Intelligence has nothing to do with education, although the two often go together because intelligent people like to learn. Intelligent people ask questions. They are interested in the way things work. They are creative -- they make things. They are able to solve problems and puzzles. They usually like to read, because you learn things by reading.
A good memory is not intelligence. Many people make this mistake. They believe that if someone can remember facts, they are intelligent. More often than not, this is false. A good memory is no substitute for creative, analytical thinking.
They usually like to read, because you learn things by reading.
I would like to add, intelligent people also listen to other intelligent people.
Skepticism of corporations, governments, and people that don't behave properly.
tell me more... I'm listening
:)
intelligent people also listen to other intelligent people.
This. I can tell I'm talking to an idiot whe I give my opinion, because they don't disagree with a logical explanation or a cogent attack of my position. Instead, I get, "Nuh, uh! You're wrong."
THIS. Took the words right out of my mouth. Education is just a tool. Like a gun. I can give a gun to Tyrone who does nothing except freestyle rap and smoke weed all day....and then give the same gun to redneck Billy Bob who was taught to shoot and handle weapons since he could shit on his own.
In a firefight, who do you think will win between the two? The one who actually knows how to use the tool will win.
The problem in modern society is two-fold.
One, education isn't even really education anymore. They aren't teaching people how to think, they're teaching them what to think.
Second, people who achieve a certain amount of education automatically believe that it makes them intelligent. So they get arrogant and condescending.
I say this as a college-educated man. I can't tell you how many of my contemporaries are utter fucking morons. Their academic credentials don't mean shit, and more often than not the "uneducated" people I know are vastly more intelligent than the educated ones.
True intelligence has more to do with application of knowledge than with simple acquisition of knowledge. Intelligent people know how to apply it. Morons don't. That's the main difference.
I consider common sense to be another indicator of intelligence, personally.
Not to mention, creativity..which the last time I checked, the standardized IQ tests don't even measure.
Perfect example is my ex-wife. Bitch has a master's degree in music. But literally ZERO common sense.. perhaps her common sense metric is even in the negatives.. There are some things she's good at, but they are all things that were drilled into her via repetition.. which I don't believe is an indicator of intelligence since you can also teach a fucking animal to do most things through conditioning/repetition.
This was glaringly obvious the few times we played music together. Her, a college-educated musician and me.. while I am college educated, it's not in music... but I can still play.
She had ZERO musical creativity. The only thing she knew how to do was to play what was on the sheet in front of her. While I'm writing music left and right, all the time. She could play along, she just needed to know the key. But I can do that, too, and the only musical instruction I ever had was from myself. But as far as just freestyling a musical part within the key, it was like pulling teeth for her.. which I could never understand why it was so difficult because it comes naturally to me.
Beyond that, simple decisions that people with common sense could make without thinking, she'd have to have a meeting of 5 different people to tell her what to do. All that to say, she was a perfect example of an "educated moron".. which is probably part of the reason we got a divorce..
At some point in year two, I realized that I was married to an idiot. It wasn't a conscious decision, but I lost respect for her once I made that realization.. and respect is a hard thing to fake in perpetuity. So, it had seethed out of me in various ways in the subsequent years.
I had been fooled by all the flashy academic credentials and the (now) obvious "acting intelligent show" she put on while we were dating.
Her brother was the same way. Dude is a doctor, but has ZERO fucking common sense. I remember one year their dad (my ex-father-in-law) had purchased an AR-15. I was showing him how to operate it in the living room because he had never handled one before. Now, he was an intelligent man. Credentialed as well, but actually intelligent. HE understood after being showed once. At some point, the son (doctor) walks in and wants to handle the gun. He picks it up and I say to him, "drop the mag and make sure the chamber is clear" because of, ya know, gun safety. That fucking dumbass just picks it up and pulls the trigger. I chewed his ass out and he couldn't understand why I was so mad. One of his buddies was there, too, and told me later that "yeah, I can't believe he did that..that was sooo stupid."
It's all good, though. I'm about to marry a woman with actual intelligence who is way hotter anyway. I basically traded a pinto for a ferrari.
Actually, memory is essential to creative thought, which is usually the recombination of the objects of memory in novel ways. People have this idea that creativity is some kind of pipeline direct to God, but it’s not. You have to work to acquire knowledge and commit it to memory before you can be truly creative. This is why Mnemosyne, memory, is the mother of the muses.
Yes, longer term memory retrieval. But, a mind full of indoctrination is useless. The ability to discern is essential. Therefore one who has both the ability to acquire and retrieve a vast amount of information and the wisdom to discern it is key.
Agreed. Perhaps the mind of indoctrination could be described as one unconcerned with long-term memory. They do have to remember the rules, but the Party can change those at a whim and thus memory must be uprooted. We have always been at war with Eurasia.
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