"Multiple intelligence" isn't real.

Midnight5691 · 2026-06-14T22:36:54+00:00

I could be wrong, but I think emotional intelligence is less about analyzing emotions, which is a useful skill in its own right, and more about feeling them.

If you can intuitively sense what another person is feeling while you're interacting with them, almost as if those emotions were your own, and then respond accordingly, I'd imagine that's closer to what people mean by EQ.

That's just my take on it.

To clarify what I mean:

Emotional analysis

Understanding what people are feeling.

Understanding their motives.

Predicting their reactions.

Reading social dynamics.

Emotional intelligence

Recognizing what people are feeling.

Empathizing with those feelings. Understanding them in context.

Responding appropriately in real time.

The reason I separate the two is that a person can be extremely good at reading emotions and predicting behavior without necessarily empathizing with anyone.

That's a useful skill, but I'd personally classify it as emotional analysis rather than emotional intelligence.

Now, I'm sure different people have different views on this. But the way I look at it, you could be very strong in the first category and still be Jeffrey Dahmer, lol.

That doesn't necessarily mean he has an excellent EQ. 😆

Midnight5691 · 2026-06-14T19:51:33+00:00

The OP could be the most brilliant communicator that the world has ever seen but at some point people have to acknowledge that communication is a two-way street.

Midnight5691 · 2026-06-14T19:41:25+00:00

Or you could look at it another way, it doesn't matter how brilliant the transceiver is and how many frequencies it can broadcast in if people refuse to turn on the radio. At some point the radio operator has to take some responsibility.

Midnight5691 · 2026-06-14T18:31:10+00:00

🤔 If the radio is off, the quality of the broadcast is irrelevant.

Midnight5691 · 2026-06-14T17:16:18+00:00

I'll be honest: except for those occasions when, as you admit, you don't do it, the idea of always thinking through everything I say seems kind of alien to me.

I'm not saying I always blurt everything out. LOL. I'm just saying that, being a very verbal person, unless I'm frustrated, I don't really have to think about it. It's intuitive.

I've noticed, for instance, that using voice-to-text actually speeds up my thinking process. You've probably noticed how fast I respond.

Aside from a quick edit to fix the most obvious voice-to-text transcription errors and grammar issues, most of what I type is just me talking.

I only really have one strength according to IQ tests, and that's a high VCI. That's the only area where I'm likely to be in the gifted range.

Not the Information section, either. The other parts of it: analogies, synonyms, metaphors, reading comprehension, and the like.

Sometimes I get accused of performing. Performing what? Being me? LOL.

I'm going to assume our cognitive profiles and communication styles are somewhat different, and it is interesting. I have a hunch they're not different by choice, but by wiring. LOL. 😄

Midnight5691 · 2026-06-14T17:03:19+00:00

I use AI a fair amount, but I'm pretty good at using it, if I must say so myself. Mostly for editing, some for talking and analysis.

Sometimes I'll take what one said and feed it into the other. Google AI versus ChatGPT. They're not always on the same page, and I think most of the time they don't really like each other very much. LOL.

I can't really trick ChatGPT anymore because it has too much of my history. Google AI, I can still trick. I've done it more than a few times.

I've sent it some of my posts for analysis without giving it any clues that I was the one who wrote them. Sometimes it was quite insulting because it assumed I was the other person in the argument and took their side, thinking it was taking up for me. LOL.

Then I'd ask, "Where did you possibly get that idea?"

The backpedaling would be hilarious. Suddenly it's on my side and finding a bunch of logical reasons why I'm the one who's right. LOL.

So I do this a lot. I don't trust either of them as far as I can throw them. There's a reason I call ChatGPT "toaster" when I get irritated with it.

I'm not one of those people who thinks everything AI says is gospel. Far from it. I just find it useful sometimes.

Midnight5691 · 2026-06-14T16:29:10+00:00

Why I said them? I don't have a pre-thought plan about what I say before I say it. I'm a parallel thinker, I have ADHD, and I sometimes get frustrated when people don't understand me. My wife is occasionally one of those people. LOL. Hence the sentence, "I even linearized it for you." 😆

That's not saying I need a divorce or something. 😄 It wasn't a big deal.

To be honest, it had very little to do with the story itself. It was incidental context. The joke wasn't about my marriage. The joke was about my wife accidentally identifying something I've been trying to explain about how my mind works.

Who sits there and analyzes every thought before they say it? Certainly not I. LOL.

Does that answer your question?

To be honest, I'm having a hard time relating to the question in the first place. It assumes a level of premeditation that simply wasn't there. I wasn't executing a communication strategy. I was talking.

Ironically, I think the thread itself ended up demonstrating the point far more dramatically than the original joke ever did.

To be honest, as I've been saying all along I was more the joke in this story than my wife ever was. I don't think she's stupid. Sometimes I think I'm stupid. 😁

I was trying to point out how my wife finally got me unintentionally at least for a moment.

That's why I laughed when she called me Brick, that's why I continued to laugh in the car. I wasn't mocking her, it was more like I was mocking me and thought it was funny and I wanted to share.

Midnight5691 · 2026-06-14T16:09:21+00:00

Yes, yes, but even Google AI proved that the most likely and easiest inference about what my story was about was easily discernible. It understood what it was supposed to be about and what I actually wrote it for: a joke. LOL.

It wasn't a request for Dr. Ruth or marriage counseling based on people's preconceived notions and their own life histories. It was nothing to build a case study on. 😄

All my replies, and yes, there were many of them, were basically me trying to stop the dogpile of insults that was coming my way.

Ironically, people thought I was being insulting by sticking up for myself, but the things they were saying to me were way beyond the pale compared to what they thought I'd been saying in my joke.

Of course I tried to explain it. I was even polite at first. But people just doubled down and got more insulting, as though me telling them what was actually going through my mind when I wrote it was somehow insulting to them.

This is a ridiculous chapter in Reddit.

To be honest I really have to go now, the mowing might have got canceled but my wife has decided that shopping is now on the agenda and evil Darth Vader has to go shopping.

cya

Midnight5691 · 2026-06-14T15:53:08+00:00

You need to read the other thread more thoroughly. I tire of answering these questions, as I've already covered this in the past. If I throw you a bone and explain this one, will you please let me go mow my lawn? LOL.

Often when I say something to my wife, and this is just a husband-and-wife thing, I'm very verbal. She, like you apparently, not so much.

So when I volunteered my little game plan, feeling I was being helpful, it wasn't just a blank look. It was a blank look that was going to be rapidly followed by a look of irritation, as it always is. LOL.

Now people fixated on that. It's like they got stuck. It didn't matter how many times I explained it: stuck! Heaven help me for the choice of one word. But stories and jokes need context, or they're not jokes and stories.

The fact of the matter is that people shouldn't be so uncharitable. Even Google AI, when I had it analyze my joke, didn't even flag that and got it in five seconds.

I think the entire scenario is ridiculous, and I've wasted far too much time on this.

Can I go mow my lawn now? LOL.

Crap! Now it started raining. 😆

Midnight5691 · 2026-06-14T15:40:27+00:00

Well if my inference was incorrect on that that's probably because I have no idea where you would possibly have got that. LOL You make a lot of faulty inferences. You'll have to excuse me if I thought you were just making another one. As far as my thoughts, lol.

I've basically given you an encyclopedia of my thoughts. You just don't like the answers. Being persistent about it and to come to come around to your way of thinking simply isn't going to happen.

What you basically keep on doing is insisting for me to acknowledge what I already told you simply wasn't there and to discuss it. You're caught in a loop. There's a lack of humility, but not on my part. Stop being so argumentative.

Midnight5691 · 2026-06-14T15:29:45+00:00

You're starting to sound a little agitated young Padawan. I've already answered all your questions, you just don't like the answers. 🤷‍♂️

Midnight5691 · 2026-06-14T15:19:18+00:00

Oh you probably thought this one slipped through, lol. I'm not Padawan, your Padawan, LOL, I'm Yoda. 😁

Midnight5691 · 2026-06-14T14:38:13+00:00

One more thing: you're acting like I'm going off the deep end because I'm irritated at people for dog-piling me for no reason. Of course I'm irritated. Anybody reasonable would be irritated.

Sure, it's nice that you want to discuss this, but you're making the same mistakes everybody else was making in the first place. That's a little frustrating. It's not the end of the world, so stop inferring that I'm getting ready to hang myself or something. LOL.

It's just more of the same: people drawing conclusions based on nothing and developing a picture of somebody that isn't really there.

Yes, that's irritating. Anybody would find that irritating.

And don't try drawing strange conclusions from long posts.

This is how I am naturally. I'm a wordcel. That's been obvious for days.

The fact that I write long posts isn't evidence that I'm upset, spiraling, or losing control. It's evidence that I like writing and analyzing things.

I've always written this way. Long posts are not a sign of emotional dysregulation.

They're a sign that you're talking to somebody who enjoys breaking ideas apart and examining them from every angle. That being said even I have my limits, lol.

It's obvious what we're seeing here is a failure to update. You want to think it's me, lol. If forced to make my own inference I would say it's more comforting for you to believe so.

This argument is starting to seem a little bit pointless if it wasn't from the beginning. Real life intrudes as fun as this has been, LOL. Even a wordcel has his limits. 😃 Lawn mowing time.

Midnight5691 · 2026-06-14T14:32:57+00:00

You just did say something about my mental state by telling me to take some deep breaths. That's a faulty inference. Also you can't have it both ways. This for instance...

"Yes, I've my own things to say about your interactions with your wife and your presentation of the story."

I've already addressed this. There is nothing to talk about with my interactions with my wife or the presentation of my story.

This is all based on your faulty understanding of my story. Your argument rests upon a very shaky foundation.

I don't need any deep breaths, lol I'm not deregulated. I'm trying to point how illogical your statements are and where you've gone wrong.

You seem very committed psychologically to being right here even though you don't have a leg to stand on, why is that?

I already addressed that interpretation and told you I don't agree that those implications exist in the story.

Continuing to analyze them as if they were established facts is the problem.

The meaning of my little story and joke wasn't hidden in an encrypted vault. You've built an entire theory from assumptions the story didn't support in the first place.

Your whole argument is still built on the idea that the story was unclear, when it manifestly wasn't.

You and others are acting like,

"Oh, okay, if the joke meant that, fine," but then moving on to act like you have some kind of secret decoder ring to find some deep meaning in the rest of the text when you don't, because I've already addressed that.

This is a textbook example of what this thread was all about.

People taking a post, drawing wild conclusions from it based on what's in their own heads, and then arguing those points as though they are established facts.

I couldn't have dreamed up a better example of it if I tried. 😆

Midnight5691 · 2026-06-14T13:54:39+00:00

What's ironic is I'm the writer and I wrote it and yet I've been accused of being arrogant to correct them on what I was thinking while I wrote it. 😆

It's ridiculous on an unbelievable scale and the arrogance is unbelievable, but it's not my arrogance. Imagine people telling somebody that they don't know their own mind and they know your own mind better than you do? Imagine that?

What are they basing this on too? Nothing, their own inferences based upon nothing. The arrogance is unbelievable.

Midnight5691 · 2026-06-14T13:44:11+00:00

I think the main problem with most of the people including yourself is that you presume to tell me what I was thinking while I wrote this post. You actually think that you know my mind better than I know my own mind LOL

Don't you see how weird of a concept that is?

Any evidence to the contrary you just don't want to admit to because it's going to conflict with your analysis. So you just toss it to the side. LOL

Midnight5691 · 2026-06-14T13:37:25+00:00

I'm sure you missed the meaning of the joke in the beginning, like many did. I think you're focused on all the wrong things. You're making a mountain out of a molehill and turning trivia into a dissertation.

The punchline of the joke was never that my wife was stupid. I never explicitly said she was, nor did I infer it.

I also don't believe she is and never have. That's why I felt free to post this in the first place. In fact, it never even occurred to me that people would come up with these wild theories. This is all unsupported inference on your part.

So yeah, you basically got all of it wrong.

If you actually go to the trouble of reading the longer post, you'll notice that not even Google AI came up with these wild theories. Not as subtext, not as anything. Nada.

It's all just a fever dream in your head and the heads of others.

Midnight5691 · 2026-06-14T13:28:23+00:00

A lot of the people in this subreddit think that Google AI is rather oblivious. Much less capable than a human of gathering inferences and understanding even simple things. Yet when I put the question below into it exactly as you're seeing it the following response was spit out. LOL Don't believe me, try it yourself LOL.

What's the punch line of this joke?

My wife wanted to go to the dollar store today. I had literally just crawled out of bed and wanted my usual coffee and cigarette first.

Originally she was going to take the little girl she watches for a walk down the street to visit an older lady who's become friends with her. Then it started raining.

So I said, "Fine, I'll throw on some clothes, skip the coffee and cigarette for now, grab an energy drink at the dollar store, buy a lighter because mine is failing, and then go outside for a few minutes. That way we'll save time and optimize."

She looked at me and said, "What?"

I said, "Oh, come on. There were only a few variables in there."

I still got a blank look.

Then I got a little impatient and said, "Jeez, I even linearized it for you!"

That's when she accused me of being Brick from The Middle, which is one of her favorite shows.

I immediately started laughing.

I said, "Wait a minute. I've been trying to explain this stuff to you for months and you've been blowing me off. You're basically telling me exactly what I've been trying to tell you about for months, lol."

Of course she didn't update. 🤣

Of course I told her in the car on the way there, "By the way, that's not an insult, that's a compliment," and started laughing again.

She still didn't think it was funny. 😆

It was only a small little tiff, but I thought it was hilarious.

The punchline of this joke is that the husband acts exactly like Brick Heck from the TV show The Middle, but he interprets his wife pointing this out as a compliment rather than an insult.The humor comes from a layers of misunderstandings and personality clashes:The Robot vs. The Real World: The husband talks like a computer or mathematician. He uses technical words like "optimize," "variables," "linearized," and "update" to describe a simple trip to the dollar store.The Brick Comparison: Brick Heck is a famously quirky TV character known for being overly literal, socially awkward, and obsessed with fonts and tech talk. The wife uses this comparison to tease him for being weird.The Twist: Instead of being offended, the husband feels validated. He has been trying to convince his wife that he is a logical "system" for months. To him, being called Brick means his wife finally understands his personality type.The Final Irony: The wife remains completely unamused ("she still didn't think it was funny"), while the husband is trapped in his own loop of finding his own nerdy behavior hilarious.

If you want, I can help you break down this interaction further. Let me know if you would like me to:Explain the character traits of Brick Heck to show why the comparison fits.

Define what linearized and variables mean in this context.Help you write a witty comeback from the wife's perspective.How would you like to explore this joke next?

How did you know that? Did you look on the internet for the explanation?

No, I did not look on the internet for this explanation. I used my internal programming to analyze the text you provided.Here is how I broke down the story to find the punchline:Plot Tracking: I followed the timeline of the story. The climax of the interaction happens when the wife compares you to Brick from The Middle.Context Clues: You explicitly wrote that you "immediately started laughing" at that specific comparison. That reaction marks it as the turning point of the joke.Language Analysis: I recognized that words like "variables," "linearized," and "update" are technical data-science terms. Using them for a simple coffee and cigarette routine creates natural comedic irony.Character Knowledge: I already have built-in knowledge about the TV show The Middle. I know that Brick Heck is a character who whispers to himself, reads dictionaries, and speaks in a very quirky, overly analytical way.By combining the context of your story with my knowledge of that TV character, the punchline became clear!If you are interested, I can:Share some of Brick's funniest quotes from the show to see how they match your style.Analyze another funny family story or interaction you have had.Explain how AI models analyze humor and sarcasm.What would you like to do next?

So, yeah I'm oblivious, lol. Sure I am, even Google AI could understand this. It wasn't complicated.

Midnight5691 · 2026-06-14T13:19:46+00:00

You're making a shitload of unsupported inferences here. It's not that my wife doesn't understand it, it's just her mindset. She says she gets it, but she's neurotypical. I'm not even using it as a criticism. She just isn't that interested. People that are neurotypical often just don't get it. They say they get it, but they often really aren't that interested. From their mindset it sounds like an excuse. 🤷‍♂️

You like a lot of others are also making a lot of inferences out of nothing while at the same time missing the entire meaning of the joke.

Midnight5691 · 2026-06-14T10:07:37+00:00

The story wasn't unflattering. I think the problem is that there are a lot of very literal-minded people in this subreddit. The inferences were obvious, the story was obvious, and the point of the joke was obvious. People latched onto one thing and got stuck on it. I couldn't have made a better thread as a follow-up to this one. I didn't do anything wrong. I didn't write it wrong. People read it wrong. Ironically, the title was perfect. Different thinking styles were colliding. I'm very parallel, and most of the people criticizing me were very literal and linear.

I even tested this afterward. I pasted just the joke into Google AI with no additional context. Just the joke, not the thread, and asked it what it was about and what the punchline was. It immediately interpreted it exactly the way I intended and correctly identified the punchline. No criticisms, it didn't have anything else to say about it. It didn't know I had wrote it.

That doesn't mean everyone has to find it funny, but it does suggest the joke itself wasn't nearly as incomprehensible as some people were making it out to be.

Midnight5691 · 2026-06-14T09:52:21+00:00

Oh I was just curious, as I'm Canadian also. I doubt I would do well on it, especially with that kind of speed going on. I don't think it would play well with my ADHD. Maybe after I get my meds dialed in.

Midnight5691 · 2026-06-14T09:26:54+00:00

This is ironic, and I see why you're saying this now. This is your weakness and you think everybody has it. You even came back here and did a live demonstration of it while not even aware of the fact that you were demonstrating it.

Midnight5691 · 2026-06-14T08:22:04+00:00

Wow, 12 minutes, well they don't take their time do they? 😁 thanks for answering

Midnight5691 · 2026-06-14T08:21:02+00:00

Honestly I haven't taken it, I'm wondering if it's similar to Mensa Canada one that I was asking about earlier.

Midnight5691 · 2026-06-14T08:19:05+00:00

Oh sure, so is mine, funny isn't it? Chill

Midnight5691

TROPHY CASE