How much trivia does one need to pretend that they are smart?

I have a smart phone, I don’t need to “store up” trivia. My deductive reasoning and critical thinking skills are good, that’s why I’m intelligent. Life experience, compassion, and empathy are really the basis for wisdom.

I can’t keep my damned mouth shut, which means I’m not actually smart.

Trivia has been maligned and criticized for years, unfairly.

Trivia is actually a highly demanding skill – it combines intelligence (general knowledge, often applied knowledge) with rapid recall. (It makes no sense to know answers if you can’t enunciate them when needed).

Smart is not the same as having a knowledge of trivial facts. Smart is actually applied decision making to the facts at hand. Essentially it builds on knowledge to make action-based decisions.

These (trivia, smartness, knowledge) are totally different, although tangentially related skills.

I do try to learn what some people would call trivia, but would actually be very helpful under certain circumstances. When it’s helpful to share, I do so, but why would anyone bother with trying to promote oneself by spouting trivia? That’s just silly.

@snowberry I know some people when I was living in Jasper who would look up trivia before everyone else to look smart.

Excessive trivia knowledge does not make me think someone is smart or wise.

@Zaku Doesn’t mean that people don’t try?

@snowberry People can be silly.

We play Jeopardy a lot, and often do pretty well. Google says contestants are generally very smart and mentally agile.
We love trivia and often do well with that.
Personally I think we both just loce knowledge and now that we’re of a certain age its accumulated. :)

This reminds me of a quote from John Steinbeck’s book “The Moon is Down”:

“Dr. Winter was a man so simple that only a profound man would know him as profound.”

Also:
“If you think that you are the smartest person in the room, then you’re in the wrong room.”
-Unknown

Once, while winning at Trivial Pursuit in the early 1980s, a friend said, “where did you learn so much trivia?”

I replied, “nothing I know is trivial, it is all very important.”

73.267%

@filmfann I was thinking closer to 73.266%

@RedDeerGuy1 That’s a common misconception, and doesn’t include Yodel lyrics.

@filmfann & @RedDeerGuy1 You need to round up to the significant figure of 73.3%.

@Zaku I am not sure I know what you mean by “Doesn’t mean that people don’t try?”

Knowing trivial things, even many things, including some that aren’t so trivial, seems unlikely to make me think someone is smart or wise.

I have seen people try to seem smart by knowing things. It seems to me that it tends to often fail or even backfire, because knowing scattered pieces of information is rarely impressive to anyone who has actual intelligence, understanding, or wisdom.

I still remember several cases from grade school (e.g. people trying to use unusual vocabulary words in essays) or college (e.g. people reading biographical details about an author, or a summary of a book, in a literature class). It tends to get quickly spotted and recognized as someone learning something small-scale, rather than engaging the actual subject of a class.

I dare say, just a trivial amount of it.

Most “trivia” has a lot of pop culture and sports stuff referenced in whatever context it is presented in. I’m pretty bad at all that because I don’t care about it. Being smart has more to do with how fast and effective your mind is. That certainly helps with trivia because you can remember and regurgitate things you may not even be interested in.