All language subtitles for 5 Things Hollywood Gets Wrong About Smart People.en

(spray paint tin whooshing)

(upbeat rock music)

- Welcome to Reckless Disagreement,

the only show on the
Internet you can trust.

I'm your host, the sexy genius,

and I've spent the day memorizing poetry

because of this scene
from Good Will Hunting.

- As a matter of fact I won't,

because Wood drastically underestimates

the impact of social--

- Wood drastically
underestimates the impact

of social distinction
predicated upon wealth,

especially inherited wealth.

You got that from Vickers,

Work in Essex County, page 98, right?

- Because Matt Damon is a
brilliant mathematician,

he has apparently memorized
entire history textbooks

right down to the page number
of certain important quotes.

Hence.

I figure if memorizing history textbooks

makes you a good mathematician,

memorizing romantic poetry
will probably help me

figure out how to escape
from this YouTube bunker

I've locked myself in.

That logic follows, right?

(chuckling)

I'm getting a little desperate.

So let's just get right to
discussing all the weird

assumptions Hollywood
makes about smart people.

(thudding)

(clicking)

- It is a melancholy
truth that even great--

- Great men have poor relations.

Dickens.

- Oh no, I know Hamlet,

and what he might say with
irony, I say with conviction.

What a piece of work is man.

- I get what they're going for here.

If your brain has all this extra space,

you may as well fill it

with expensive sounding words, right?

But the ability to repeat
things other people wrote down

doesn't necessarily mean you're smart.

Think of all your friends
who can recite Bill Pullman's

speech from Independence Day.

- We will not go quietly into the night.

- Which is actually pretty
close to what's happening

in this famous scene from Tombstone.

First, Doc Holliday's
like, "In vino veritas."

Then real quick, Ringo's
all "Agi quod agis."

Then Holliday gives him a look,

takes his time, and says,
"Credat Judaeus Apella, non ego."

Ringo takes a second, then

"Iuventus Stulturum ... magister."

And then Holiday's all,
"In pace requiescat."

That's not a conversation,

"Credat Judaus Apella non ego"

is a semi-antisemitic line
from one of Horace's satires

that means let the Jew
Apella believe it, not I.

Holliday says,

- Evidently, Mr. Ringo's an educated man.

Now I really hate him.

- But really, they're just
throwing semi-relevant

famous quotes at each other like a couple

of 19th century Jake Peraltas.

- Welcome to the party, pal.

- Besides, what kind of loser
would spend all his time

memorizing lines from his favorite...

(buzzing)

Well, this is a little bit different,

but you know whenever a
genius movie character

quickly solves a Rubik's Cube?

(jazzy music)

- Basic link.

- Solving the Cube isn't an insane feat.

Anyone can do it provided they
read the instruction manual

that comes with every Rubik's Cube.

It's a party trick, like knowing origami

or quoting Dr. Strangelove.

♫ Da da da da da da

- Yee-haw.

- Oh, and I've decided
after very little research

that this phenomenon can be traced back

to J. Robert Oppenheimer,

who reacted to the first ever
successful nuclear bomb test

by remembering a quote
from Hindu scripture.

- Now I am become death,
the destroyer of worlds.

- He didn't actually say
it, he just remembered it.

Because if he had really responded
to the first ever nuclear

explosion with, I am become
death, destroyer of worlds,

everyone would've been like,
(scoffs) shut up, Julius.

(thudding)

The J in J. Robert
Oppenheimer stands for Julius.

(clicking)

Was that clear without me explaining it?

Here's an incomplete
list of smart characters

that are also huge dicks.

You've for your Dr.
House, your Tony Stark,

your John Nash from A Beautiful Mind,

Mark Zuckerberg from Social Network,

Henry Higgins from My Fair Lady,

Nathan from Ex Machina,
Caleb from Ex Machina,

Ava from Ex Machina eventually,

Sherlock Holmes, Sherlock
Holmes, Sherlock Holmes.

Alan Turing, Julian Assange,
Dr. Stephen Strange, Khan,

wait.

How many Benedict
Cumberbatches have we had here?

A whole batch of Cumberbatch (laughs).

Well that was terrible.

I should learn how to edit
so I can cut that out.

In real life, you can be a
genius and cool to people.

It's true, I've seen it happen.

In fact, the tendency is
toward the opposite of this.

The smarter you are,
the more aware you are

of your own shortcomings,
and the knowledge

that you don't have.

It's dumb people who tend to be cocky

and overestimate their own intelligence.

This is called the Dunning-Kruger Effect.

The people who think they're wicked smart

are actually wicked dumb.

For example, see men explaining
jokes to women on Twitter,

most of Reddit, or the
people correcting my abridged

definition of the Dunning-Kruger Effect

in the comments below.

Yeah, I know about you.

I understand that there
really have been smart people

in the world who were also dicks,

but the infatuation with
them that movies seem to have

is still pretty baffling to me.

It's like we think the
best part of being smart

would be not having tolerate
other people anymore.

Which, like, life hack,

you don't have to be smart
to be a dick to people.

You can be dumb and mean,

that's just some information
for you to chew on.

(thudding)

Batch of Cumberbatch, you're
better than this Sargent.

Movies really like to show us
smart people writing on glass.

I don't have much to say about this

other than it's weird.

Are smart people too
distracted by their own genius

to keep a (bleep) notepad around?

Scraps of paper are everywhere.

I have one here, and I'm literally trapped

in an underground bunker
with a bunch of DVDs

and some camera equipment.

I'm living off rat stew and refried beans,

and even I know where the damn notepad is.

That's all.

(thudding)

Oh gee, I just thought
of something clever,

I should write it down.

(clicking)

- When did you become an expert

in thermonuclear astrophysics?

- Last night.

- When Tony Stark needs
to build something,

we always see it happen
because Robert Downey Junior

looks great with shirt off.

Especially for a 52 year old man.

Wow, 52.

Looking good, Bobbo.

Bobbo and I are friends,

which is why I get to call him Bobbo.

But there's nothing sexy about
working your brain muscle,

so movies just skip that part

and make brilliant ideas
seem like they pop up

with no warning like boners sometimes do.

- No, no, no, no, tell me.

(dramatic music)

- Well, each of his messages begins

with the same five letters.

C-I-L-L-Y.

So I suspect that Cilly must
be the name of his amore.

- That's impossible, the
Germans are instructed to use

five random letters at the
start of every message.

- [Woman In Blue Dress]
Well, this bloke doesn't.

- Love will make a man do
strange things, I suppose.

- Yes, yes.

Love just lost Germany
the whole bloody war.

(sploshing)

(groaning)

- What is that?

What's the matter with you?

- Genius.

- If we all go for the blond,

we block each other,
not a single one of us

is gonna get her.

- We love this idea so much

that we write it into true stories.

Alan Turing didn't crack the German codes

because of something a girl said in a bar.

It would've been illegal
for her to discuss

her decoder transmissions with him at all.

And John Nash didn't
invent the Nash Equilibrium

because of a pretty blond,

because that's not even how
the Nash Equilibrium works.

Wait a minute.

Matthew Good was in the Imitation Game,

and he was also in Watchmen,

where he played Ozymandias,

who sometimes quoted Percy Shelley,

who wrote Epipsychidion,
which sounds like epiphany.

Ephipahnies do happen in real life.

But this is still part of
Hollywood's weird aversion

to showing us characters who actually work

for a living.

Would Tony Stark ever have
done the board meeting?

Batman sleeps through his.

Indiana Jones sneaks
out of his office window

to avoid grading even a single paper.

And those people are all geniuses.

I'm not saying we have
to have a 45 minute scene

where Indiana Jones gets in
trouble at tenure review,

but it's kinda weird how
much we idolize laziness.

American culture has this major hard on

for pulling yourself up by your bootstraps

and paying your dues, but
all our really brilliant

aspirational heroes never do any of that.

(thudding)

- These smart arms are
controlled by my brain

through a neural link.

Nano wires feed directly
into my cerebellum,

allowing me to use these arms

to control fusion
reaction in an environment

no human hand could enter.

- Question, Dr. Octopus.

Are you a physicist, or a
neurologist, or a roboticist?

Because you just casually described

incredible breakthroughs
in all of those fields.

And you know what?

It's not fair for me
to use a super villain.

Let's stick to normies,
like Lucius Fox from Batman

who not only knows how to
design and build a train system

but also how to run a
multinational super corporation

and cure fear toxin.

But fine, again, I get it.

We're still in superhero movies.

Dr. Elizabeth Straw from Prometheus

is an archeologist and astronaut,

and feels comfortable performing

an autopsy on an alien head.

Those are three very specific skills

that require a lifetime of study,

and the third one isn't even a thing.

And bringing back Will Hunting,

he's not just a great mathematician,

he memorizes textbooks, already said that,

and is a total expert in
the probably made up field

of reading peoples' minds
based on their paintings.

- Maybe you married the wrong woman.

- [Sean] Maybe you
should watch your mouth.

- And this is a problem that has bled over

into the real world.

Bill Nye the Science Guy isn't
an expert in all of science,

but we treat him like an
expert in climate change

because he has science in his middle name.

I mean, I agree with him,

but we may as well be getting
a take from Dennis Quaid

since he at least played
a climate change expert

in a movie.

Which is why real climate
experts have issues

with what he says.

Also, you know how Stephen
Hawking occasionally predicts

the end of the world?

That's fine, but it has nothing

to do with theoretical physics,

which is his area of expertise.

Science is actually like a
whole of different things.

It's really well
illustrated by this cartoon

by Professor Matt Mike,

which shows a circle containing
all of human knowledge

and shows a Ph.D as a tiny little red dick

poking out toward the rim.

Which, by the way,
vindicates the entire point

of my show because we've
conclusively proven

that movies are screwing with our heads

and making us dumber, so
this isn't just a bunch

of pointless observations.

These are real problems.

I'm doing important work here.

We all are.

Together.

Let's finish up.

(thudding)

There's the title, have you read it?

Is it long enough?

Great.

Cool, go.
(clicking)

I'm not really worried about smart people.

They're gonna be fine.

If anything, they're probably in on it.

Trying to fool us, make
it harder for us to know

what's really going on so
they can stay one step ahead.

My God.

What are the smart people hiding?

Oh well, it's probably boring.

I mean, they're just a
bunch of nerds anyway.

(thudding)

Oh, dammit.

(crackling)