I am. I am really god damned smart. I can hold my own with the best of the best in some fields.

But there's a moment, a tipping point, everyone eventually reaches. And it goes like this: I know fucking nothing. I am bad at almost everything. I am an an idiot in most things.

If you reached that tipping point...welcome to the club! We all got there. It took us awhile because childish ideals and self-importance gets in the way. But...welcome. You are not alone.

The most intelligent people in the room are always the ones who say, "I know nothing about that, tell me more". The most intelligent people in the room are the FIRST people to say, "I don't understand, explain" or "I know you just went through that, but I didn't get it...say it again".

Intelligence is NOT knowing things. It is the exact opposite. It is the recognition of what you know with some degree of certainly, what you know in a generalized way, and what you almost kind of grasp. While you automatically assume everything outside of those spheres are things you don't understand at all.

You will always only know a very small number of things. This is just true. The difference between intelligent people and the otherwise is that intelligent people know what they don't know. It is not the knowing that makes you smart, it is the lack of information that helps you identify when you have real information to back up what you're saying or not. Your brain is not the internet. There are a few gifted people who break these rules, but we'll leave them out for now. Smart people aren't smart because they know things. They are smart because they know when they DON'T know and they seek out those answers in a logical, formulaic way.

Smart is knowing what you don't know and asking. Smart is about filling in knowledge gaps in a responsible way (not taking one perspective whole-sale, not being convinced by one argument, letting multiple perspectives sway you).

I know I am the smartest person in the room when I am asking the dumbest questions. I know I am smart because I am the one always saying I don't understand. Learning is hard, it takes repetition, and I am the one unafraid to say, "I didn't get it the first time, say it again" or "Well, I hear what you're saying about [x] but why is [y] not a factor?". I do not show up with all the answers. I show up with ALLLLLLL the questions. I have a thousand questions. About everything. All the time. Consonantly. I know very little, yet most people would put me in a room and call me an expert in certain subjects. I am not, I am just someone who asked a fuck ton of questions and got some interesting answers, put them together, and wants to talk about them.

I am very smart. I just don't know a lot. I know a few things with certainty because I asked enough questions that I feel good about saying I 'know'. But mostly I'm just dumb in terms of knowledge, hard core facts. I'd have to read every book, know every subject, and I just don't. I can't. And so I just ask everyone I know about everything they know all the time. And I start, always, with the dumbest questions. What IS biology? Why do you care? What matters in it? What are you working on?

You want to talk smart? T