On a regular basis, I hear people talk about "that guy from high school" or "that girl I used to be friends with" and say, "He/she is really smart, but..." followed by some reason why the person doesn't utilize their smartness, such as "but he dropped out of school" or "she liked to smoke pot" or "he's just lazy".  In my opinion, those people aren't smart.  They obviously have some amount of natural intelligence and the ability to learn, but by not utilizing it, I think it disqualifies them from holding the title of "smart".

[On a side note, I'm having quite a bit of trouble writing this post because I don't want to write things that make me sound stupid because that would seem to defeat the purpose of the post.  However, assume that I'm a neutral third party whose smartness is absolute and must remain unchallenged.  This gives me the option of using words like "smartness" and putting punctuation after quotes like "this".]

I think in order to be considered smart, a person needs to have an ability or create an ability, and use it.  I grew up with a kid who was super-smart.  He was in all the smart classes and did well.  He was extremely creative and was able to get incredible results without putting in much effort.  Where is this guy now?  Living down the street from his parents (not that there's anything wrong with that), probably without a college degree (not that there's anything wrong with that), and doing some sort of low-paying manual labor (not that there's anything wrong with that).  My point is not that smartness breeds success, and success is measured by things like proximity to home, college degrees, and non-manual labor.  My point is that smartness, when left un-utilitized, can no longer be considered smartness.  It's wasted smartness, which in effect is stupidity.  So to say a person is smart "but..." something, you're saying the person isn't smart. #psychology