We all know confidently incorrect people. People displaying dunning-kruger. The majority of those people have low education and without someone giving them objectively true feedback on their opinions through their developmental years, they start to believe everything they think is true even without evidence.
Memorizing facts, dates, and formulas aren’t what necessarily makes someone intelligent. It’s the ability to second guess yourself and have an appropriate amount of confidence relative to your knowledge that is a sign of intelligence.
I could be wrong though.
Intelligence is such an elusive concept, but here goes anyway…
Knowing stuff makes you knowledgeable. You’re either born intelligent, stupid or somewhere in between. No amount of studying will ever change that, unless studying also involves copious amounts of alcohol. In that case, you’ll only get dumber.
Anyway, studying gives you information and tools, and what you’re talking about is a bit of both. If you go through a training system like that, you’ll be equipped to process and evaluate information, but none of that changes how intelligent you are. Sure, you can sound really smart to other people by using fancy terms and explaining complicated things. Those words alone don’t make you intelligent. Having the innate ability to understand that level of information does.
I’m sure there are really smart people living in rural parts of India where they don’t learn to read or even count very far, but they can do really clever stuff when hunting birds or weaving baskets. Even though they didn’t receive much education beyond what they learned from the local villagers they can still be intelligent. If they were born in a wealthy family in UK, these people would probably go to Oxford and graduate with a PhD in no time.
I’m not saying people without formal education don’t have the capacity for intelligence, I’m saying education increases intelligence through reevaluating your own thoughts.
From what I recall, it’s generally accepted that your potential for intelligence is based primarily on your genetic luck and environmental factors. Your genetic potential being how well your biological processes work, the hardware you’re given, and then environmental factors like injury, nutrition, and education that determine how much of your potential you reach or are hindered from.
If there were 2 clones, one born to a rich family with high IQ parents that understand how to nurture intelligence and one born to 2 mentally challenged parents who not only lack the ability to take care of their kid properly but require their kid to take on a caregiver role as a child. 99% of the time, one of them would reach their full potential while the other wouldn’t.
You’re mixing up knowledge, (or maybe “being smart”) with intelligence. You also just repeats the post ls claim you’re answering to, that an intelligent person in the UK will have better opportunities than in a poor country.
Knowledge is remembering facts, intelligence is pattern recognition and problem solving. Where did I mix the two?
Education gives you tools and information. Intelligent people are able to put those to good use. Stupid people are unable to, no matter how hard they try.
Tools and info yes, but the feedback is what I’m saying teaches people to adjust their confidence levels closer to their actual understanding of a subject.
Like if you wrote tests but never got graded or told what you got wrong, your confidence in your ability likely wouldn’t match your understanding of what you were tested on. Someone who wrote tests and were shown what they got wrong has a better understanding of how well they know something. I think that constant feedback is important and not something many people consider as a takeaway from being educated.
And yes, “stupid” people don’t have the ability to connect all the dots
Totally agree with you about the importance of feedback. With no feedback, you won’t know how wrong or right you are. You’ve also connected feedback with confidence, and that was a pretty good point. Formal education provides the feedback, which then adjusts your confidence to a more realistic level. Great observations, good post. 👍
However, many people get sidetracked by the way you mix up terminology. Maybe you should stop and think what exactly goes into the list you label “intelligence” or “being smart”. Are they the same thing, or are those lists different? Maybe they are separate lists, but there’s overlap? Either way, I suggest you sit down and reflect on the meaning of those terms. Maybe even write that list. Once you’ve done that, see how wikipedia describes intelligence.
As you can see from the number of comments, most people don’t agree with the way you use these terms. That’s the feedback you’re getting from this post, and it’s a great learning experience. Think of it like an exam, where the 100 teachers in this post are taking out their red markers and crossing out half your post.
I may have missed it but I’ve only seen you and 1 other comment say I mix up the terms, if you can point out where I’m mixing them up then maybe I can correct or clarify myself. I am fully aware of the difference between knowledge and intelligence.
That’s interesting, because the original post certainly didn’t sound like that. Thanks for the clarification anyway. I’m glad we’re on the same page here.