Well, I do admit, quite freely, that I hold on to pet peeves.

[capri0mni]

A few weeks ago, I ranted about that old NBC series The Pretender.

There's now a new series called Kyle XY, on the cable network ABC Family (apparently, it's still airing; I caught a few of the episodes when they were promoting the show on ABC, one summer). It's basically got the same subtext as The Pretender, with almost the same plot (That the super-intelligent people are freakish, and potentially evil), except it's much more blatant, because the hero is a teenager with no bellybutton, OMG!!

Anyway, what pulled my chain about all this "old news," now?

Well, on Friday's episode of Numb3rs (Which I normally love for its Geek-Pride), the Geeky Brother, Charlie, for some reason that was explained in the first two minutes (which I missed), spends the hour going through FBI agent training, and failing miserably, and getting horribly embarrassed, until his mentor just reminds him how smart he is, and that he should use his brain for "more than just math."

The next time we see him, he's on the shooting range, and he gets the highest score in the entire class, and he gets all cocky.

This brought a flashback of a scene from Kyle XY, when Kyle comes upon his foster sister struggling to practice the guitar (and he's never seen a guitar before, having been sprung into full adolescence from a loom, from a test-tube, or something). There's some voice-over of his thoughts about how he could instantly understand about the mechanics of a guitar and how harmonies work, and the intervals of musical notes. Then he takes the guitar from his sister, and starts playing a passage of classical music... perfectly.

Excuse me, but... no. It doesn't matter how much of a genius you are: shooting a gun and playing guitar take time and practice, before the intellectual understanding gets transmitted down to the muscles and nerves.

It's like when I was a little kid. Other kids would see me getting about on my crutches, and ask: "How come you don't know how to walk?"

Mother commented to me, one day, after such an exchange: "You do know how to walk... That doesn't mean you can."

And that's correct. I can explain to anyone, should anyone care to ask, how walking is a continual process of losing your balance and catching it again, about the proper shift of weight from one foot to another, how the muscles contract to swing the hips and bend the kness, and so forth. But none of that intellectual knowledge helps me one bit when actually I try to get up and walk across the room.

But there seems to be a cultural shorthand around that intelligence = ability. So, if you don't have the ability, you must not have the intelligence.

And the reason I'm writing about this now, instead of on Friday? The star of Numb3rs (too tired to actually check his name) was just on a talk show, tonight, and they showed a clip from that episode.

Comments

[pedanther]

I feel moved to respond to this, but I can't think of anything to say that hasn't already been said by you or by Noel Coward.

(Noel Coward once said, "I can't sing, but I know how to, which is quite different.")

[capriuni.livejournal.com]

And that reminds me of a line I saw once on a Murphy's Law poster:

"Never try to teach a pig to sing. It wastes your time, and annoys the pig."

[rob-t-firefly.livejournal.com]

When I was little, I was allergic to various things, and that list was always changing and expanding. I guess the concept of food allergies wasn't as mainstream back then or something, because for some reason, whenever certain older people (family members, babysitters, even teachers) offered me something to which I was allergic and I refused, they'd always process this as "he doesn't like it."

"Here Robert, have some chocolate."
"Thanks Grandma, but I can't have chocolate, I'm allergic to it."
"You don't like chocolate??"
"No, grandma, I love chocolate!"
"Oh, then have some!"
"I can't, I'm allergic to it!"
"You don't like it?? Hey everyone, Robert doesn't like chocolate.."

It wasn't just my batty grandmother, either. It seemed that most people who were seniors when I was young all had that same reaction. I guess it was a generational thing, but it aggravated the heck out of me back then.

[capriuni.livejournal.com]

I know! I remember, when I was five or six, wondering how some grownups even navigated the world, since they seemed confused by so many simple things...

[indefatigable42.livejournal.com]

Hell yes. I was just thinking the other day, people who tell you to 'cheer up' when you're depressed have obviously never been in a state of mind where they can't cheer up. Yes, I know what 'cheer up' means. Yes, I know depression is genuinely 'all in my head'. That doesn't make it easier to just think it out of existence.

[capriuni.livejournal.com]

heh.

"Oh, Gee! 'Cheer up!' That's an idea than never occurred to me. Thanks for the reminder..."

[daibhid-c.livejournal.com]

I wonder if the people who process "I'm alergic to chocolate" as "I don't like chocolate" are the same people who process "I don't drink" as "I want you to keep naming alcoholic beverages until you come up with one I like".

The TV Tropes website calls the thing where a genius can work out how to do anything without practicing "Awesomeness By Analysis". It has a lot of examples (although I'm not sure some of them count).

And, yeah, it's nonsense. There's lots of things I know intellectually, but can't actually do. For one thing, I'm mildly dyscalulic. People occasionally think this means I don't understand maths, but it doesn't, it means I can't do maths. I can certainly tell you how equations work, just as long as you don't ask me to solve one.

[capriuni.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the link. It's always nice to discover that other people notice the same silliness you do. Now, I can abreviate the trope with ABA.

And yeah, among the examples given, I think the one from Quantum Leap, where Al gave Sam visual guidelines for shooting pool counts, because the guidelines are a crutch to compensate for lack of muscle memory.

I wonder if the people who process "I'm alergic to chocolate" as "I don't like chocolate" are the same people who process "I don't drink" as "I want you to keep naming alcoholic beverages until you come up with one I like".

Probably. I usually cut that off with a suggestion of my own. To the question: "Would you like a beer?" I answer: "Actually, I'd love a glass of seltzer, if you have it."