guys, you might want to rethink your title here. if he died subway surfing, he is not “bright” nor “smart”. he’s a dumbass.
Meh, he could have been bright and smart, but not particularly good at risk analysis or physics. 15 yo boys aren’t known for being risk averse.
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Especially since the first paragraph of the article is about him being on the autism spectrum.
being on the spectrum means he’s bright and smart?
No, I think it typicallly indicates difficulty in relating to people, even if they happen to be bright and smart.
i have difficulty relating to people, but i haven’t felt the need to subway surf.
Do you consider yourself easily manipulated or overly trusting?
No
look, i’m not a nice compassionate person.
Well, shoot 
I hadn’t read link until soy pointed out the issue. That would be a difference between the child and you. That doesn’t mean you aren’t on the spectrum though.
Not necessarity - but it means he could be bright and smart and not have much of what we call “common sense”.
Or, it couldn’t. There’s a lot of variation - which is why it is a “spectrum”.
I taught at Mathcamp.
The students there were definitely bright and smart.
at math
They did some incredibly stupid things, which didn’t really surprise any of the adults, because most of us remembered being teens and doing dumbass things, too. (albeit, not subway surfing)
Lots of adolescent boys do very physically dangerous things and end up dead as a result. It has nothing to do with intellect per se. One need not be autistic to do these stupid things.
I went to nerd high school, and some of the boys there liked setting things on fire, exploding things, and similarly stupidly dangerous things. At least my destructive behavior was limited to computer files.
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When people say “smart” they usually mean book smart and not street smart.
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My vote is that he was definitely a dumbass
Apparently not rail smart either
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Plenty of us got through life without having the urge to surf subways. He was as dumb as they get.
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i mean, i’m not particularly “street smart”. not entirely sure what that means, but i would never consider subway surfing.
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Warning: insensitive reply
Is there any semantic difference between “bright” and “smart”? If not, then why use both words except to make the decedent more sympathetic? If there is a difference, then at least one of those words should involve some all-around good sense.
From the article:
See? His contemporaries had the good sense to run like heck when they saw someone was seriously hurt.
Well double dumbass on you
When they handed out brains, I decided to get trains instead, so that made me rail smart. It also gives me a one-track mind