Intelligence

I had an interesting exchange the other day, and I got to thinking about what it means to be smart or intelligent. I was talking to someone at work, and we were talking about something that we disagree on, and I asked him to explain his logic to me, and that I would admit I was wrong if that was the case, but that I needed to fully understand his point first. We were talking over email, and he responds with, “thought I was talking to the smartest person I know. 😉”, and then said he would explain the following day, as he had something to do.

I started wondering. Even if I were the smartest person he knows, that doesn’t mean that he can’t know something that I don’t. Nobody knows everything, right? So why do we have this idea that we can’t teach other people even if they are “smarter” than us?

When I was in a physics class in my early 20s, one of the guys I partnered with often for labs was actually a janitor at the college. He had a dream to be an electrical engineer. He was a sweetheart too, very kind man.

He struggled with different things, and I would try to help where I could. He was always grateful, but when it came to the unit on electricity, he actually saved me. And by that, I mean my grade – we never worked with enough current to be dangerous. That man understood things about circuits and currents that I just could not wrap my head around. He was the reason I didn’t fail that unit!

Some people looked down on him or assumed he wasn’t “smart” because of his occupation, and that is bullshit. He knew things I could barely comprehend, and just because he had issues with some other parts of the class doesn’t mean a damn thing. He was there, putting in the work to make his dream a reality, which is more than most people can say. I admired him, and am so thankful that he helped me get through what I considered the worst part of that class.

In any case, I looked up the definition of intelligence. It’s not about knowing everything, it’s about the capacity for learning or applying what you know to new or difficult situations. I’ve said before that my dad was one of the smartest men I’ve ever known, and that stands. He wasn’t “educated” per se, but he was extremely intelligent. I think that we too often assign the value of intelligence to how many facts someone knows or how many degrees they have. That’s not what makes someone intelligent. What makes someone intelligent is the ability to take in new information, reason with said information, assimilate it if it fits or discard it if it doesn’t, and move on to solve whatever problem you are facing.