Really, Really Smart. No, Really!

I'm a sucker for some movies. If I stumble across Crimson Tide or My Cousin Vinny in my channel voyages on cable, I'm sure to stop and watch some, if not all, of the flick. "Good stories well told" is my definition of a good flick to kill time before the show you're really waiting for begins (and in the case of those two, not especially draining on the brain). The other day I spotted 2001: a Space Odyssey on Encore and TiVo'd it. It's also one of my will-watch-anytime flicks, even though there's nothing mindless about it. Remember, this is a movie that starts out with a black screen and classical music for two minutes and doesn't have a word of dialogue for almost half-an-hour! I believe Kubrick and Clarke created a great morality play, almost Shakespearean in scope, with the supercomputer HAL as the conflicted father figure. (I'm perfect, so how can I have made a mistake? I must kill the children!) Combine that classic with a NY Times story about increases in computing intelligence that ran this week, and I got thinking about thinking, and intelligence. Aren't we all the top experts in our own ignorance? I mean, don't we individually know more about what we don't know than anyone? And part of our lives is spent either hiding, or at least diverting attention away from, those black holes in our knowledge. There's talk about the development of computers that can read minds, measuring the electrical codes sent during any given thinking process and translating them into words on paper. That certainly would change interrogations! Who needs waterboarding? Has anyone ever researched the level of actual intelligence vs the self-perceived intelligence? Do the people you consider smart know they are smart? And the not-so-smart folks? Do they think they are smart? In My Cousin Vinny, the character played by Marisa Tomei comes off as a rather dumb Brooklyn High School dropout, but get her talking about the mechanics of car engines and whoa! The judge (Fred Gwynne) wears robes and occupies a position of importance, but can't see through obvious witness lies. Who's smart? I have some old 8mm film of a birthday party for my sister. I'm about 3 or 4 years old in it and sitting at the table with the usual cone-shaped birthday hat on. There are maybe a dozen children attending, but if you look at just me and carefully watch my eyes, I swear it appears as if I have a developmental problem of some kind! I'm unfocused, smiling but kinda late, kinda disengaged. But how could that be? I'm smart...really really smart! Honest! [NOTE: Readers who are prompted to comment that they "knew that all along" are asked to be kind. I'm in a vulnerable place right now..(-: ]