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What characteristics makes a person SMART?

MTR

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8 Jun 2009
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What characteristics, in your opinion, make a person SMART?
When you tell someone s/he is smart, or when someone tells you you are smart, what does it mean?
I would say a person is smart if s/he:
is inquisitive
knows that s/he doesn't know ☝
 
Hmm, I think it depends, for me there are people who are clearly smart like one of my friends, he's a real logical thinker so he's very good at maths and very good at programming even though he may think he's not, but most of the problems I have gotten during our courseworks have been solved by him. Then there are people who are not "academically" smart, but can think on there toes like being creative to solve a problem or who just know many facts about certain things (which are true).

I don't think a person shouldn't think he/she is smart to be smart, imo most people are smart in one way or another, some just know it more than others.
 
To me a person is smart if they use their intelligence properly, regardless of how high their IQ is. In other words, it doesn't necessarily depend on IQ. Example: If you have a high IQ, and you make many mistakes in life that you wouldn't make if you took your time to look at the consequences of your actions, then you're being stupid.
 
I think that the word "smart" is too vague to mean anything specific, it works like a filler word in many cases I think... I'd prefer to use an expression like "skilled in (insert a specialty field name here)". Same goes for "stupid". I think will and motivation are more determining factors in any human achievement; even neurological disorders like dyslexia and dyscalculia can be dealt with...
 
I think that the word "smart" is too vague to mean anything specific, it works like a filler word in many cases I think

I agree. There's also a difference between being intelligent, in the sense of having an inherent ability to absorb and understand information, and being intellectual, in the sense of having a love of learning and knowledge. I know intelligent people who don't use their gifts, and I know people who have a limited natural aptitude for learning who work hard because they value knowledge. Which of these two types of people would we characterise as 'smart'?
 
I agree. There's also a difference between being intelligent, in the sense of having an inherent ability to absorb and understand information, and being intellectual, in the sense of having a love of learning and knowledge. I know intelligent people who don't use their gifts, and I know people who have a limited natural aptitude for learning who work hard because they value knowledge. Which of these two types of people would we characterise as 'smart'?


Hmm, I'm not even sure if we can accurately measure "the ability to absorb and understand information" or prove that it is "inherent". Once we reach a certain intellectual level, it's hard to tell whether our intellectual abilities were there since we were born, or were simply acquired in the process of learning. Much like the gravitational field of a mass cannot be observed without another mass being subject to it, intelligence, as a power field, cannot be measured without a minimum of knowledge; but the question remains whether the phenomenon in question (being attracted in the first case, solving a complex problem in the second), and a fortiori the field itself, was generated (or at least altered) by the existence of the observer or not. Where the analogy fails perhaps is that, while in the case of gravitation science has gathered enough theoretical and experimental knowledge to predict the comportments of interacting masses (well, theoretically at least, since the n-body problem, where n is greater than 3, still remains unsolved), specialists of intelligence and knowledge acquisition are still staggering their way through myriads of theories and hypotheses; probably because "intelligence" manifests itself in different manners depending on an undetermined number of factors, or perhaps because it doesn't work as a unified field that affects every structure of information in the same way.

Except for humoristic or abusive purposes, I don't see the utility of the duality stupid/intelligent. I think that all aspects, ideas, and comportments linked to both concepts are mostly dependent on education, cultural background, motivation, etc...

I remember I read once about the great mathematician Evariste Galois, who didn't answer an easy question in a test when he was in the Ecole Normal, and when someone asked him why, he said that it was "too insulting to his mind that he couldn't even waste some moments on it". Well, of course, Galois has proved his great value in other circumstances, but I've always wondered if people who had problems with answering some questions didn't have a similar "firewall" (subconscious in this case) that made them unable to think simply because the question was about a subject they didn't like, that they didn't like the formulation of the question, that they were being influenced by external or internal factors, etc... some people may feel, at the moment they start formulating/thinking about an answer, a great responsibility weighing over their psyche, that somehow they must get the answer right, which may simply have the reverse effect, blocking all mind processes related to the subject at hand. Now imagine this happened to someone at an early stage of their education, when they were still learning the basics, which resulted in them having "bad" marks, losing all motivation to put their mind in such matters, and finally, after a succession of "failures", being lumped up with the "idiot" ones. Society, I think, plays a major role in perpetuating the denomination "stupid" (with its relevant attributes) which does not always reflect a reality, but may actually create one: a person dubbed such by all social factions, especially figures of authority, may start adopting the adequate behavior associated with the word " stupid". This may concern the general use of "stupid" as well as a particular use in a special field like mathematics.

As in the fable of the tortoise and the hare, I think that every person is capable of accomplishing any task if they are motivated enough to do it; actually I do think that the tortoise CAN become a hare if it works, not only on acquiring a sufficient amount of knowledge to achieve a particular objective, but on improving its very methods/skills to acquire that knowledge.

I'm not ruling out the fact that there are people born with higher abilities in some fields, just pointing out to the fact that, as long as one doesn't have any particular neurological or psychological disorders (which would require a particular treatment), willpower remains the true ability that one should garner, before all else, in order to achieve any objective.

Here's an article I read long ago written by Isaac Asimov. It was posted by Pyrogenesis in HH once.


What is intelligence, anyway? When I was in the army, I received the kind of aptitude test that all soldiers took and, against a normal of 100, scored 160. No one at the base had ever seen a figure like that, and for two hours they made a big fuss over me. (It didn't mean anything. The next day I was still a buck private with KP - kitchen police - as my highest duty.)

All my life I've been registering scores like that, so that I have the complacent feeling that I'm highly intelligent, and I expect other people to think so too. Actually, though, don't such scores simply mean that I am very good at answering the type of academic questions that are considered worthy of answers by people who make up the intelligence tests - people with intellectual bents similar to mine?

For instance, I had an auto-repair man once, who, on these intelligence tests, could not possibly have scored more than 80, by my estimate. I always took it for granted that I was far more intelligent than he was. Yet, when anything went wrong with my car I hastened to him with it, watched him anxiously as he explored its vitals, and listened to his pronouncements as though they were divine oracles - and he always fixed my car.

Well, then, suppose my auto-repair man devised questions for an intelligence test. Or suppose a carpenter did, or a farmer, or, indeed, almost anyone but an academician. By every one of those tests, I'd prove myself a *****, and I'd be a *****, too. In a world where I could not use my academic training and my verbal talents but had to do something intricate or hard, working with my hands, I would do poorly. My intelligence, then, is not absolute but is a function of the society I live in and of the fact that a small subsection of that society has managed to foist itself on the rest as an arbiter of such matters.

Consider my auto-repair man, again. He had a habit of telling me jokes whenever he saw me. One time he raised his head from under the automobile hood to say: "Doc, a deaf-and-mute guy went into a hardware store to ask for some nails. He put two fingers together on the counter and made hammering motions with the other hand. The clerk brought him a hammer. He shook his head and pointed to the two fingers he was hammering. The clerk brought him nails. He picked out the sizes he wanted, and left. Well, doc, the next guy who came in was a blind man. He wanted scissors. How do you suppose he asked for them?"

Indulgently, I lifted by right hand and made scissoring motions with my first two fingers. Whereupon my auto-repair man laughed raucously and said, "Why, you dumb jerk, He used his voice and asked for them." Then he said smugly, "I've been trying that on all my customers today." "Did you catch many?" I asked. "Quite a few," he said, "but I knew for sure I'd catch you." "Why is that?" I asked. "Because you're so goddamned educated, doc, I knew you couldn't be very smart."

And I have an uneasy feeling he had something there."

- Isaac Asimov
 
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Hmm, I'm not even sure if we can accurately measure "the ability to absorb and understand information" or prove that it is "inherent".

You're right of course. I was thinking about when I worked as a school librarian. There were kids who were considered intelligent; they were at the top of their classes and always passed their exams with flying colours with seemingly very little effort, but who seemed to have no interest in knowledge for its own sake. Then there were kids whose academic performance was mediocre, but who would always be rushing to show me some interesting fact they had learnt. My point was to ask, which of these kids is smart? It's probably impossible to answer that.

I think that every person is capable of accomplishing any task if they are motivated enough to do it.

But don't you think it's likely that some people have more inherent aptitude for some fields than others? I never learned to play an instrument because I tried it and felt clumsy at it, and was therefore less motivated than I was in my studies of Mathematics, which came easily to me.
 
You're right of course. I was thinking about when I worked as a school librarian. There were kids who were considered intelligent; they were at the top of their classes and always passed their exams with flying colours with seemingly very little effort, but who seemed to have no interest in knowledge for its own sake. Then there were kids whose academic performance was mediocre, but who would always be rushing to show me some interesting fact they had learnt. My point was to ask, which of these kids is smart? It's probably impossible to answer that.
And my question is "is your question meaningful if we don't have a conventional definition of "smartness" to begin with?". This is a mere problem of semantics I think. Smartness only indicates a vague notion of "powerful mind capacities", and each one of us interprets that according to what one considers as a "relevant" or "important" mind capacity, or accoding to a "reliable" reference. Some people consider good academic grades as a sign of intelligence, whereas others, on the contrary, consider it as a sign of total submission, close-mindedness and uncapacity to construct one's own path independently.
I call people of the first category (those who "always pass their exams with flying colours with seemingly very little effort") "system synchronized", as opposed to "system disynchronized": yep, the academic system proposes a method and an environment to acquire knowledge, and tests to check one's progression in knowledge acquisition; succeeding in those tests with flying colors may guarantee that one had retained a significant amount of the information presented in the program. But the weakness of most, if not all, educational systems not only resides in their limitation (the academic program doesn't provide knowledge as a whole, only a portion of it), but also in their repetivity, their slow evolution, their narrow methodology, and their unadaptibility to every single individual. Of course there are reasons why we can't readapt the system often and why we can't take into account the particularities of each student (mainly limitations of budget and time). Under such conditions it is possible for some, who are "not interested in knowledge for its own sake", to use "dishonest" methods to get high grades, and hence be "unrightfully" taken for "the best ones" or "the most intelligent". It is also possible that some people with "natural abilities" in one or several fields feel unmotivated or "disynchronized" with the System, in such a way that they do not care much about following the courses or even doing the necessary minimum of study before the exam, which does not exclude the fact that they may be highly interested in learning in general. For instance, during my mathematics and physics preparatory years, there were students who would learn by heart every solution of every possible maths or physics exercise they expected would be given in an exam, without even trying to use their minds to solve them by themselves (and it usually worked or them!); while others, who were genuinely interested in maths would "waste a lot of time" trying to demonstrate a theorem which was not even part of the curriculum (that's me by the way).
A System Synchronized person may or may not have "inherent aptitudes" in some field (whatever that means), but the most important thing is that their method of study, their psychological profile, their social status and relationships, their sleeping patterns, their breathing perhaps.. are all matched up in such a way that they fall into or are close enough to the optimal space of criteria, which achieves the objective of having good grades. They're listening when one is supposed to listen, studying when one is supposed to study, playing when the time is right to play... hence achieving an optimal repartition of effort which would give the impression that they're getting good grades with "very little effort"; There could be as many as an infinite possible ways to do that of course, but the most important thing is that they fall into one or several ones of the possible "good" repartitions. This may or may not be intentional, and among those SSes there could be discipline geniuses, people who can adapt to any form of organization they are incorporated into.
But don't you think it's likely that some people have more inherent aptitude for some fields than others? I never learned to play an instrument because I tried it and felt clumsy at it, and was therefore less motivated than I was in my studies of Mathematics, which came easily to me.
I agree with both stances to some extent. I just don't give much importance to "inherent aptitudes". If I'm interested in something I'll just go ahead and study it no matter how much time it would take or how daunting it is. Besides, I don't think there are really inherent aptitudes "for fields". It's not like people have mathematics or poerty written into their brains. It's more presented like particular capacities stemming from particular repartitions of brain areas, and the number of connections between those areas (it was suggested for example that mathematicians have a better connection between the left and right sides of their brains). A person with a high aptitude in mentally representing 3D objects (which could possibly be divided into several sub-aptitudes, each corresponding to a particularity of said person's brain), may be advantaged in fields like Geometry, or sculpture, but their field of predilection remains a matter of luck and choice.
In short, there are three levels, that I can think of; which could describe a person's aptitudes (whether inherent or not):
1- The "hardware" level: expressed in terms of brain structure, and dependent on the original configuration plus acquired changes. (belongs to neurology and brain studies)
2- Specific aptitudes: is a compilation of the hardware particularities or sub-aptitudes at an intermediate level. (belongs to psychology and other human sciences) Example: good facial memory.
3- Fields: Is partially dependent on the previous level of course, but could be also acquired through sheer hard work. This way a person may acquire an aptitude that they didn't have originally, though admittedly it would be hard to come on a par with someone with an "authentic" aptitude I guess.

I personally prefer to put more emphasis on motivation and its substantiation into work, than on possible inherent capacities, because it's more concrete and it leaves hope that I can learn anything I want as long as I feel like doing so. It's just my personal strategy. 😊
 
And my question is "is your question meaningful if we don't have a conventional definition of "smartness" to begin with?".

That's really my point. Whether you consider a particular person smart or not depends on your definition of "smart". Until we can all agree on the definition this thread is pretty meaningless.

I personally prefer to put more emphasis on motivation and its substantiation into work, than on possible inherent capacities, because it's more concrete and it leaves hope that I can learn anything I want as long as I feel like doing so.

I think that motivation and willingness to work are capacities like any others, and I think it's likely that people possess them to different extents. Perhaps an ability to motivate oneself and a good work ethic are at least partly inherent ;-)
 
I think that motivation and willingness to work are capacities like any others, and I think it's likely that people possess them to different extents. Perhaps an ability to motivate oneself and a good work ethic are at least partly inherent ;-)

Well, I guess every human trait is partly inherent at least. Though motivation and willingness being the main levers of human activities, it would be better to focus on them than on some hypothetical intrinsic capacities, I think.
If I become a maths professor at uni as I hope, I'd prefer to tell a failing student that they need to work more or differently, instead of telling them that they're "not smart enough for the subject". Who am I to know anything about their inherent abilities?
 
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