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Comment by MangoToupe | Hacker News Reader

> This is a midwit-level take on Plato.

Is this intended as a pejorative? Why not just say "dimwitted"? It would communicate your semantics much clearer.

"Midwit" must be new to you, but in fact it has a particular meaning and sense in internet parlance. A midwit is a person who believes themselves to have transcended the dimwitted, when in actuality the dimwit is in better agreement with a genius/the very-well-informed.

Here: https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/iq-bell-curve-midwit

Hopefully you wrote this ironically otherwise... QED?

I'm legitimately confused what was confusing about my comment. Are we supposed to presume that the author thinks themselves better or not?

Typically when someone encounters a word they're unfamiliar with they'll do at least a cursory search of it[0] to see if it's a real word, the context, etc., rather than assuming the author made it up or intended to use some other word. Dimwit and midwit mean two different things.

[0] https://www.google.com/search?q=midwit

> Dimwit and midwit mean two different things.

> Midwit is an internet slang term, often used pejoratively, to describe a person with average or slightly above-average intelligence who believes they are exceptionally intelligent or insightful.

Does this not describe most of the people on this forum? Why would you invite such comparisons if you aren't confident you're better or "more correct" in some way? It seems they intended to use "dimwit", as that would result in comment making more sense overall by drawing a clear contrast with the speaker.

One commonly observed midwit behaviour is to make arguments based on the dictionary definition of a word, having failed to understand that there is a complex set of cultural and social connotations implied by its use. In the case of the midwit, the implication is that intelligent people understand, stupid people understand, but the half-smart get completely the wrong end of the stick.

Yea another dumbass behavior is using words nobody can understand because they sound trendy. This doesn't make plato magically interesting unless you're living 2500 years ago. At least I can understand plato because he, and especially his successor, made comparisons quite explicit. He would not have used "guy like you or me" as an implied insult....

It seems a reasonable response for someone who is reading the term for the first time ever. I also didnt knew the word despite having seen the iq graph meme.

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