How can you tell if someone is smart?

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When they know enough about a subject to be aware of the gaps in their knowledge. Only stupid people claim to know everything.
 
MAPK phosphatase dijo:
You don't. You can get evidence that points to them being smart and makes the conclusion more likely, but knowing it for sure is difficult approaching impossible and using a single metric isn't going to get you very accurate results.

Someone saying that they're smart just means they are insecure. They may be smart, they probably aren't, but that probability is more a factor of smart people being rare than the fact that they made that comment.
Asking repeatedly for sources could mean a number of things. They may have been burned in the past or they could have been trained to do that by their community (e.g. reddit). It shows ignorance more than anything. They only have one tool in their epistemology and now they want to use it on everything. If they are young they could be smart just without a lot of life experience. If they are doing it when they are older, they probably aren't very smart or are very sheltered. Saying "Smart people can distinguish if something is true or not on the fly" is only true in narrow situations, like with a math savant. Smart people are only clairvoyant about all truth if you're living in a universe created by dumb people trying to write smart people. Smart people can fall to cognitive bias just like everyone else. The people who don't are wise, which is closely related to but different from being smart.
The point that "They ask questions that strike at the heart of the topic repeatedly" is an apt one. If someone does this it shows both an ability to remember and process information quickly which are signs of intelligence. But it also shows life experience, which is wisdom. Often it is hard to distinguish the two.

What will get you the best results, in my opinion, is looking at what someone has created and comparing it to things other people have created. Eventually you've looked at enough material that you can place new people's work on a continuum from "dumb" to "average" to "smart". If someone's work in their best field appears to be consistently smart then that person is probably smart.
Even though I consider this the best metric, it isn't perfect and I can still see flaws in it. This falls to the problem that someone's work could be smart, only the person is average but highly practiced, or someone's work could be anything but smart, but they are inexperienced. You could adjust for this by age like is done for IQ, but that still isn't perfect because a smart person could have started later. Another problem is you often have to have experience in the field to make the judgement (helped partly by the fact that you gain some experience by consuming content within the field).

Examining it deeply enough you end up arguing about definitions. What is smart? Is someone who is experienced smart? Is wisdom smart? I've made my positions pretty clear, but I can imagine there are good arguments that experience and wisdom are components of intelligence. They're certainly components of not doing dumb things.
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Incorrect.

The correct answer is, "if they can call the twist near the end of Clerks before it happens, they are smart".
 
In all honesty, smart people solve problems quicker, take to new skills quicker (if they're not arrogant about learning), & ask questions designed to further their knowledge on the subject they're asking about. That's the most identifiable stuff I can think of off the top of my head. The rest of the thread has better advice though.
 
To be fair, you have to have a very high IQ to understand spotting a smart person. Their humour is extremely subtle, and without a solid grasp of theoretical physics most of the jokes will go over a typical listener's head. There's also their nihilistic outlook, which is deftly woven into the conversation- their personal philosophy draws heavily from Narodnaya Volya literature, for instance. The listener understands this stuff; they have the intellectual capacity to truly appreciate the depths of these jokes, to realise that they're not just funny- they say something deep about LIFE. As a consequence people who dislike science truly ARE idiots- of course they wouldn't appreciate, for instance, the humour in an existential catchphrase "Wubba Lubba Dub Dub," which itself is a cryptic reference to Turgenev's Russian epic Fathers and Sons. I'm smirking right now just imagining one of those addlepated simpletons scratching their heads in confusion as Dan Harmon's genius wit unfolds itself on their television screens. What fools.. how I pity them.

And yes, by the way, i DO have a Rick & Morty tattoo. And no, you cannot see it. It's for the ladies' eyes only- and even then they have to demonstrate that they're within 5 IQ points of my own (preferably lower) beforehand. Nothin personnel kid
 
If they’re able to answer someone’s genuine question without being a cunt about it. Like, not in a joking way but a “I am objectively better than you and have more Reddit karma” way.
 
Ask magic 8-ball if man smart. ball knows all. if woman, no need ball, woman not smart.
 
Austrian Conscript 1915 dijo:
in an argument, if they question everything you say and demand sources all the fucking time they're not smart. Smart people can distinguish if something is true or not on the fly
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100% this.
Unwarranted skepticism makes me immediately stop taking someone seriously. People love to feel smart by doubting obvious common sense, and there is never any reward in trying to prove to them what they already know.
 
Eris! dijo:
100% this.
Unwarranted skepticism makes me immediately stop taking someone seriously. People love to feel smart by doubting obvious common sense, and there is never any reward in trying to prove to them what they already know.
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Even if it is bullshit what's the fun in trying to kill a discussion like that? If someone is halfway clever they can reason their way around a dummy and ask (nice) follow up questions that breaks the bullshit apart, bit by bit.
 
He look at the sun not the finger/at the forest not the tree.
 
Smaug's Smokey Hole dijo:
Even if it is bullshit what's the fun in trying to kill a discussion like that? If someone is halfway clever they can reason their way around a dummy and ask (nice) follow up questions that breaks the bullshit apart, bit by bit.
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Talking to someone who is determined to apply skepticism to literally everything is not a discussion, let alone a fun one. It is equivalent to talking to a markov bot, not a human. Why are you trying to break up something that doesn't need breaking up? Why would I indulge you?

What kind of savage just tears down every fence in sight in hopes that the necessary ones will be stronger and won't be torn down?
The kind who gets eaten by tigers.
 
Eris! dijo:
Talking to someone who is determined to apply skepticism to literally everything is not a discussion, let alone a fun one. It is equivalent to talking to a markov bot, not a human. Why are you trying to break up something that doesn't need breaking up? Why would I indulge you?

What kind of savage just tears down every fence in sight in hopes that the necessary ones won't get torn down too?
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Oh I meant it the other way around. If their claims are dumb and unfounded a smart person can make that apparent and there's no need to ask for sources.
 
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