Follow along with the video below to see how to install our site as a web app on your home screen.
Note: This feature may not be available in some browsers.
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'?
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
Hmm, I'm not even sure if we can accurately measure "the ability to absorb and understand information" or prove that it is "inherent".
I think that every person is capable of accomplishing any task if they are motivated enough to do it.
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.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 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.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.
And my question is "is your question meaningful if we don't have a conventional definition of "smartness" to begin with?".
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 ;-)