After 51 respondents (I only counted Yes/No responses or ones that clearly leaned one way), here are the results:
1. Do you think you are more intelligent than 75% of adults in your country? - 86% (43/50) answered YES.
Board 8ers are supremely confident in their intelligence. This question easily received the highest positive responses of the bunch despite the toughest percentage requirement; an overwhelming majority of B8ers feel they are smarter than three-quarters of the adults in their home countries.
2. Do you think you are more socially adept than 60% of adults in your country? - 31% (15/49) answered YES.
Despite a less stringent percentage requirement, Board 8’s positivity plummets with the second question. Less than a third of us feel we are more socially adept than 60% of our fellow countrymen. The wild swing in percentage between the first and second question is interesting. While Question #1’s response may point to us being a group of overconfident egotists, the combination of Question #1 and 2 suggests a more accurate and objective self-appraisal.
3. Do you think you are more honest than 55% of adults in your country? - 76% (39/51) answered YES.
This is our second most positive response. While it may be difficult to expound on this one (think about it – how do we even gauge our responses to this compared to more quantifiable subjects like intelligence or athleticism), I’ll try anyway: I buy it! I think most people lie more as they get older and more entangled in the complex maturities of the real world. Lie to your spouse. Lie to your kids. Lie to your coworkers. Most B8ers don’t have a spouse or kids, and we probably don’t have jobs important enough to warrant lying to our coworkers all that often. I imagine this percentage will decrease if I re-run this poll in ten years, assuming the same group of people respond. Someone remind me! Also we’re on a damn message board. It’s easier to be honest here.
For what it’s worth, this is the only question that was clearly answered by every respondent.
4. Do you think you are more hardworking than 55% of adults in your country? - 24% (12/50) answered YES.
Aaaaaaaaand there’s no defending this. Board 8 drops the hammer of brutally honest self-analysis on itself. Whether or not we consider ourselves brainy, sociable, honest, or athletic, there’s one thing we nearly all agree on – we’re f***ing LAZY. I suppose it’s not hard for me to believe, but it is tough to understand why we feel this way. Do we see our peers working harder as we let our natural brains coast us through life? Do we see our parents working hard to support us while wondering if we’re slacking? Do video games and the internet shoulder some of the blame? Who knows, but lol us.
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5. Do you think you are more athletic than 60% of people in your country (same sex and age group)? - 31% (15/48) answered YES.
Hmm… I was expecting a more positive response here. Maybe the percentage requirement shook our confidence, or maybe most of us simply didn’t participate in many sporting programs (or have let ourselves fall out of shape since). Board 8ers typically come from more affluent backgrounds than the average person, so I’d imagine we’re at least well nourished. Maybe too well nourished lol. Anyway, this is the least interesting question for me to analyze, so let’s move on to the last one, my favorite…
6. Do you think you will wind up more financially successful than 70% of the adults in your country? - 71% (34/48) answered YES.
This response – especially in conjunction with the others – is the most fascinating to analyze. Despite assessing our own damn selves as (essentially) lazy and socially unimpressive, the vast majority of Board 8ers still believe that we will wind up more successful than the vast majority of our countrymen. Trying to reconcile this with our dismal self-confidence in work ethic and sociability is freakin beautiful. I think most people would agree that hard work and good social skills go a long way toward financial success, so what’s up with these percentages?
Are we thinking that we’ll “pick up the slack” and start to work harder later, or – more likely – do we simply believe that natural smarts (which we believe to possess in spades) trumps all with regards to future prosperity?
I’m reminded by a study an old finance professor of mine performed. He asked several of his classes a very similar question, and a vast majority of his students believed that they would wind up richer than their classmates. It’s completely irrational – why would you be so confident compared to your peers, to the people taking the same class, sitting right next to you? If I had to play psychopathatrist, I’d wager it’s because people usually remain quite optimistic about their future. No matter what our past foibles or the gutters we may find ourselves in today, we believe that tomorrow, we will be stronger, smarter, better, and ready to make all the right decisions. That seems to be the case with Board 8, anyway.
SUMMARY By our own self-appraisals, Board 8ers seem to be:
- Very intelligent - Socially unimpressive - Very honest - Lazy - Unathletic - Confident that they will wind up richer than most people
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I think every response outside of 1 & 6 are accurate. 6 is ridiculously optimistic and there is absolutely no way 1 is true. The results aren't surprising (people, especially nerds, tend to think they're more intelligent than they actually are), but the average intelligence of a person here probably isn't much higher if at all than the average person.
Yeah, the more I look at 1, the worse it gets. 86% of us think we're smarter than 3/4 of the country? There's a psychological definition for that that I can't remember off the top of my head.
I think Board 8 attracts a bunch of statheads and general nerds and it's not at all unlikely that we're smarter than the general population on the whole
actually everything on this strikes me as pretty accurate if I had a mental image of the average B8er
Being a stathead/nerd doesn't make you automatically smarter than the average person. Your average nerd is someone who really likes video games and thinks he's smarter than most people.
From: KamikazePotato | #008 The results aren't surprising (people, especially nerds, tend to think they're more intelligent than they actually are)
Yeah 86% is high, but I think a strong majority of us were probably right. Hell, I wouldn't be surprised if the percentage really was in the 80s. Everyone on this board is extremely literate and well-written compared to the general population. We know how to work a computer and are technologically savvy. Most of us have or are in the process of obtaining degrees, and I imagine a huge percentage of us scored way higher than the 75th percentile on standardized tests. These are all metrics by which you can gain some kind of insight with regards to intelligence, and Board 8 likely excels.
but the average intelligence of a person here probably isn't much higher if at all than the average person.
I disagree. We've got the average joe on brain lockdown. Given these results though, the average joe can probably beat us up and go home with the girl we've been crushing on.
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Also, I have to wonder: do you think we're being equally pessimistic with our responses to #2 and 4? Those ones have much lower percentage requirements, but we're terribly negative in our assessments for both.
From: Mershaaay | #007 B8: Aspergic blowhards who think they will be financially successful without trying
Last question was the toughest for me to answer. I don't consider myself particularly hard working or even driven to make a pile of money, but I'm educated and smart with my finances. And tbqh, my family and closest associates are really successful and close-knit so I'll probably end up falling ass backwards into their money.
-- Yoblazer: http://oi42.tinypic.com/15douf9.jpg Watch and you'll see... someday I'll be... part of your world!
Mershaaay posted... B8: Aspergic blowhards who think they will be financially successful without trying
To be fair, I -am- financially successful -already-; this isn't speculation.
I'm just not arrogant enough to claim that I, as a computer programmer, work harder than, say, a waitress at a busy restaurant, or a construction worker. Or just about anyone with two jobs or even one job + children.
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1 is easy enough to be confident on. There are any number of measures, between standardized tests, IQ tests, and even just comparing your marks to others once you hit university if you're taking an academic path through life.
And if you are going to a university odds are you'll end up with more money than 70% of the population. So that's my thoughts on the matter.
EDIT: That last statement depends on what you're taking. That's pretty clear though.
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living in a third world country where 75% of the population are still sweating it out in farms with carabaos and having earned a college degree in the best university while also having a secure job in the city pretty much make all of my answers true!
From: JeffreyRaze | #019 1 is easy enough to be confident on. There are any number of measures, between standardized tests, IQ tests, and even just comparing your marks to others once you hit university if you're taking an academic path through life.
Well you see, I think that intelligence has a lot more to do than simply academic-related stuff. In fact, I think that decision-making is a much better indicator of intelligence than how well you know algebra or chemistry and other crap that you find on tests.
The first question would undoubtably get the most Yes answers. However, let's say for the sake of argument that 50% intelligence = a C in school, 1000 on the SAT (Verbal+Math), 100 IQ, and a 24 ACT, and then combined with a section of abstract intelligence and such.
For 75% an IQ is around 110 (like most things of this nature it follows a bell curve). And your SAT is around a 1140ish or so. However, you're IQ does not really mean as much unless you're an outlier at either end (so extremely dumb or extremely smart), and can't always be a good measure of intelligence. LIkewise, the SAT might test your knowledge and vocab a little, but it's much more a test that tests you on how well you take tests.
Now if you assume that ~10 percent of students will get As on their courses on average (and from my experience more people get Ds and Fs then As and Bs), then 75% is looking around to be a low B.
So scholastically B8 averages a B- in school, has a 110 IQ, and has gotten a 1140 on their SATs (verbal/Math), and a 24 on their ACT. Now, this does not take into effect the amount of time we spend to attain these marks. Some people study forever to get to these, and others just coast through and good grades appear on papers.
The second question is hard to really determine since it's hard to really tell the difference unless you're really awkward or like a supermodel/rockstar who everyone loves. If I had to guess most people gather around the middle for this one and the deviation between person to person is normally insignificant.
Honesty is interesting since, a lot of times, we don't know if we are being exposed to dishonestly a lot (almost no one is dishonest and admits to it). A lot of "dishonesty" we are exposed to are the extremes we see on TV that make news and scream that we're potentially better people. However, even if you break it down to like saying you'll call someone tomorrow, and then don't, would technically count as dishonest.
Obviously different types of work will get compared for jobs. Admitedly some professions are rather cushy and others take extreme mental/physical stress. I'm not sure how you compare a Doctor, who is constantly on call and has peoples lives in his hands, to a sports star, who is constantly in the public eye and under extreme scrutiny all the time, to a wall street trader, who can work 70 hour + weeks with little to no recongnition besides his/her paycheck.
From experience, non athletic people tend not to play athletic sports so when they do they feel like they are on the lower end of the spectrum in comparison to those who are. This might mess up the results. HOWEVER, if you take into account USAs obesity rate... I'd have expected this to be higher.
And finally. I have class so I don't have time to finish up, but 70% financial does not seem that bad unless you've taken one of the lower paying college majors.
Seems like the standard results I'd have expected.
For intelligence, people define it in a lot of different ways (usually to suit their own needs) so it isn't unsurprising most people here feel that way about themselves. The fact the second question clearly shows that most people do not believe they are very socially adept would mean that the majority of people feel intelligence has nothing to do with social decision making.
Yeah, some people would say "I'm more street smart than book smart!" which really means they're a dumb ass. Meanwhile a lot of "geniuses" have awful social intelligence.
Anyone who thinks the online tests are accurate probably is not smarter than 75% lol
I know my school administered IQ tests to get into the gifted programs. So I took the test twice, about 6 years apart. My score changed a lot (about 20 points) which I always thought was bizarre.
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For me, the first second and fifth questions were really easy for me to answer, and I'm all but certain my responses were accurate for any reasonable definitions of intelligence, social adeptness, and athleticism. The honesty question is kind of hard to evaluate; it's not entirely clear how often others are lying to you. Similarly, I think it's hard to get a feeling for how hardworking the average person is. For the last question, it was more of a matter of knowing that median income in the US is not very high, and reasoning that I'll probably be able to get at least a halfway decent job with my education.
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I said I wasn't hardworking because I don't work hard right now. I don't really have anything to work hard on at the moment. When I do have something to work hard on, I put my heart and soul into it, because I'm a bit of a perfectionist. But right now? Zzzzzz...
Also I'd have to hit the lottery to reach the top 30% of my country's financial ladder. I'm not nearly ambitious enough for that kind of thing.
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Yeah, I don't see the problem with most of this board being smarter than most of the US. Spelling and grammar is generally good and critical thinking seems to be there to some extent, at least. Speaking as someone who has had his IQ tested by reputable sources and has known a decent amount of people who have been, you don't need to be that smart to be smarter than 75% of the country. I think that puts your IQ at 120 which isn't really that smart. And the thing you have to realize is a lot of people are dumb. If anything spending too much time on the Internet might skew your perception on that-- as a lot of people are simply too dumb to use computers much <_<
And being humble in the social/athletic categories to me does suggest people gave a somewhat honest self assessment. In fact I think people might've been a bit too conservative on some categories to prevent themselves from coming off as too boastful. Well, I think that was the case for me... in all of them I wasn't completely sure on (hardworking, athletics, honesty) I kinda defaulted to no.
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metroid composite posted... Mershaaay posted... B8: Aspergic blowhards who think they will be financially successful without trying
To be fair, I -am- financially successful -already-; this isn't speculation.
I'm just not arrogant enough to claim that I, as a computer programmer, work harder than, say, a waitress at a busy restaurant, or a construction worker. Or just about anyone with two jobs or even one job + children.
makes sense to me. first one fits with the last because yes, you figure your smarts will get you through. if you're good at something and smart enough at it then it takes less work out of you than it would someone else to perform the same task. so you would be paid more for doing more despite your working less. alternatively we're just lazy right now but know that when push comes to shove we can do much more and are just wasting potential. either way, ego goes a long way.
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I would answer yes to all but the hard work section. My jobs are pretty cushy and the work I do is all actually enjoyable
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In an attempt to get people to click on the topic, I would imagine
Worked for me!
Oh... Well now I feel silly. See I didn't question the [User of the Year] tag because Yo was actually User of the last Year. I thought he was saying this topic was posted by your User of the Year, thus it didn't strike me as a ploy for views. But that other tag was pure trickery. I feel so used... ;_;
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