smart: Someone truly smart will think of something and then try to find holes in their idea before believing it, where as a stupid person will just think of or be told something and then believe it? Have you seen truly smart or stupid people in the political party you oppose?Is the fundamental difference between a truly smart vs a stupid person?These people are gullible , not necessarily stupid . However , during a political debate , the smart ones will load phony statistics or cleverly avoid a question . The stupid ones call names or start yelling .|||You have completely ignored the vast majority of what makes a person what they are. You can not specify that someone's ability to perceive information and comprehend abstract ideas is determined by how much they agree with a view or not. You must understand that the first part of our understanding is how we perceive the world around us. This will not be the same with every person due to many factors. Any attempt to judge a person's intellect depends also on the bias of the observer. it is fundamentally flawed from the get go for anyone to try and judge the intellect of the ideological or political opponents due to this bias.Is the fundamental difference between a truly smart vs a stupid person?I'm not sure if that's true. Sometimes the difference is that a stupid person will just accept any argument they're given for an absurd claim, while a smart person, recognizing the absurdity of the argument that the stupid one is willing to accept, will come up with an original, and much more sophisticated, reason to believe the exact same foolishness. As a liberal, i can identify a number of smart conservatives. But it's pretty significant that all of them, people like David Frum, Andrew Sullivan, Conor Friedersdorf, David Brooks, etc, are writers rather than politicians. And every one of them has been pushed to the edge of, or flatly excommunicated from, modern conservatism. It seems to be mandatory, not optional, to be stupid in order to be a modern mainstream conservative. And when you consider that, with very few exceptions, every Republican candidate in the upcoming midterms simultaneously supports the following position, it isn't hard to understand why stupid and Republican are rapidly becoming synonyms: All support sweeping tax cuts and a balanced budget amendment, but not one will identify even 5% of the spending cuts necessary to balance the budget. The official Republican plan states that defense, Social Security and Medicare are off limits for spending cuts, meaning that about 95% of all other government spending would have to be cut to actually make the numbers work. The best solution to global warming is to hide your head in the sand and pretend it doesn't exist. The United States can continue indefinitely its practice of consuming 25% of global oil output if it just drill some more wells to further exploit domestic sources - which are 3% of global reserves. Married men who cheat on their wives are perfectly acceptable models for traditional family values, as long as they firmly assert that gay people getting married poses an intolerable danger to marriage that no right-thinking adulterer will stand for.|||It seems to be mandatory, not optional, to be stupid in order to be an Obama supporter. When you consider that, with very few exceptions, every Democrat candidate in the upcoming midterms simultaneously supports the following position, it isn't hard to understand why stupid and Democrat are now synonyms:Is the fundamental difference between a truly smart vs a stupid person?both, but here, the stupid ones are more noticeable. they're more adamant in their beliefs, even though holes can be found. they post a lot more than the smart ones, and stand out more, because most people are repulsed by what is said by them.|||truly smart people don't know it all and can admit to it. stupid people don't know it all and they think they do.