This is a question I ask myself often, and it has bugged me for a while: How can somebody tell if another is wise, or if they are only faking it? Is it that they readily admit that they don’t know everything and is open-minded to different ideas, or could it be that and the ability to see the world from a different perspective from what is considered “the norm,” but still in a way that makes sense? Any thoughts on this one?
I think it’s too difficult to evaluate a person for it to be a practical thing to do while engaging in philosophy. How would deciding “This person is wise” or ‘That person is a fool’ help you in any way? What is accessible, is the analysis of what people say. Rationality and logic ensures that we all play by the same rules, so if you trust your basic grasp of the process of critical thinking, then you should busy yourself testing the message, and not the messenger.
“Wise men say, only fools rush in…”
I suppose, we can judge through what “wise men” say if they are really wise, but I think this is only half the picture. I prefer to actually see how have they lived or been living. Did/do they follow what they say in practice? We tend to value wisdom in terms of its effects in life, in the way we live. So, time will tell whether the wise men are really all that wise.
id say the main way to identify the source of what makes a smart person smart is their long term memory. ive found that all people who score high on standardized tests and have full conversation abilities, they have good long term memories. theyll tell you the stupid details about some random little event that they admittedly have no reason for remembering.
i think that is the one mechanism that changes an iq of 90 to 150. it seems possible that there is a separate mechanism for the speed, but also possible that merely a larger volume of memories can create that speed.
if you have few memories stored in your head, then the connections that you need to make in order to understand abstractions may not even exist, or will take longer to find and establish.
if you have many memories because of your 150iq, and the same recollection speed as the 90iq, then when you are faced with an abstract illustration of something, like an unobvious social commentary on the simpsons, you have more memories to compare what you see on the simpsons to what social reality it is commenting on. as you play hide and seek in your brain, there are more feet sticking out from under bed skirts.
this is kind of a bad, oversimplified example, getting simpsons jokes isnt what id use to call someone smart. but basically, when carl carlson comments that “rich people always want whats best for everyone”, the fact that i have certain memories clearly demonstrating the opposite and i have memories of the simpsons agreeing with those views, then i get the joke. if i had a certain number fewer memories, i would not have gotten the joke, or it would have taken longer to find the appropriate memory for the requisite comparison.
and that is what separates 90 from 150, how easy it is to find appropriate previous experiences. nothing more. agreed?
as for immediately identifying wisdom, such as on this board, i think those people who use a lot of quotes and dont write any long paragraphs in response or those who refer to the classics for an example of their argument… well those people annoy me.
when they attack the specific things you say instead of your whole idea, then either they are too slow to grasp your whole idea before emotionally responding to some little detail, or they wish to hide the fact that they have no argument against the big idea, but they still oppose it for reasons they are unable to articulate.
Oh, Future Man—you disappoint me this time. I read your posts, and now this is what I see?
Not necessarily. Arguments have components—their assumptions, implications, assertions, inferences. Anyone one of these not logically possible, or false, should be questioned. People arrive at different conclusions, given the same premises—Or, arrive at same conclusion, given different premises. Why is this so? Shouldn’t you want to question at which point someone have made a mistake in believing that war, murder, abortion, bestiality, child porn, etc are either moral or immoral? Correct conclusion by accident? Should we allow this to happen? Or should we arrive at correct conclusion KNOWING that not only it is logically correct, but also verifiable, testable, empirically plausible.
the person to whom i was specifically refering to probably knows who he is. if you read the arguments ive had with him, youd instantly notice the difference between our responses. to me, it looks like i have wasted a ton of time on somebody who doesnt really seem to care about convincing me of his position. expressing the mere fact of his disagreement appears to be his only goal.
he does this by quoting a paragraph the size of the one you quoted there, and then he’ll give me once sentence such as “hitler tried this, hes evil. therefore so is this idea”
when i reply, i will quote maybe one sentence of his and then respond with a paragraph generally at least three times longer than the quote.
people need to write more questions here. the best way to make me realize i am wrong is to find out what things i am assuming, if you believe there to be some wrong ones in there. such as, when i blab on about a radical facist social theory “why do you assume corruption will not exist? or what will motivate people to excell if not the urge to progress beyond what is expected of them?” not “youre hitler”
if two people responded to my social theory with the preceding two responses, and i had to quickly choose who was faking and who was the smart one…
so yeah youre right, its neccesary to pick apart the components of my arguments. its also possible to completely fail at doing so and make yourself appear less ‘cognitively active’ than somebody who responds differently utilizing a larger understanding of the situation.
I do very well on standardised tests and the like and have an absolutely disgraceful long term memory. I can’t remember how to even start doing differentation or any advanced Maths, even though I got an A in A level Maths 8 years ago and also used it a lot for Physics and Chemistry, again both As. IQ tests and the like are usually specifically designed not to include memory questions or cultural questions like you referred to with the Simpson’s joke.
I’ve always found that people who do well on IQ tests are good at quickly seeing associations and notice solutions to problems that others do not. I’ve always found myself a good problem solver and also someone who can rapidly pick up virtually any subject you throw at me, the big problem for me is keeping hold of that information, I can become an expert on a concept quickly, but ask me about it again in a years time and I will have forgotten everything about it.
Well, the point of this post wasn’t to bemoan my failings, just to point out that intelligence has nothing to do with memory.
On the idea of ‘wise’
The whole point of knowing that someone is wise is that you know who to ask the question of in the first place. There is no point wasting your time listening to fools!
And TheQuestioner, surely there is a third thing to being wise, someone who admits they don’t know everything and are open to new ideas are not necessarily wise, is it not also their ability to assess those new ideas and discard the useless and the wrong that makes a wise man?
Finally, I’d like to say I agree with arendt, a truely wise man will have his evidence through his life, without that he shows he is victim to Aristotle’s Akrasia.[/i]
I think that your assumption that there are fakes is wrong. Everyone is wise, it’s just a matter of degrees.
A baby is wise becaue: They have learned to cry when they are hungry. To act upon what they have learned is wise.
As we grow older, we learn more and more. As we use what we have learned in our daily lives, we build upon our wisdom.
Mark twain once said: (or something close to this)
The educated speak, the wise listen.
The implication there is that learning is key to wisdom. But I believe there is more to it than that. Being able to apply your learnings is what makes a person wise.
oo a lovely question
first off, wise is not same as intelligent. for my needs, intelligence is sufficiently defined as “the ability to easily translate factual situations into symbolic models and vice versa”. wisdom however has little to do with that, because it has a historical component (if you know how people before you solved a problem and apply that, you are wise not intelligent, if you score high on iq tests because you take alot of them you are wise not intelligent etc) that is very important. hence why it can be argued memory, especially long term, has a priviliged relation with wisdom.
but wisdom also has an “understanding the history” component, which is why if we meet somebody who can answer any history of psychology quizz or trivia question we don’t automatically consider they are a professional psychologist, just as if somebody can answer any american football quizz they are not necessarily football players. the proof of understanding history is simply applying correctly the lessons of it, which is to say comparing comparables and not comparing incomparables.
as a very limited example, somebody who learns the history of europe during the 1935-1945 decade is not wise about it untill he realises, for instance, that hitler in himself is nothing much more impressing than an under-educated, under-achieving army corporal, with a number of unsavoury individuals for friends, who on his own, by his own devices, stages something that is known as the beerhall coup, but that as soon as the mistakes of french diplomacy and the overall dissolution of the federal (germany was not a democracy at the time) state allows him to fill a gap in the power structure, he does so, carrying all his intellectual and moral limitations as liabilities all the way to the top.
on the much more practical (and much more fun side) of deciding who is wise, who had good luck (yes, in an argument luck counts, alot, especially for idiots) and who simply emanates random symbols, there are a few neat tricks :
first off, the non-traps, ie things that you dont do deliberately to trap somebody, hence you need no preparing, just examination.
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the tought pattern. people are normally analytical or synthetical dominant. which is to say they prefer to either cut something to pieces and see how it works, or integrate something into a bigger unit and see how it works. if they mix the two methods, they might still be wise, but they are likely uneducated. if they mix them alot, they are just confused. if they just collate the two, but not mix them, and both sides are pretty well tought out, run. it’s either more than one person, or terminator that’s after you.
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the argumentation construction. the more they avoid recourse to authority (The lord said this and that type phrases) they likely they are wiser (and educated, the two often go together, we will later on see where they go apart).
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the no proof needed for a negative. watch how often they fall in the trap of “If there is no proof x exists, it is unreasonable to think x might exist”. this is a very usual pitfall of the unwise, and what the educated unwise usually use to replace #2 in their mental economy. the statement is false, and has led to a very large number of amusing historical anecdotes, like the story of the black swans for one.
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the argumentation adequacy. if somebody is using standard feminist terminology to describe a situation in ancient egypt, he is commiting what is known as “presentism” and unless its painfully obvious they are doing it on purpose for a good reason, they are simply being silly.
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reaction to criticism. if people react to criticism by any of the following : denial, quotes, recourse to authority, missing the point (on purpose), mixing criteria (for instance bringing moral considerations in an ontology discussion, methaphisics in a chemistry discussion etc) they are not wise.
if they react to criticism by asking a pertinent question, modifiying their definitions or statements, or (in some situations) being silent, they are likely wise. -
the precision of their comparisons. if they use any comparisons at all, the more exotic they are, and the least flawed/impossible they are, the wiser the author.
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strength of their metaphores. if they use any metaphores at all, the artistic value of one indicates a great mind, even if the metaphore is flawed. however if their metaphores make you gasp with sudden realisation, they are likely wise. it is after all what metaphores are ment for.
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strength of their implicit deffinitions. if during an argument a need for defining concepts arises, the ones who define theirs swifter and more precisely, not more complicated than its needed, and with no needs to re-think them half an hour later are likely the wiser.
i think part two, ie how to trap people into showing just how wise they are i will write later on.