Come even goddess who seems to think I am impaired by a poor education can not surely think those we disagree with are always stupid?
Being for or against the Iraq war makes you stupid? you go too far.
I am then twice stupid and content to be so, I once thought mad evil Saddam and his sons a bigger threat than a lunatic American leader.
I still shudder at the thought of North Korea, a country held hostage by one man.
A nation educated not to be educated stupid, I must be silly as an old sock!
Strange how the left insult the west at will but ignore the dreadful things like that poor country .

Belly
Dont worry about Goddess. She thinks she walks on higher groud than the rest of us.
Must be the higher education- and if i were to guess it would be law.
Give me the bush and the real people any day.
By the way. Good Morning.
oowah! I nearly made a spelling error.
Thats a sin punishable by Goddess as she goes through OLO trying to be -little others.
There are many forms of stupid and many of disabilty.

I do not think I am stupid. But I have often acted stupidly. We all do.

We need to distinguish between a "non-stupid" person who sometimes (often?) behaves stupidly and a person who is intrinsically stupid.

Goddess,

None of us are proficient at everything. I would submit that anyone with sufficient mental agility to communicate on OLO is not stupid though many of us say and do stupid things here.

PALE,

improving schools may well help. But I think we need to face the fact that there are a proportion of people who will not be able to master marketable skills and will therefore never be able to earn a living wage in 21st century Australia.

Is Mise,

politicians, at least those in Parliament, have mastered a skill. It is the skill of politics. It enables them to earn a living. They would therefore not qualify for a partial disability pension on the grounds of stupidity.

Arjay,

I agree with you. My encounters with long term unemployed lead me to believe that a portion – not all – of them are not so much unemployed as unemployable. I think we need to stop pretending they are employable and remove them from the tally of the unemployed.

But what about those that are employed but in very low-paying occupations? Should they get a PARTIAL disability pension?

Belly,

My experience is that native intelligence can often overcome a lack of FORMAL education. I stress the word "formal" because anyone who is really smart – as opposed to "non-stupid" - understands that education continues forever and what you learn outside the classroom can be more important than what is taught inside.

Diagnosis of partial disability because of stupidity is difficult. IQ tests are at best a blunt instrument. With advances in functional MRI technology it MAY soon be possible to detect at least the slow-brained if not the slow-witted.

But disability is a slippery thing. Many years ago when handling disability claims in the insurance industry I learned that what may disable one man may be regarded by another as a minor ailment.

There is nothing wrong with being a Lawyer.
It is good as any profession such as a baker, a cab driver, a doctor or a handyman.
You cannot judge a person's character by their chosen profession.

Stupidity is a word that should never have been introduced to the English language, it has too many facets and often used in the wrong context, especially when used to degrade and used to judge anothers personality, level of inteligence, acts made through unthoughtfulness.

We often hear "that was stupid" or "what a stupid thing to do" when in fact the word stupid referres to the inability to apply ones own understanding of any particular subject or not quick enough for the person you are speaking to, you are then classed as stupid, meanwhile, all you are doing is giving your brain a little more time to decypher, thats all. Ever wondered why the "lights" turn on, only after an hour of ending a particular conversation with another person? Just because brains are apt to continually digest something we did two days ago, doesn't mean a person is stupid, it means some peoples beains are actually more active and alive than those who we think are clever, besides, some people are not as fortunate as others as in some cases where the parents are in a position to send their children for higher education. Stupidity can therfore not be treated as a disabiliy.

I agree with SPANKY the word while we think it is descriptive is one we should not use.
It is most often misused by those who also misuse their own EGO it is a fault some have that in talking to people they both over estimate their own worth and under estimate the opinion of those they debate.
It is worth noting such people quite often see others faults clearly even faults that do not exist.
But rarely hold them selves accountable for their own wrongs.