My good friend Nick has a theory that smart people always lie because their intelligence leads them to become easily bored with social interaction, and many of them glean pleasure from messing with other, less-mentally-well-endowed individuals. Here is a quote taken from a comment on this entry where Nick explains this.
I would never answer any of these questions, and it is fair to assume that a smart person ALWAYS has something better to do than participate in a survey that will yield inconclusive results.
Actually, I’d believe first that the intellectual community has an unconscience drive to mislead the general public (aka the norms) into what they like. The fact that statistics about smart people exist only proves my hypothesis.
I’m thinking we may have found the actual first Foundation [...]
I just happened across rather conclusive evidence of this. The evidence requires that one make the (admittedly potentially rather daunting) logical assumption that biologists are in fact smart, but from that point on, it’s watertight.
03:27:45 Jim: yo, so, animals are awesome
03:27:58 I: pretty much yeah, espesh the one with tits
03:28:14 Jim: which is like all of them
03:28:42 I: well, mammals.
03:28:48 I: coral reefs are animals, too.
03:28:48 Jim: yeah
03:28:53 I: I remember 6th grade biology.
03:28:54 Jim: touche
03:29:05 I: I’m sorry but a coral reef is not an animal
03:29:15 I: fuck science and fuck scientists it’s just not an animal
03:29:24 I: I would think that’s obvious, especially if you have a phd, jesus christ
03:29:36 I: but my friend Nick does have a theory that smart people always lie to fuck with people who aren’t smart
03:29:42 Jim: true
03:29:55 I: but applying that theorem in this case would require that we assume biologists are smart
03:30:04 Jim: also true
The debate’s over. It’s obvious. Everybody knows coral reefs are not animals because it would just be so stupid if they were. So it’s proven that biologists are playing a trick on elementary school teachers across the nation (and potentially the world, but I’m not really sure if the whatever parts of the world are outside of the U.S. and Europe have electricity yet). From this I think it’s fair to infer that since the vast majority of smart people play tricks on dumb people, biologists are indeed smart. I mean, they’re so obviously tricking people.
A bit later on the conversation with Jim, this little gem of a discussion cropped up.
03:41:05 Jim: so buffalo roll in their own urine so they can smell even manlier
03:41:22 Jim: before mating that is
03:41:53 I: it works. trust me.
03:41:59 I: I felt way manlier
03:42:11 Jim: i’ll have to try that one
03:42:31 Jim: i wonder why the animal world hasn’t adapted the kick in the balls
03:42:35 Jim: as a defense
03:44:08 I: well animals pretty much just eat and get laid all day
03:44:11 I: and then sometimes fight
03:44:23 Jim: yeah, but goat balls are huge
03:44:29 Jim: you’d think they’d aim for that
03:44:37 Jim: because it also hurts their mating
03:44:40 I: and when you think about it, the kick in the balls must have at one point been a viable technique, given the relatively secluded location of the testicles anatomically
03:45:06 Jim: true, but not in all animals
As one should notice, Jim was crafty enough to note “but not in all animals,” an obvious reference to the coral reef discussion, indicating that Jim is indeed in on the Foundation project.
Am I tricking you right now? You don’t know! (But no, seriously, I probably am.)
Wait, so now I’m in on the Foundation? What if I’m on Second Foundation?
Also, beaver lodges are so strong bears can’t break them. Watching The Life of Mammals has taught me a lot of useless info.
Useless my ass. My New Year’s resolution is that I’m going to apply this knowledge in my day to day life.
Look out, bears.
When I say “smart” I mean “smarter than the people they are tricking.” The fact that biologists spend their time tricking elementary school students doesn’t say too much about their intelligence.
This an important correction, thanks for it.
But biologists also tend to fail to convince fundamentalist Christians, who are generally astoundingly dumb, at least when it comes to understanding biologists. Does this mean that the fundies are smart?
Maybe they are tricking the rest of the world into thinking that they are dumb. The possibility that a good deal of them pose as farmers only strengthens allegations of the Foundation theory.