I will tell you. They are really not much of a change in some cases. Many people who could kick my figuative academic ass in other courses did horribly while I did as well as I ever do. I was in his office after he kicked out of class a question because so many people complained. Im like hey I got that right and there are only so many classes where im the A student. I need this for my grade point.
multiple choice and contents/questions straight out of the book is pretty bad practise by the teacher. at least thats what i learned in swiss teachers training
USA here [surprise, surprise, surprise!]
From 6th grade to High School, my state had standardized tests for most courses. If you're going to test literally millions of kids it's hard to do it without standardization.
On the other hand, that started bleeding into the other courses. Overworked teachers like these tests because they are easy to grade.
When you understand something, you can deduce related information without having memorized it—so understanding increases your total capacity for knowledge. It’s like a knowledge compression algorithm.
this. I am horrible at memorizing so I got through trig by deriving everything from the base sine/cosine rules.
Problem is that my brain uses lossy compression instead of lossless
That’s what gives us “educated guesses”.
I know.
Damn internet. I know it's always the obvious jokes that get posted, but I thought I'd get away with being the first one in on this one. lol
Its kinda funny because yeah you can tell stem types because they just hate to say something is definite in either direction. Its like I would have bosses and its like 99% is best your going to get from me. 99% is your super definte locked in absolute. I mean its not because nothing is like that but for how you function yeah that is it. If I say 95% then its like its going to work fine and if not we might need to do some small things to deal with. Lower than that though I would give pause.
I do it all the time
Are you talking about the Dunning Kruger effect?
I catch myself "parroting" sometimes when I talk. Where there is some fundamental gap in knowledge on some "best practice" I've learned.
Building things I've had the same experience too
I mean it gets you pretty dang far though