We're human, so we sometimes make some pretty silly mistakes, the kind that leave us embarrassed or shaking our heads at ourselves for what we did.
It somehow never fails to surprise us when someone of a higher intelligence makes the same sort of mistakes anyone else could make.
But there's a reason why people sometimes differentiate between intelligence and common sense.
Cringing in anticipation, Redditor loztriforce asked:
"What's the dumbest thing you've seen an intelligent person do?"
Throwing Out the Wheel with the Bathwater
"A physician got a flat on his high-end Mercedes."
"Mr Fixit decided to take things into his own hands, dismounted the wheel, and got a ride to the tire store."
"He said, 'I need a tire for my Mercedes.'"
"'Where’s the flat one?' they asked, presuming they could either repair it or get the specs."
"'I threw it away, it was flat.'"
"The dumb** threw the entire wheel and tire into a dumpster, and it was gone when he returned. The car had to be towed, and a new OEM (Original Equipment Manufacturer) wheel ordered."
"What may have been a ten-dollar flat repair put his car out of commission for over a week and cost more than 1,000 dollars. This was in the 80s."
- RationalDB8
Gotta Make It to That Meeting
"A senior physicist was trying to go his lab on the edge of an area with chemical hazard warning lights flashing."
"It turns out that it was a false alarm, but the readouts were a gaseous chemical leak of the 'melt your face off' variety."
"The people he wanted to talk to had definitely already evacuated."
- gerkletoss
"I know you should always take warnings seriously, but I used to hear so many alarms constantly that I just kinda tuned them out. Then I moved out of the city, heard an alarm while grocery shopping, and I didn’t really register it."
"I overheard some kids and realized there was a fire in the restaurant next door…"
- sillybilly8102
Academic Brilliance, Indeed
"As a kid, I saw my stepfather (a Doctor with several specialist qualifications who did two Master's degrees in the same year on a whim) put his hand under the lawnmower to dislodge something... The lawnmower was still on."
"He didn't lose fingers permanently but had several months of recovery and skin grafting surgeries."
"He was academically brilliant but lacked a lot of practical life skills, clearly."
- HipsterPicard
"My father is a mechanic. He is a brilliant man, the classic Autistic genius artificer type who can fix anything."
"But fifteen years ago, he tried to remove snow clogging the snow plow fan while the fan was on. He lost both his middle and index fingertips."
"This year, he tried to wash his hands… with a pressure washer."
- -CluelessWoman-
Remember, Start Those Engines!
"My cousin (21) got the highest marks in his A-levels and GCSEs in England, and he’s now in Scotland studying at one of the hardest universities to get into, and one day, he decided to hoover the lounge this is how it went:"
"I walked in. 'What are you doing?'"
"Him: 'Hoovering the lounge?'"
"Me: 'You need to plug it in first?'"
"He was pushing the hoover around the room without plugging it in and turning it on."
- DOORFORAKNOB
"This is me when I'm halfway to work and start to freak out that I forgot my car keys. The keys are HOW I'M DRIVING THE CAR. Clearly, I couldn't have gotten out of the driveway without them! And clearly, I should have had coffee before driving the car."
- laurasaurus5
Oh, For Fork's Sake
"Just this week, someone microwaved a fork in the office kitchen. I work at a research institute. Everyone in here has at least a Master's in Engineering."
- throughalfanoir
Different Degrees of Flavor
"Someone with a Harvard Ph.D. in biochemistry told me that it never occurred to them that different colors of Nespresso pods in their office meant different types or blends of coffee. It was just all coffee and sometimes the coffee was good, sometimes it was off, and sometimes it felt like it did nothing."
"It wasn't until they mentioned the last point to a co-worker, that the co-worker pointed out that this person was in the process of loading a decaf pod into the machines."
- BS_Creative
"My mother made several pots of coffee a day for decades and couldn’t figure this out either or how to correlate the amount of coffee with the correct ratio of water."
"She was blown away when I explained she only liked Colombian coffee and the directions were on the package."
- Miss_Awesomeness
Lost in Translation or a Slip of the Tongue?
"My mom, who was multilingual, said to me, 'Watch out for that ice. It might be frozen.'"
- thelobear
Hits Too Close to Home
"I’m an ocean lifeguard. I was driving a truck on a beach that has unstable cliff faces, so part of my job is telling people it’s unsafe to sit under them."
"I pulled up to a man that was comically sitting on a fallen rock, directly in front of a sign that said, 'DANGER FALLING ROCKS.'"
"I warned him it wasn’t a safe area, and he kinda smirked for a second before looking around and seeing that I was right. He got very, very embarrassed, turned bright red, head in his hands, visibly upset and very apologetic."
"I told him it’s fine and that a lot of people don’t think about things like that."
"He said, 'No, you don’t get it. I should know better than anyone. It’s not fine. I’m a geologist.'"
- FalconTonguePunch
They Missed That Week in Science Class
"This week, I had to explain gravity to a group of people, and they didn't believe me."
- Leonetta852
"Things go up, things come down. One of the great mysteries of life."
- Walk4Jesus
Clear As Glass
"I saw a doctor walk right into a window at Panera Bread one time. I guess he thought it was an open door."
- NaughtyDad42
"I walked into a glass door face first in a Prague hotel. I had to sit next to the only family that saw me, and we spent our entire breakfast in tears of laughter even though we didn't speak the same language."
"I thought it was brilliant, and I still chuckle to this day. It's not stupid, just unlucky and hilarious. I still tell the story to people, it was so genuinely brilliant."
- FinalEdit
If Our Heads Weren't Screwed On...
"Last week I couldn't find my phone, so I looked down at the phone in my hand and started to try the Find My Phone thing when... oh."
"(I swear I'm at least reasonably intelligent.)"
- Pyran
Flunked Out in Dating Skills
"I have a close friend who is super smart, always had the highest average at uni, won multiple awards and stuff, and in conversations generally just either knows a lot about any subject at hand or knows enough from other subjects to draw a probable theory about it."
"She's also kicking it in every other aspect of life: she's a great girl, kind, humble, caring towards everyone, works out, eats healthy, is always learning a new language or skill, all in all, an amazing girl."
"But I swear on my life, I have never seen anyone with a worse taste in men. Most of the guys she was attracted to/dated were losers, c**ky bast**ds who think too highly of themselves, or just utter scum. I can't even explain it, to me the guys were walking red flags, a waste of a bag for bones."
"Luckily, she finally found a decent, smart, caring, well-spoken man. I d**n near cried tears of joy when she told me about him. They've been together for a few years now."
- -attix
Tourism Troubles
"One of my schools mates dad was a professor at a top university in economics. He did a lot of traveling giving speeches. Anyway, he decided to go walking on his own around a township in Johannesburg at some hour of the night."
"He was luckily picked up by a passing police car, and the officers were apparently having a meltdown at how stupid it was to be around that part of town and at that hour."
- Open_Marsupial_4941
Scams For All
"A cardiologist I worked with was contacted by 'Apple' about his computer security. He gave them access to his laptop and was working with the guy to set something up on there when I got suspicious and googled for him."
"I ran to his office to show him the Apple website, saying they would never contact you by phone, and if you do, it's a scam."
"He immediately ended the call and shut the computer down. He had to make many phone calls and change MANY passwords as it was his work laptop. Thankfully, no harm was done. Proof that even highly educated doctors can be scammed."
- Suspicious-Elk-3631
Desperation Over Stupidity
"A woman believed she could cure her ALS (Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis) by having her fillings removed because they contained toxic metals that caused the disease. Spoiler: it didn't work."
- Goldeverywhere
"As someone with chronic illness, I can say confidently that level of suffering alters how you think. You become desperate and irrational in any attempt to have relief. It’s not so much stupid as it is desperation."
- Scared_Mongoose2689
"Amen. I begged to have my hair shaved off because I just knew it was my hair making my migraines so bad. My husband had to bear hug me and promise he would shave my head in the morning. By then, I was more rational and kept my hair."
- Letmetellyouwhat
"I think this is why MLMs flourish so readily with the crunchy crowd. Years of being in pain and being dismissed by doctors (usually the 'hey hun's are women) and then someone LISTENS to them and promises things that may work and sh*t, placebos actually have a decent effectivity rate amongst populations. Give someone a reason and a placebo and listen to them and bam, you got someone spreading woo because she actually believes in it."
- splithoofiewoofies
This is a great reminder that we all can do dumb and ridiculous things from time to time, no matter how ridiculously smart we might be.
Just like how we can't master every subject area, we also can't be masters of navigating every area, either, which leads to sometimes hilarious mistakes.
Hopefully, they more often lead to funny connections in Prague than trips to the emergency room, though.
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