Everybody is Smarter Than You Think

This is the third in a series of posts derived from old Facebook Notes. The original was posted on Nov. 7, 2010.

1. I am imperfect at translating my thoughts into speech that can be unambiguously parsed by an arbitrary second discourse participant.
2. Due to (1), I have frequently witnessed people respond to things I say in a manner that makes it obvious that they did not reconstruct the thought that I started with properly (i.e., they didn't understand what I was trying to say).
3. This probably makes me seem less intelligent than I actually am, especially when the misunderstood versions of my thoughts are, in fact, wrong. Either factually wrong, or indicative of an immature point of view.
4. I put a lot more thought into what I say in order to ensure accurate communication than most other people. (Although this is probably tempered by the fact that I am not neurologically typical, so I kinda have to.)
5. Due to (4), most other people are probably at least as likely as I am to have the same experience with being misunderstood. The less intelligent they actually are, the more likely this is to be their own fault; the more intelligent they are, the more likely it is to be because the other discourse participants are simply incapable of formulating the correct thought (but, of course, high general intelligence does not imply high social intelligence, so it could still easily be your own fault, insofar as not knowing your audience is your own fault).
6. Ergo, most people you talk to will seem, at least until you get to know them very, very well, much less intelligent than they actually are, because what you think is going on in their brains is a very degraded version of what they're actually thinking.

In short, language is a noisy, imperfect channel for thoughts. So give people the benefit of the doubt.