Why intelligence doesn't matter
75Yesterday I wrote something titled "The smartest guy in the room". The piece was actually was about confidence, not intelligence, but it upset some people. Today I want to remind those people why intelligence does not matter.
It doesn't really take much to see that, but I'll take my time proving it, because first I'd like to explore why most people think it does matter and why any hint that someone thinks they are more intelligent than another will often cause anger.
Why does that cause anger? It's definitely anger, not resentment. If someone is tall, or good looking or has a lot of money, people sometimes do exhibit resentment, but that's not an emotion that is usually in play in this matter. Why does the subject of intelligence bring anger up from the depths?
Before you rush down to correct me, yes, I know that's not always the case. Anger is not always present. It is, however, common, and common enough that I feel justified in asking why the matter of relative intelligence is so touchy and unpleasant.
Equality
There are no immediate outward signs of intelligence. Good looks are obvious, wealth may be betrayed by clothing and even grooming, but intelligence is hidden. Vocabulary usage may give some hint, but by itself that is not enough.
At yesterday's comments, one person noted:
"[H]umans naturally start off with the assumption that everyone is the same as them, only after the immediate rationalisation of the chances of that being true according to past views and stereotypes do we decide that it is not the case."
I'd note that there is also great shame associated with not being "smart". There is little that will make people blush more quickly than being made to look "dumb".
So: we don't want to look "dumb", we do want to assume equality and there are no immediate outward indications of intelligence. Is it any wonder that anger can come out of that?
Again, not everyone reacts that way. This is all generalizations.
Intelligence is not expertise
Although sometimes forgotten, I doubt anyone will take me to task over the assertion in this section title. Let's take a very simple example, though, just to hammer the point home.
Did you ever play Tic-Tac-Toe? If you did, you probably know that there is a "never lose" strategy. That strategy can be learned rather quickly and easily and might be why you tired of playing Tic-Tac-Toe as a child and haven't thought about it in many years.
That strategy is expertise. Most expertise isn't acquired quite so easily: becoming good at chess or poker requires much more work than learning the Tic-Tac-Toe strategy, but no matter what level of effort and knowledge is involved, expertise trumps intelligence every time.
No matter how intelligent you are, you can't beat someone who knows the strategy of Tic-Tac-Toe. The same is true for chess, poker and any other game, although there is no "perfect" strategy in many games.
Expertise will beat intelligence.
That's not to say that a highly intelligent person can't acquire the expertise, of course. It may even be easier for them: they may be able to learn faster and memorize more quickly. But once mastery is attained, they lose much and perhaps even all of their advantage.
If the game does have a winning strategy, intelligence obviously becomes unimportant. If there is not a perfect winning strategy, any initial advantage of intelligence diminishes and when we reach the expert levels, if there is any advantage left, it is always very, very small.
This does not apply only to games, of course. In every occupation, education, experience and expertise are vital.
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Novelty
The only place intelligence matters is where there is complete novelty, where no strategy exists. That's why very bright people like puzzles and gravitate toward occupations that involve troubleshooting or invention.
The advantage in those areas can be lessened by a person who is willing to work hard and gain knowledge. There are strategies for troubleshooting and puzzle solving too, and although they may not be perfect, they can even the playing field.
Even in invention, brute force experimentation (Edison's search for a light bulb filament, for example) can substitute for genius and sometimes is even the better method!
Intelligence isn't all that critical. Hard work is often a viable substitute.
Limits
There are obvious limits to both intelligence and expertise. Many very important problems are simply far too complex to yield to any application of intelligence or study. A highly intelligent person may be able to talk a good game in some of those situations, but they don't necessarily have any real advantage.
In fact, they may be at a disadvantage. In some situations, a primitive and simple emotional response is far better than any amount of reasoning. We recognize that when we warn people not to "over think" something. Some things really are better solved without deep inspection.
Hard work
We all know that hard work and study are what really matters. You may be born with genius, but it is the application of that intelligence that really matters. Being a "quick study" is nice, but it is the study that matters, not how quickly or easily you learned it.
No doubt many of us know people of very ordinary talent who applied themselves with extraordinary concentration and succeeded brilliantly. They may have had to work harder, yes, but at the end, they gained the needed knowledge and expertise.
It's simply not all that important
That's the final conclusion. Intelligence is not a vital asset. Hard work and expertise are almost always more important.
Is that perhaps what lies under some of the anger? Is it because we know that it really doesn't matter and object to the value society sometimes attributes to those who have it?
Or is it just because those people have an easier ride, that the expertise most struggle to obtain comes more easily to them?
Perhaps it is all of that and more. Whatever drives it, we should try to remember how unimportant it truly is.
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I must have had a lot of "I hate you!" votes yesterday :-)
I don't think I have ever had a hub start at 45 and sink lower before!
It's at 64. That's not that bad. I actually voted it up as I found it to be interesting and the fact that it got so many comments was good no?
No, I meant this one :-)
Yes, it's "good" but it's sad when people get angry about things they really haven't thought through.
I suppose I could have expanded the bit on "intrinsic worth" or hammered in the implied "until proven otherwise", but I honestly found the bitterness so interesting that I didn't want to change anything. Frankly, I thought the implied things were quite strong enough - or should have been, anyway.
Very,very interesting :-)
Pcunix, Thanks for quoting me in your hub, perhaps this next comment will feature in another follow up.
The reason that people get angry when intelligence is compared between them and another, is because of the inferiority that accompanies it. This is well based too, because intelligence is simply all mental functions, behavioural intelligence such as volition (hard work) and emotional & moral intelligence such as calmness and kindness all also fall under the term "intelligent". Thus when people hear "he is more intelligent than you" it is a statement meaning "he is superior to you overall" excluding physical factors.
It simply means that this person is better than you naturally at something, and will achieve more than you with less effort and time, allowing him to move on.
Thus I disagree entirely with the idea that "hard work" can counter intelligence's effects because being able to work hard is part of being intelligent. If a person cannot apply himself as well as another, he is lacking the emotional intelligence to do so.
Intelligence is such a general term. Some would call someone with expertise intelligent. Indeed, the total amount of knowledge that a person has often is the basis of his "intelligent" status. In this hub, you have used another side of intelligence which is to be naturally better at things than other people, and that is fine, but that is just one aspect of intelligence and used broadly, does not necessarily mean that a person is intelligent.
The only reason that people should not feel upset about intelligence levels is that of the fact that intelligent people will equally find problems and sadness themselves, equal to someone of less intelligence, since we are all humans and seek things to be unhappy with as our nature, either it is because of not solving a difficult question or a simple sudoku, the displeasure is all the same. The knowledge however, that you are more intelligent than someone else will be a particular pleasure that one might have over another.
You must also bear in mind that there are so many different areas to be intelligent in, with one structure being the 9 intelligences, music, natural knowledge, interpersonal, intrapersonal, existential, mathematical, bodily-kinaesthetic, spatial and verbal. Being good in one of these might falsely lead to one being deemed intelligent, but without knowing the level of ability in the other 8, that conclusion can't be met.
Specifying in one subject does not make you intelligent of course.
Also is the notion that the brain has plasticity and can adapt drastically according to the skills necessary and almost every skill can be improved drastically by simply exposing our brains to particular tasks.
We are all born almost identically in the brain department, it is after that, the stimulus, hard work and efforts that we put in, that differentiates one from another.
Thanks,
Philanthropy,
Agree that if one doesn't develop/use their smarts, the smarts aren't worth a lot.
But without intelligence one can work as hard and long as they want and get nowhere. I work with Special Needs children and some of them are mentally challenged in varying degrees. I guarantee you any one of them could work as hard as you like for a hundred years if they had that long, doing their best to get us to the moon, and never accomplish that or much of anything else. Many of them can't even answer a simple question, read, dress themselves, and don't know where they are most of the time. To be sure, they often exceed what are considered their abilities compared to people of average or above intelligence, but to suggest intelligence is completely irrelevant, I think is misguided.
One of my history professors made the statement one day, "The world is run by C students who show up." One only has to look around at what a mess this world is in to see the truth of that statement.
There are lots of people who know more about a variety of things than I do and I love to glean knowledge and information from them. Most are not considered gifted, but they have the expertise you speak of in certain areas.
Yes, I have known people who accomplished things through sheer hard work and determination, but I think had they not had reasonable intelligence to start with, they would not have succeeded.
I have heard people say this isn't necessary and that isn't necessary all of my life. Usually people who either don't have whatever it is they say isn't necessary, or people who think they don't have what they say is not necessary. Basically rationalizing and trying to justify whatever short coming they may have, or think they have.
"Grades don't matter," is a statement I often hear. I guess it's all relative. If you don't mind working your butt off paying your own way through school as opposed to having the university of your choice offer you grants that will pay for it in total, then I guess grades don't matter.
If, for whatever reason, you think intelligence doesn't matter, I guess you will develop a theory that you believe proves that. However, I think my mentally challenged clients prove otherwise.
@Au fait: special needs are a special case. That's damaged goods.
@Philanthropy2012: I'm going to have to disagree with a lot of what you had to say, but your comment certainly is valuable and it's perhaps just a matter of how we look at things.
I can give a good example in someone I play Scrabble with. This is not a "dumb" person, but they are not "quick". Their vocabulary doesn't begin to match mine and they sometimes miss bingos even when they know the word that could have been played. These factors mean that I usually win when we play.
But I do not win by much. They work hard at playing, very, very hard and it pays off. They work much harder than I'd be willing to for the sake of a game.
There is another very bright person I play with who also takes it very seriously. I can beat them, but I have to work much harder at it and therefore I don't enjoy it. The games are too competitive, it's not "fun".
I think it would be very interesting to put those two together. They both care very much about the game and my suspicion is that they'd be very closely matched even though one has far more raw talent to bring to the game.
Hard work CAN replace intelligence. In my opinion, of course :-)
Some every interesting points. Half my the national honors society from my High School are homeless and dumpster diving for food. So I would guess there should be a common sense clause of intelligence versus actual aptitude.
JT
This discussion is interesting, but it by-passes the whole in picking apart the facets. I'm reminded of doctors who specialize, and almost forget that there is a real, live, complex individual to consider.
A person can be extremely intelligent but, if emotional intelligence is low, life can be very difficult and lonely. If a person isn't a bit intuitive, nasty surprises can come up that other people would be prepared for without even realizing it. If a person lacks determination, discipline or resilience, that person can easily end up dumpster diving, because quitting has become the only persistent habit practiced. If a person has poor health, it can lessen stamina and make other gifts less useful.
All that is true, HP. I am simply pointing out that intelligence alone has limited usefulness.
Pcunix, the idea that ability to work hard is intelligence is one that I and the psychiatric community will agree with. This is predicated on the fact that volition (willingness) is a function of the brain and having more means you have more intelligence in that respect.
What you are talking about in your scrabble analogy is a difference in the growth and development of particular parts of the brain. Challenge your scrabble-gifted friend at playing tennis or understanding an existential concept and he statistically speaking should be less adept at the task than you,
Philanthropy,
Intelligence varies from one person to another whether one has such a huge variation as to be considered mentally challenged or not.
@Au fait, yes, of course it does.
Nice write!
I'm one of those people who's always assumed himself to be THE brightest of any bunch. It's not all my fault, my family reinforced that in me from a young age, and they still do the same.
"Most scholarly" of my class didn't help. Yeah, it was a small class by urban standards.
When I went into a good, old fashioned redneck industry (my assumption) - the HVAC industry, I quickly assumed that I would dominate as usual. I thought everything would be easy for me...as usual.
But I learned that my book smarts didn't translate into the hands on field of mechanical repairs. I didn't have it, I didn't understand it, and I was lost.
I've surely got some learning ability....but I learned that some folks just have mechanical ability, the ability to understand electrical circuits - rather than what Hemingway was trying to say, etc.
Now, eventually my natural smarts started making up for lost time - but my lack of mechanical aptitude was surely very hard for me to figure; and I paid the price in pride.
i know some one with average intelligence who through hard work got A's in high school. when it came to college, though, her best effort produced C's. this person could never have fulfilled her grandmother's dreams for her of becoming a doctor. intelligence matters, and not only at the very lowest end.
@cathylynn99 So because one person could not, no one can?
I know someone with brown eyes who is under five feet tall. That proves my point.
This is the first of your hubs I've read[probably not the best choice]and though I would have understood your point better had you given your definition of intelligence,it was well thought out and easily followed.I would like to offer a mitigating word that might bring some perspective to this dualistic presentation;balance.
Contrary to what you might think,I voted up for presentation.
Dean
@cheaptrick: I realize that some definitions are more broad than others.
it was just an example. i do not believe any person of average intelligence would do well in medical school.
I don't think any person of average ENDURANCE would do well in medical school.. the system is idiotic and primarily designed to keep doctors incomes higher than they should be.
i don't know what you think docs make. family docs, internists, pediatricians and psychiatrists make about what someone with a four-year engineering degree makes. some specialists like cardiologists do break the bank, i agree, and could handle proposed cuts to medicare.
i also agree that working 36 hours straight a couple times per week is ridiculous. it nearly killed me (fell asleep driving home, no energy to leave an abusive relationship). it's meant as a rite of passage, but its time has passed. more and more laws limiting working hours for doctors-in-training are on the books.
the length of the training is beneficial given the sheer volume of material that must be mastered.
I know that HMO's have hurt medical incomes, but as you note, specialists are truly raping people.
By the way, the volume is also ridiculous - specialist could learn heart surgery without knowing anything about the endocrine system and so on - but that's getting off topic here.
let's see, endocrine - diabetes, a heart surgeon who can't treat his many diabetic patients - not good. medical care is already too fragmented resulting in many ($60,000 worth for three people in my family over the past four years) unnecessary tests and suboptimal care.
See, you are concentrating on things unrelated to surgery. I read a few years ago about a team of Canadian joint surgeons who train and do only that at greatly reduced costs.
But I don't want to get into the idiocy of medicine here. Some other day, some other place.
People need to remember that wisdom and intelligence are two separate things. Wisdom and some sense of emotional intelligence do wonders to shore up the gap. I had an ex with an IQ somewhere in the stratosphere...(Around 160 or so) I could turn him into a speechless idiot in about 10 seconds.
Point being, I agree with you Uni, intelligence is nice but it's not the end-all of gifts.
As a By-the-way, if you ever call special needs kids "damaged goods" again I will most assuredly have to bite you.
Oh, I think you are reading that as derogatory and it isn't. People with severe emotional issues are going to have trouble too. Dyslexics, autistics - these things just put more barriers in the way and make success that much harder.
i also object to calling anyone "damaged goods". it is hard to see it as anything other than derogatory name-calling.
Sigh. So someone who is, in fact, damaged, physically, emotionally or intellectually has to be referred to in some other way.
Fine. Whatever you want. It doesn't change that they are damaged.
What's next? If I have cancer, we won't use that word?
It's idiotic.
Just Ask Susan Level 8 Commenter 5 months ago
Nice follow-up!