But how do you know when a person, another human being, is more or less intelligent than you?
How about vastly smarter or stupider? What should be done with vastly smart or stupid people, within societies?
The most notable geniuses in world history, generally are excluded, their ideas banished, laughed at, and ridiculed while alive. But then they die, and their ideas are heralded, taken as absolute truth, and praised for centuries. Why are geniuses well regarded in death, but not in life, and not while living? Isn’t it about pride? One man’s pride cannot actively advocate another man “superior” to himself, right? Is intelligence connected to pride?
Shouldn’t a vastly intelligent man, individual, praise and feel pride about his intelligence, or, become humble and humiliated about it? Won’t society only support and accept a humble intelligence, one that is firmly and thoroughly humiliated and emasculated? Are you a humble person? Who is fit to judge humility and pride? Does this have connection with intelligence?
I think a superior intelligence will see the mendacity of pride, if not, his superiority may develop a facade for the lack of moral insight, and if sustained, will lead to the development of an attitude, as the relating platform through which interpretation is made.
The problem of extremes of intelligence, is not realizing that it is for the most part a matter of a situational perspective. He was there at a time in place, where the possibility of the use of his intelligence became feasible. He just thinks,that it is him, whereas it is the situation itself, which has become so complex, as to utilize his particular neural make up. This realization is one that all intelligences of higher quality have to cope and adapt to.
The reasoning involves, more than anything else, the issue called “ego”.
When a person is alive, everyone feels threatened by giving credit to the odd guy.
And even more, those who have made their wealth based upon former thoughts, seriously feel threatened by the new idea.
And they are the ones controlling the media.
After the guy is gone and time has passed, his ideas don’t feel so threatening and people begin to open up to, “what’s wrong with THIS idea that that guy was saying long ago?”
People are eternally dissatisfied, thus they are always looking for something to safely try out other than the status quo, but not while there is a person still attached to it. That would be too much like “following a leader”.
And additionally, there is the fact that intelligence doesn’t come in linear portions. Intelligence has vast variety, not merely degrees. When a person proclaims something as important to know, it is because his particular type of intellect has detected what was missing from the status quo. But no one else will recognized that until they have the ego-courage to truly examine it and the desire to change what was apparently not good enough.
Sometimes attitude and pretentiousness are advantageous. An supra-intelligent being would apply this pretentiousness in socially appropriate situations, and apply humility in other situations. Attitude is situational. I believe that a supra-intelligent being would demonstrate more of his insanely brilliant ideas in the company of certain groups of people, namely, people of higher intelligence. People of lower intelligence would be treated as if such knowledge were beneath them.
I don’t believe that knowledge applies to everyone equally, or that information is equal. For proof, we have classified and declassified information in the CIA. Such knowledge and wisdom should not fall into the hands of the common man, society at large, or the nation’s enemies. Because the average person, is defined by an average intelligence. Only the highest levels of intelligence should be introduced to such knowledge, information, and wisdom.
Super intelligent beings, species, animals, life, should all know this intrinsically and fairly early in cognitive development. Secrets exist, in part, to exclude the lower intelligence from the higher intelligence. The most profound secrets, knowledge, of all time, of all human existence, passes on from philosophers to philosophers, across space and time. I also believe, and assert here, that philosophers are writing to themselves, hundreds of years separated in history. Today’s philosopher is speaking to another philosopher, 500 or 1000 years ahead of now.
This is the level of intelligence at the “super intelligent” level. One man may not find proper communication within his own lifetime, society, culture, or even planet.
Is it anything other than or more than male pride, causing this misplacement of credit to the “odd guy”?
Yes, most people do not want to “follow the leader”, even if they take, and fully accept, the ideas spouted by men of higher intelligence. It is a pride and ego thing. A man can be right, correct, and true, but still hated, despised, and rejected. Men will simply wait until the intellectual is dead, before openly expressing the same ideas spouted by the source, and applying them large scale to the world.
Wisdom produced by super intelligence, are situational and contextual. A genius political idea which helps a democratic movement, may not help, or may hinder a communist movement. But that does not lessen the benefit, usefulness, and genius of the original idea and inspiration. And such genius ideas can repeat. A democratic movement in 2200AD could use a genius political idea, the same as another democratic movement in 2400AD could use the same idea repeatedly.
There’s no need to reinvent the wheel. And looking at the philosophers of history, much wisdom is lying there, partly buried, but ready to use today. The wheels are already invented, just waiting to be used, at different times, for different causes and reasons.
I prefer to openly boast and flaunt my superior intelligence, though in almost all circumstances feel this to be inappropriate.
Why? Because, as mentioned, in almost all circumstances there is nothing and no one against which/whom to exhibit superior intelligence. Ability needs footholds in order to stand above others, and to communicate the full extent of one’s ability requires others to be standing above others as high as they can, and yet for you to be standing above them.
I feel embarrassed most of the time, when I reluctantly say the simplest of things and am immediately labelled intelligent. Others simply passively notice the ease with which I do things that they have been too lazy to get good at - today I was referred to as “a walking calculator” because I had added some numbers quickly and in my head a few times before. Perhaps I might let loose a bit of extra insight or information on a topic beyond the socially accepted intellectual level.
Dealing with such a world, a terrible ennui may develop and become projected onto others around you in a negative manner. I have instead learnt to put most of my mental effort into repressing my thoughts and learning the language of the unremarkable in order to proactively cause others to become bored of me, so that I do not have to deal with them.
Confusingly for other people, I will also repel those who are intellectually adept - by challenging them in the most unsympathetic and hostile of ways, short of being disingenuous and rude. The best ideas are the only ones worth challenging, and in order to attract the most challenge against my own ideas I must initiate a conflict in order to motivate the most unfettered response to the best of the other’s ability. Usually I am disappointed, though I must test the water when unsure - I am perpetually hungry for this. It seems that I can only extract enough of others in such a way, it seems the only way to occasionally stumble upon a worthy criticism.
As such, I make it almost impossible for the other to acknowledge me, unless perhaps they recognise what I am doing and respond in a knowing manner due to their encounter with the same problem, and at least a consideration of the same solution. This is extremely rare. Once in a while, I may meet a worthy “opponent”, and the resulting mutual respect is more than enough reward: only the insufficiently capable will remain hostile to me. The best will come to revel in my challenges, and I likewise. I will not significantly “be regarded” for this in my lifetime and have no desire to be (nor do I in death).
A humble intellectual is a lazy one, who is not driven to be challenged because he is sufficiently challenged as he is.
And in what ways? You could probably work out if they were stupider about traffic fairly quickly if you could spend some time with them navigating streets. But there are so many ways to be intelligent and so many ways to be stupid -and people can be both in different categories. And then there are issues around how they communicate. A very shy smart person might not come off as smart, as one possible example.
Kill them all!
It seems like some people considered geniuses are considered so in their own lifetimes.
Self-promotion can definitely help in a number of fields. Probably some combination of apparant humility and agressive self-promotion - if only behind the scenes - would be best for the would be acknowledged as genius.
Let’s talk about intelligence and how to define intelligence. Reno, you’re right about something. People are “smart or stupid” about specific tasks. Maybe one person is a history buff who likes to memorize dates and historical facts. Maybe another person memorizes the periodical elements and protein synthesis. Different people specialize in different fields. Is a rocket scientist automatically “smarter than” a brain surgeon? Is a brain surgeon automatically “smarter than” a kindergarten school teacher?
Most people, perhaps falsely, will presume that a rocket scientist is “smarter than” a garbage man. Because one specialization requires a lot of studying, testing, science, knowledge, and the other does not. But forget about that, for a moment. Does specialization itself, indicate intelligence? I don’t think so.
There are the Darwin Awards. People who engage stupid, “high risk”, behaviors, tend to die and throw their lives away meaninglessly. Is high risk behavior “stupid”? No, it’s not. In fact, sometimes taking risks is very intelligent and smart, if you win. If you go through life always taking the “safe road”, then maybe you’ll gain very little in life.
So speicalization, and risk behavior, do not indicate “intelligence” to me. I’m referring to a deeper form of intelligence, something “super intelligent”, the ability to know when to take risks, or avoid risks, or the ability to specialize, or avoid specializing.
I finally see something with which to disagree with you.
“High risk” is ALWAYS less intelligent than low risk. The intelligent knows which is which, whereas others do not.
Intelligence is the ability to predictably resolve problems or accomplish tasks. Due to the complex nature of problems and tasks, intelligence types are varied and the garbage man (or more likely the street bum) might in fact be more intelligent than the rocket scientist. You cannot gauge intelligence by someone’s circumstantial situation in life. The playing field has never been level, nor will it ever be.
Intelligence is the manipulation of risk, not the actual risk taking. If a person sits their whole life in a room, like a jail cell, then this doesn’t make the person any “smarter” than others who do go out into dangerous situations, and live a more high risk lifestyle. No risk, no reward. Intelligence is merely the navigation of and through risks. Intelligence also dictates what types of rewards people ought to, and will, risk their lives over. For example, soldiers are drafted into the army. In what circumstances are they more or less willing to risk their lives?
If a soldier risks his life trying to save a friend, then this obviously demonstrates his value of friendship. While, objectively perhaps, people can claim that his risk taking behavior, to save his friend, is “stupid”. It’s not stupid. People just don’t see the values inherent within the risk taking.
Then it begs the question, again, as to what intelligence is exactly.
Conversely, I can define intelligence as the ability to create problems and impede tasks.
Sometimes it is intelligent to impede other people, animals, behaviors, ideologies, which are destructive or counter intuitive to your own personal interests and value.
Do we need to appreciate a general rule of intelligence in order to identify a specific instance of intelligence?
A rocket scientist could be a part time garbage man.
This is essentially what intelligence is, by derivation. Inter, +legere (the Latin root of the word) literally means to choose between. Good judgment is choosing “well” between any given number of options. This is much more commonly associated with intelligence than “bad judgment”. Either way though, it’s a question of values that determines “good” and “bad”, and perhaps either way is irrelevant to intelligence itself: being able to discern between various options (in order to provide greater perspective and understanding on any given situation). From here, let us choose the better or worse option.
You speak as if only death will give absolution to fault, and ideas are elevated to truth, both Newton and Einstein was elevated whilst still alive.
Sometimes while geniouses are still alive, the personallity will overshadow their work and people will not have interest in an obnoxious person’s works.
Under the Vietnam war, we began to found the understanding of intelligences, where they were located and how many. Specially soldiers with brain injuries were tested, it was found we had about 9 major intellects, and some of them could work individually and some seperately.
IQ test are a very oudated method of testing people, whilst personallity test are a bit better, though many journalists doesn’t comprehend that IQ tests are outdated and will still use them and refer to them.
Some are geniouses at sports, some are geniouses at math, some are genious at linguistics, etc, etc.
People may never discover where their major intellect lies, maybe one should have been an ingeneer, when one tries to be a rockstar.
It had nothing to do with their personalities.
The “powers that be” promote who they want to promote based on their own values.
Those famed people were Jewish and each proclaimed to be “fathers” of Science, as if the Catholics had nothing to do with it.
Yet the Catholics and a great many other Christians (and even Muslims) had a great deal to do with it.
Between a general law and a specific idea of intelligence, the idea of quantifying the instances, to levels, to descriptions, and finally definitions of singular occurrences. ; the various forms of IQ testing have taken front and center in qualifying the said intelligence. The methodology is fairly accurate, and various organizations have been established to accommodate people with higher intelligence, Mensa being one of the foremost.
It is a question whether this type of testing can accommodate ultra high intelligences, where those types, may be reluctant to test, in the first place.
Another issue os with abnormally displaced intelligences associated with the savant, who may test abnormally high on certain facets of intelligence, yet do very poorly on other types. The misunderstood high intelligence may in fact, have enormous social/psychological challenges, which bear down and de-vindicate intelligence.
The spin off attitudes may again be rightly or wrongly be interpreted, if they ever come to that.
So, just how intelligent IS it to put one’s life in jeopardy just for the thrill of it, just for the sake of the risk? That isn’t about intelligence, that is about an addiction to thrill seeking, that is about adrenaline albeit one is conscious of (aim) the risk.
It isn’t the risk itself being taken that determines whether someone is more or less intelligent - it is the intention, the reason for or behind taking the risk?
If one runs into a burning building simply because it is high risk, they are not intelligent - they are a fool and stupid.
If one runs into the burning building to save a child, it may be risky but they are doing it for a higher purpose or intention.
Great super intelligence you have there.
And insofar as emotional intelligence goes, taking a risk for its own sake is not very intelligent either.
So, just how intelligent IS it to put one’s life in jeopardy just for the thrill of it, just for the sake of the risk? That isn’t about intelligence, that is about an addiction to thrill seeking, that is about adrenaline albeit one is conscious of (aim) the risk.