‘What’s the creepiest display of intelligence you’ve ever witnessed in real life?’ – 17 genius but unnerving experiences

As the saying goes, a little knowledge is a dangerous thing. And judging by the response to this r/AskReddit question, a lot of knowledge is downright scary.

Thanks to the research of user Jessica_Enna, we agree with another phrase – ignorance is bliss. And that’s because they asked people to leave their answers to this seemingly innocent inquiry:

‘What’s the creepiest display of intelligence you’ve ever witnessed in real life?’

Comfort blankets at the ready, here are the top replies…

1.

‘We were studying and she recognized a young man from an anatomy textbook. She said it was from her 3rd grade math book. We didn’t belive her and made fun of her, so one day she showed up with that book. Same young man, totally different pose and environment. Obviously some stock photos.

‘She still works in medicine, but works with the police several times a year for super-recognizer screenings or whatever that’s called. When we would go out, she would see someone and just go: ah, this guy was at the lake 4 years ago when we were there. We all just stopped confirming with those people because she was always right and it was always creepy.’
-reedshut

2.

‘I knew a kid who had an intellectual disability. He was non verbal and needed 1 to 1 support all day, every day.

‘However, pull out a 500 piece puzzle, he puts it together upside down.

‘As in… the pieces are flipped to the blank side. No imagery to fit together.

‘Extremely fascinating to watch, never seen anything like it!’
-honey_bee_bee_

3.

‘Miriam. A friend introduced me to her at a party. She was a math major. She had gotten into a bet with her roommate to see who could memorize pi to the most digits. She won, by *thousands* of digits.

‘My friend said “Hey Miriam! Do pi!”

‘Her eyes went glassy and she went 3.1415926535….. She went on for minutes.’
-BoredBSEE

4.

‘My husband grew up in a bad area, bad family, high school drop out bc school was so bad for people with learning disabilities. He grew up truly believing he was stupid.

‘I’m a writer, and he would never read. Complained that he couldn’t read. Not a lack of ability, but he apparently has that thing where you can’t visualize in your head — but no word for it 30 years ago, and I didn’t even realize that was a possible thing. He just told me he can’t see the story like I can, so it doesn’t make any sense for him. He found it difficult and pointless.

‘Then, at 20 years old, he sat down and read a college chemistry textbook left at our house in one evening and literally taught himself chemistry. I was a “gifted” student with a full scholarship, and chemistry was where I got lost AF. I could not understand what i was seeing.

‘”I don’t have to imagine with this book. It just explains. Easiest book I’ve ever seen!”

‘🤯’
-HotAsElle

5.

‘My old cat who was the eldest of 4 cats I had was wicked smart. He was insanely clean. We had 2 large litter boxes for the 4 cats. He made the 3 younger girls copy his habits and they used 1 litter box only for pee and the other only for poo.

‘I swore up and down to my partner who at the time didn’t believe me he could understand English but when I asked sarcastically to get the kitten out from behind the drawer he just looked at me. Went to the drawer, had a “conversation” with the kitten and she came right out! We had tried for hours! If my partner didn’t see it with her own eyes lol.’
-Unrigg3D

6.

‘I did a little time. I ran into a guy in there that engineered a fight between three unrelated parties. That part wasn’t the creepy part (though, good enough, really – two of the three fighting parties were not fighting people and he got ’em in the mix effortlessly).

‘The creepy part was that in the roughly one minute before the fight kicked off (resulting in the block being locked down for three days, btw) he explained to me point by point and in close detail what the administrational response would be, exactly who would be involved, who would be written up, injured, reassigned to different blocks, etc. He did this so that a fourth party, not involved in the violence, would be caught up in cell searches with contraband, which happened. A tattoo kit. That guy left the block with the three fighters but never came back.

‘He told me all of this stuff point by point like a grocery list. Down to which guards would come and what their moods and reactions would be. He was in the cell next to mine and he just kept laying it out right until they locked us in.’
-Economy_Field9111

7.

‘A guy I was friends with ended up working in a car yard – it wasn’t a big brand one, just a small family owned second hand car yard – guy did ok in school, wasn’t a genius, wasn’t an idiot.

‘I dropped in to visit him at work after he’d been working there for about 6 years and his boss called out asking if he could remember a car and added the registration number (no description or anything) and my mate rattled off the car’s details, the name of the person who traded it in, what they bought, and who bought it, by name… but phrased it as a question: “you mean the blue toyota whatever, with the such and such, that so and so came in with etc” this had all happed about six months after he’d started there.
He clearly found his place.’
-elroyonline

8.

‘Working for a city in traffic engineering, we had a large map on a wall where we would place pins with colored heads to represent types of accidents from police accident reports, for example pedestrian related, property damage only, death, etc. Instead of bringing the stack of reports and working out each pin and exact location individually, one legendary lady would go in and stick the pins from memory. This was not a small city!

‘One engineer was incredulous and asked how she could remember so many. She became offended when he checked her work and found she got every one right.

‘I didn’t witness it but I believe him, and i can’t imagine how she did it!’
-madhousechild

9.

‘I had a classmate once who could do complex equations in her head. She was asked to solve an equation on the whiteboard once (with working) but only wrote the answer. When the teacher asked her to show how she got to the answer, she just said “I can’t”. Of course the teacher made her do a few more, and yep, all right.

‘The scariest part is supposedly her sister was even smarter than her.’
-lumoslomas