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People share the 18 things that are a 'subtle sign' someone is really smart

"They effortlessly communicate complex concepts in a simple way."

via PixaBay

Albert Einstein

One of the strangest things about being human is that people of lesser intelligence tend to overestimate how smart they are and people who are highly intelligent tend to underestimate how smart they are.

This is called the Dunning-Kruger effect and it’s proven every time you log onto Facebook and see someone from high school who thinks they know more about vaccines than a doctor.

The interesting thing is that even though people are poor judges of their own smarts, we’ve evolved to be pretty good at judging the intelligence of others.

“Such findings imply that, in order to be adaptive, first impressions of personality or social characteristics should be accurate,” a study published in the journal Intelligence says. “There is accumulating evidence that this is indeed the case—at least to some extent—for traits such as intelligence extraversion, conscientiousness, openness, and narcissism, and even for characteristics such as sexual orientation, political ideology, or antigay prejudice.”

Reddit user Gisgiii posed a question to the AskReddit subforum “What is a subtle sign that someone is really intelligent?” and the answers painted a clear picture of how smart people behave. They tend to be great communicators who understand their audience and are more concerned with getting things right than being right.

Here are 18 of the best answers.

1. They draw wisdom from multiple sources.

"They draw wisdom from multiple sources. Wait but that might be more wise than intelligent... But I guess those two tend to be seen together a lot," — Puzzlehead-Engineer

2. They know their audience.

"They can switch up the way they talk to match the person they're talking to without sounding condescending. They listen to how others learn and explain it in that person's language of understanding," — Wynonna99

3. They develop a keen sense for their job.

"I used to work with a doctor - Tom Howard - and the day I realized he was a genius was the time he guessed every single condition a patient of mine had based on minute pieces of information about him," — Yodei_Mon

4. Curiosity.

"They are curious about everything. To be intelligent you need to be knowledgeable and you can't be knowledgeable if you are never curious," — soup54461

5. They're great at conveying ideas.

"When they explain something they make you feel intelligent," — gwoshmi

6. Considerate questions.

"They spend time thinking before asking a question," — ParkMan73

7. They make hard ideas simple.

"They effortlessly communicate complex concepts in a simple way," — joculator

8. They know what they don't know.

"They know when their knowledge ends and say something to the extent of 'i don't know and anything else i say on this topic is ignorant speculation,'" — blutoboy

9. They ask great questions.

"They can ask really good questions."

"Edit: to anyone not understanding what mean, I’m talking about people who ask “really good questions”, not just any questions, really good ones. I don’t know how one would achieve this skill(I know I haven’t)," — milkmanbran

10. They don't pretend to know everything.

"They aren’t afraid to say they don’t know the answer to a question," — xchernx

11. They change their minds with new information.

"They admit to changing their mind about something," — FarAwayAdventure

12. They pivot well.

"They apply knowledge from one realm into a new and relevant situation," — soubestitch

13. They are open-minded.

"They can genuinely consider an idea which opposes their worldview without necessarily accepting it," — paidshill29

14. They use analogies.

"People who use analogies to explain concepts to others. It’s a form of code-switching and integrating concepts on the fly and is a clear indicator someone is both socially and conceptually intelligent," — SwimmerAutomatic2488

15. They don't argue.

"I think intelligent people are more willing to calmly debate/discuss, rather than argue. Like, you explain to them why you disagree, and they listen to you and ask further questions about your viewpoint before offering a different perspective; as opposed to an unintelligent person, who would just resort to insults when other people disagree with them," — AngelicCinnamonBun

16. They learn from mistakes.

"Admitting when they're wrong and being willing to learn from mistakes," — siyl1979

17. A sense of humor.

"Humor. I think that truly funny people are often very smart and cognizant of the different ways an idea can be humorous on several levels. They also know their audience. I think the difference between say a Jeff Foxworthy and a Dave Chappelle and a Bo Burnham is their audience and their interests," — biscuitboi967

18. A love of learning.

"They say they love learning and they learn something new every day. Then they listen more than talk," — throwingplaydough


This article originally appeared on 12.04.21

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What chimps understand about keeping secrets that Donald Trump doesn't.

Recently, we learned that President Trump is not very good at keeping secrets.

According to a bombshell Washington Post report, in the course of bragging about how cool his job is, the president revealed highly classified "code word" intelligence to Russian officials visiting the White House.

Oops. Photo by Michael Reynols-Pool/Getty Images.

Most people would know not to do this.

In fact, you probably wouldn't even need to be a person in the White House to keep America's national security secrets safe. A reasonably competent nonverbal mammal could probably pull it off — and an animal president would come with a lot of advantages. No Twitter! No press conferences! We could pay them in food!

But which animal?

I wanted answers. More importantly, I wanted a Plan B for America.

Is there an animal that would be better at keeping secrets than the current president of the United States? And how quickly could John Roberts make that animal swear on a Bible?

The surprising, I-kid-you-not, possible secret-keeping savior species? Chimpanzees.

Photo by Guillame Souvant/Getty Images.

According to a 2015 study, chimpanzees can actually determine who it's important to hide information from.

Researcher Katja Karg of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, discovered that the great apes are able to identify individuals seeking to do them harm, and they are cautious enough to conceal information from them accordingly.

"Chimpanzees understand others' intentions, and they can adjust their behaviour to these intentions by flexibly manipulating what they make visible to others," lead researcher Karg told the BBC in 2015.

Researchers exposed 24 chimps to competitive humans, who would steal food from their cages, and cooperative humans, who would pick it up and feed it to them.

They discovered the chimps were more likely to keep food hidden in the presence of competitors and not say, for example, "Hey, we've got great food. The best food. The most delicious chocolate cake you've ever seen. Let me show you exactly where it is."

The experiment concluded that the chimps are able to selectively, intentionally deceive — and not just because they don't talk.

The key to chimpanzees' ability to keep secrets? They are able to distinguish between friend and foe on a very basic level.

Like, for example, the difference between the leader of an allied and long-term partner nation...

Photo by Saul Loeb/Getty Images.

...and a couple of guys who (probably) lied about the reason they brought cameras into your office.

Russian Foreign Ministry. Photo via AP.

Once the chimps make the distinction between friend and foe, they are able to adjust their strategy — hiding resources from individuals out to get them, while sharing with those who are friendly.

You know.

Basic stuff.

Which raises the question: Is it time to oust Trump and install a great ape in the Oval Office?

Not so fast, it turns out.

"They are not very good at [keeping secrets]," Karg told the BBC, of her chimps' performance in the experiment. "You can help them by giving them some way to distract themselves."

In some ways, perhaps they're not so different from our current president after all.

That said, what would be the harm in giving Mr. Bananas a few weeks to call the shots?

Photo by Andreas Solaro/Getty Images.

Could things really get any weirder than they already are?

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How one man revolutionized teaching by trusting kids to teach themselves.

It's time we shrink the gap between learning and knowing.

Imagine a classroom with 20 children, four computers, and no teacher. Under those circumstances, do you think the children could teach themselves?

This was educational technology professor Sugata Mitra's theory when he decided to put a computer on the side of a public wall in Delhi, India, 18 years ago.

At the time, he was working in the city for a computer software developer training company. His workplace sat next to a slum. He wondered how the children he saw there everyday would learn to work with tech in the modern age.

Mitra's regular work with computers allowed him to set up one with a basic search engine on a wall near his company's office.

The children, who had never seen a computer before, without any guidance began to learn new things and even teach themselves using the device.

Image via TEDGlobal 2010.

After this first "hole in the wall" experiment, Mitra decided to take his research a step further. He set up more computers in rural areas of India to see if this self-learning trend was ubiquitous, each time asking local children to solve a problem or address a question.

Relying only on each other and the computer as a guide, the children could always come up with the correct answer.

Mitra had discovered a new way of teaching that could revolutionize education as we know it.

He calls it a Self-Organized Learning Environment (SOLE). The idea is simple: give small groups of students computers and let them solve problems by working together. Teachers then facilitate with positive reinforcement.

The process works like this:

1) Students are given a big question or are challenged to think on their own. 2) Students choose their own groups and can change groups at any time. 3) Students can move around freely, speak to each other and share ideas. 4) Students can explore in any direction that they choose. 5) Groups are expected to present what they have learned at the end of the session.

Mitra believes it's the collaborative nature of the experiment that sparks learning. A child plus a computer alone does not equal brilliance.

He equates it to the swarm intelligence in animals. "It’s like when ants are carrying a large piece of food," Mitra explains. "We ask, 'How does any one of them know whether to push or pull? Who’s managing the show?' And the answer is: nobody."

An ant on its own can't move that food, but a group can move it 100 times over. Mitra believes the same theory applies to humans and learning.

In 2013, Mitra won the first ever $1 million TED prize for his SOLE research. He used the money to set up SOLE labs in England and India.

SOLE lab in Greenfield, U.K. Image via School in the Cloud.

The response from the children who used them was overwhelmingly positive. They loved teaching themselves with encouragement from facilitators rather than instructions. Just like with the "hole in the wall" experiments, when working together, they almost always came up with correct answers to problems.

The SOLE labs in India proved something else: Children in areas where educators are scarce can learn almost anything using only the internet.

There are now five SOLEs established in poorer areas of India. If teachers/facilitators have a problem or question, they can ask others who are utilizing the system around the world via the School in the Cloud community.

There's also a web of virtual teachers called the Granny Cloud who act as online encouragers to students if needed.

Image via School in the Cloud.

While this method of learning may help children thrive in our technology-based world, it does not set up kids for success in today's classrooms.

Educators believe letting children use computers on exams means they're not actually learning, but Mitra is working to change that.

He believes that with answers available just one click away on the internet, children no longer need to learn by memorization. He suggests schools should be teaching children how to find answers (which is what they'd be doing in the real world) rather than having them remember the answers.

In order for the SOLE concept to spread, the entire school testing system would need to change. Mitra says it's like solving any other problem in a SOLE — the answer will become clear with heads together and time.

Mitra has noticed, however, that schools are becoming more and more accepting of the School in the Cloud concept.

Image via School in the Cloud.

To Mitra's surprise and delight, tens of thousands of SOLEs have popped up all over the world independently of his work, all self-organizing under local hubs. Mitra says people often poke fun at him saying, "You mean you didn’t know the idea of the SOLE would self-organize?”

He believes the educational system as a whole will continue to bend in this direction, with or without his help. This progression could be a vast improvement on the current education system because it's actually teaching children how to navigate the world as it currently exists  — almost predominantly online. Today, it's all about finding answers to problems quickly and efficiently — shouldn't that then be our schools' primary mission?

Just because a system's been in place for hundreds of years doesn't mean we need to treat it with such reverence. It's time our teaching methods caught up with technology — in the cloud.

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This epic zoo escape story shows how fantastically smart orangutans can be.

Fu Manchu was on the loose.

Adult male orangutans grow big jowls, like this gentleman from a German zoo. Photo by Oliver Lang/AFP/Getty Images.

Fu was an adult male orangutan who lived in the Omaha Zoo way back in the 1960s.

Though he was named after the villainous mastermind in Sax Rohmer's series of novels, Fu was anything but a villain. He was gentle and easy-going, the Omaha Zoo said in a flashback Facebook post.

"Fu, at a young age, would climb inside of the keeper's parkas as they were wearing them, slide his arms into the sleeves and play with the keepers," they wrote. "[Fu] even saved a curator who had slipped on a wet floor inside the exhibit."

One day, though, Fu caused quite a commotion by escaping from his enclosure.

When zookeepers came near his enclosure, they were shocked to find Fu sitting in a tree. Orangutans love to climb trees, yes, but the tree was outside his enclosure, over near the elephant barn. And he hadn't just escaped, he also brought his companion and three children along with him!

In the wild, orangutans often build bed-like nests in trees. Romeo Gacad/AFP/Getty Images.

The keepers were able to guide Fu back to his enclosure, where they found an open, unlocked maintenance door. Head keeper Jerry Stones, assuming it was the fault of one of the keepers, gave his team a tongue-lashing.

Stones was willing to let the incident go. But then it happened again.

Just a few days later, the Fu Manchu family was spotted basking in the sun on a nearby rooftop outside the enclosure. The keepers managed, again, to get Fu back into his home. But this time, Stones was furious.

"I was getting ready to fire someone," he told Time magazine.

But a few days later, before anyone lost their job, one of Stones' staff noticed something: Fu Manchu was behaving weirdly.

It turned out that Fu had MacGuyver'd his own escape device.

As the staff watched, Fu Manchu ambled over to the dry moat in his enclosure that contained the maintenance door and climbed down some air vents to get to the bottom. Then, as they all watched, he proceeded to jimmy the door's latch with what looked like a homemade lock pick!

Keepers later found that the lock pick was a long piece of wire Fu had managed to find somewhere and bend into shape. Using it, he could unlatch the maintenance door from the outside.

What's more, the reason that nobody had been able to find it before was that Fu kept this lock pick a secret. He'd do it by hiding it in between his bottom lip and his gums between escape attempts, only pulling it out when the time was ripe.

Orangutans are tool masters, and Fu Manchu isn't the only orangutan who's shocked us with their smarts.

Probing for goodies is only one of the many clever things we've seen orangutans do. Photo by Colin Knowles/Flickr.

Another big male, Ken Allen, lived at the San Diego Zoo in 1985 and kept finding new ways to scale the walls. The zoo ultimately had to hire a team of rock climbers to climb-proof his enclosure. He even inspired a song, "The Ballad of Ken Allen."

Orangutans in the wild, meanwhile, have been seen using leaves as gloves, napkins, or megaphones. They build nests to sleep in every night. They've even been seen spearfishing.

For his efforts, Fu Manchu earned an honorary membership in the American Association of Locksmiths, according to The Seattle Times.

Fu passed away in 1992 and was survived by 20 children and 15 grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

The zoo still has orangutans today, although none have entered the history books quite like Fu and his ridiculous, amazing escape attempts.

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