Am I Intelligent Or Am I Stupid? 💡 Understanding Different Situations
What Is Intelligence?
Society has totally different views on the word 'intelligence'. Some assume intelligence is something you are able to measure with a test. Others suppose your education level represents your intelligence. I don't agree. I don't think any test or where you have been can measure anyone's advanced mind.
Some individuals see foreigners as 'less intelligent'. This entirely depends on the difficulty it takes to speak to each other. It's tougher for some people to speak to us as English isn't their first language. However, some say this individual may be a 'stupid foreigner', despite the fact that they may be very smart.
Also, difficult and unfamiliar ideas are hard to explain to others. Maths is something that some find tough, it's not because they're stupid, but that there are several complex concepts in Maths that come naturally to some, and takes longer to grasp for others.
Communication is typically the factor in which we regard people as smart or less intelligent. Whether it's trying to communicate where the closest fuel pump is to describing an advanced Maths equation, this is the point of judgement for many humans.
A Practical Example
You may have a dodgy boiler; so you may call up a heating engineer. They will come to your house, diagnose and fix the matter within minutes. If you ask them an explanation of what modifications they have made to your boiler, you almost certainly wouldn't understand much.
This is not because you're stupid, but because the engineer sees you as someone who is familiar with heat engineering and boilers. Therefore, he would use engineering language to match your 'intelligence'.
The engineer isn't superior to you. He simply mistook you as a peer, not one who is unfamiliar with engineering. This, of course, doesn't make you stupid, however, less informed in that field.
In our modern world, intelligence is typically measured by the IQ test. However, I think that their are many aspects to intelligence. There are, of course, certain individuals such as Elon Musk who seem to have a very high level of intelligence matched with imagination, resources, etc. to be able to achieve what he has done. I have no idea about other aspects of Elon Musk's life. However, there are many examples of seemingly very intelligent people throughout history, who in their own field were highly intelligent; however, in other areas, they knew nothing. Then there are the savants at the other end of the spectrum who appear to be very disabled mentally and physically, however, have an extraordinary level of intelligence and capability in a certain focused area. There are people who by all modern standards would appear to not be intelligent if they do not participate in our modern technology society; however, in their own territory of possibly survival or lifestyle they are extremely intelligent, while the modern technology supported person would be clueless.
I believe a universal mark of intelligence is having ones mind take in completely foreign information and build an understanding by how it relates to things they already understand. I.e. music instrument vocalizations and language patterns
Intelligence..... Thank you for this piece.
I agree with the statement that intelligence is closely related to communication. I feel that's something younger people, myself included, often forget to think about. You can be the smartest person in the world, but if you can't put it into words and therefore fail to share your thoughts with others, you won't be perceived as such. Mastery of spelling, grammar and vocabulery are necessary for people to take a text serious. It all starts with language, and I think we need to focus on that aspect of intelligence a bit more again as a society (I can only speak for what I see happening in Belgium and that's a reduced knowledge and worsening application of the Dutch language in my opinion. Do you guys experience the same in other countries?)
Living in a country with 13 official languages I do feel constraints in not understanding each other adequately leads to confusion and misinterpretation.
Would be wonderful to have some form of computer able to take languages, decipher and read back immediately in a language you understand (on the spot translator)
Grammar, spelling, pronunciation varies from region to region, just take a look at English and the spelling between the UK and the USA on many words.
Nice post
Degrees on a wall do not reflect natural intelligence, the way I see it is how you apply yourself and utilize knowledge gained. In other words you may have a degree after seven years study, are you able to problem solve on the move as required.
Communication in languages or musical arts should never feature since a person using sign language may have a natural intelligence that far surpasses one that could speak.
Overcoming problems presented to him Steven Hawking is a fine example of moving forward, overcoming what many may never have thought possible.
http://www.hawking.org.uk/about-stephen.html