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Don’t care. I’ll notice if there is a big difference between me and a person in front of me.

And sometimes one person is ignorant when it comes to one topic and super experienced and knowledgeable with another topic. And I’m the same things with different topics. So I can’t even answer if I’m smarter than another person without you giving me a topic. Apart from that, it’s just a number. And the benchmarks suck.

How did I come to that conclusion? I don’t remember. Guess I have good reasoning skills and a bad memory.

I would say overall I’m below average. Fairly dumb. Bottom 30% of society.

I don’t mind it too much. I know a lot about cinema and film history so I’m happy with that.

I think saying “I am dumb” has a lesser burdon of prrof so there we go.

I’m smart enough to know that I’m dumb.

Smart enough to:

See the gaps in my knowledge

Know there are gaps I haven’t even found yet

That I have and will continue to do dumb shit

Was gifted kid, always the smartest, highest test scores. Then I got older. I know I’m above average intelligence in lot of things. But smart enough to know how stupid I can be, that I have lots of faults, limitations. There are many kinds of intelligence, and always more to learn

I average out to average, because I know a lot of things and can figure out some things, but I also have huge gaps. Whether I seem smart or stupid depends a lot on the situation and company.

I am both really smart, dumb, and average. It depends on what area you are taking about.

I always felt I was “smarter than the average bear” (I think I just dated myself), but I had no solid evidence growing up, besides my mother insisting that I was very smart for my age. I almost skipped 2 grades in elementary school because I was reading adult books before I even started school, and I could write just as well. But my math knowledge was just average, so they didn’t want me to get behind if I missed a couple grades.

Despite this, I was a solidly C+/B- student for most of my schooling. I aced the tests placed in front of me, but I hated homework, so I just didn’t do it most of the time. I understood the material the first time it was presented to me; I didn’t understand why I needed to continually go over it in my free time. It felt like a waste of time. Plus, I had a hard time learning from the teachers. I did much better if I just read the textbook on my own, rather than sitting through a lecture.

In high school, I was failing a few classes. My mother thought I considered myself stupid and was afraid it was wrecking my confidence. Apparently, when she was a kid, she also thought she was stupid. She was failing a bunch of classes, while her eldest sister was getting straight-A’s. She got her IQ tested and found out she was actually the smartest of all her siblings - her eldest sister actually had the lowest IQ in their family!

So my mother made it her personal mission to prove I was smart. After all, you’re supposed to inherit your intellect from your mother, and my mom had a genius IQ. She hired a psychologist to give me an official IQ test, and to no one’s surprise, I tested in the genius range too. So I finally received validation that I was smart.

It didn’t fix my grades, though. It turns out, I was getting poor grades because A.) I refused to do homework, which lost me half my grade points alone, and B.) I was bored in class and didn’t really pay attention. I would find out 20 years later that I have ADHD, which is why I couldn’t pay attention in class. I have very poor auditory learning skills; when people talk to me, my brain shuts off. So lectures were the absolute death of me.

I joined the US Air Force right after high school, and unfortunately, the military requires you to blindly obey orders and not think too hard about things. Everything is dumbed down so the mission can be accomplished, even in the most stressful of scenarios. The Air Force has the strictest tests to qualify for service, and we tend to have the highest intelligent people in the armed services, but it was still a drag. I spent too many years trying to argue logic and reason with my superiors and coworkers, which fell on deaf ears. So I eventually got complacent and started doing the bare minimum to accomplish the mission and get through my days. By the end of my 2 decades of service, I feel like my brain has been through the blender and I feel much dumber than I used to be. Could also be some added PTSD, too.

Now I’m retired at a young age and living a quiet, relaxing life out in the countryside. I’m not too concerned anymore about being smart or dumb, just as long as I can live in peace.

Smart enough to get into a phd program but dumb enough to think doing a phd was a good idea.

I’m a complete idiot. So probs 30% to 40% smarter than the average American Republican.

I’m a programmer. Sometimes I solve a really hard programming problem in a clever way with very few lines of code, and I feel like I’m the smartest person in the world. Other times I can’t solve a really simple problem and I realize that I’m actually a moron that gets lucky sometimes.

I’m alright at written arguments when I can take my time and rewrite and make different multidimensional bullet-point lists and tables, but I can’t organize ideas or comprehend let alone create arguments verbally. This has led me to believe I’m far below average in terms of verbal sparring. Maybe 25th percentile at most.

I don’t do too wonderful remembering things people are saying either, especially in emotionally charged situations like arguments with loved ones. I have to write things to mention down beforehand and write specific actionable items to consider them resolved. I do well in academic lectures only because I take very good notes (not exhaustive; I paraphrase and use inside jokes to remember). I think I’m far below average there too, so for auditory processing maybe. I do my best to practice this by listening to podcasts and YouTubers without subtitles. I often have to rewind 5 or 10 seconds, but I’m getting better, I think. I’m probably around 40th percentile here.

I think I’m better than average at putting ideas into words, maybe 60th or 70th percentile. Unfortunately, that skill is made obsolete by ChatGPT and similar. (I’m not an “AI” evangelist; I just recognize that it is better than me at the common task of using English grammar patterns to make something that sounds plausible out of a list of bullet points and fragmented ideas.)

I think I’m maybe better than average at using search engines and reading manuals to figure out how things work. I learned everything I know about credit cards, CDs, stocks, 401ks, and Roth IRAs from various sources on the interwebs as well as from reading the fine print on the contracts I signed. Maybe 70th percentile.

As a bonus, I’m pretty good at inventing harmony lines to songs. That comes in helpful for songs I cover/write.

That’s always been a tough thing for me to define personally. To me, trying to determine whether you’re “really smart” (or not) vs average requires context, I’d need a definition of who I’m comparing to, what subject/fields (or “types” of knowledge), etc.

As others have mentioned, I’m generally good at sensing what I don’t know and determining that I need to read up on more about a subject rather than just blindly assuming that I do know it and trying to fix the wiring in my house for example (probably an extreme example, because there’s no way I’m ever going to try to do that on my own - even with an infinite time of “research”).

I’m a software developer, and my friends claim that this makes me really smart - but when I compare myself to other developers it doesn’t feel like that. And yet for being “smart” I am terrible at math.

Maybe its not the simple answer you’re looking for, but I guess I feel smart at some things, average in others, and not so smart in certain subjects/fields. I couldn’t place myself in a “one-size fits all” answer.