Can someone be smart without being very knowledgable? Intelligent without much education? Can someone otoh have a lot of knowledge about various things but not be very smart? I think of smart as the ability to think and to solve problems. It's certainly likely then that many people only APPEAR smart because they know so much. Is that a legitimate distinction?
Smart uneducated people become inventors. Educated nonsmart people become university professors. lol!
smart (smärt) —adj: showing mental alertness and calculation and resourcefulness That's Watson. A quiz oracle of brute memory fastened to a natural language navigator that's self-learning / correcting; but devoid of ingenuity / discovery. (Which is to say, the applicable human stereotype was anticipating / mimicking for centuries its ideal non-human archetype.) http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/computers-vs-brains/
Yes. I think that it's possible to be very logical, mentally dextrous, creative and be a great problem solver, yet be untrained and ignorant. The converse is possible too. Many highly educated people end up as something like hacks, very good at repeating what they've been taught, but not very good at putting that knowledge to use or expanding on it. It's actually more complicated than that, since people might know a tremendous amount about some microscopically small topic, and be largely ignorant of many other things. Contemporary higher education kind of leads to that 'world's greatest expert in just about nothing' problem, with its highly specialized and super-focused PhD dissertation topics. And smartness isn't just one thing. I think that there are all kinds of different cognitive skills, and different people with the same raw intelligence score might be good at very different things. One might be dynamite at higher mathematics but hopeless at learning foreign languages. Another person might be the reverse. Some people might be born philosophers, scientists or historians. Others make great planners and strategists.
Strictly from my personal perspective: I am rather well educated with multiple degrees, and much smarter than the average. On a regular basis, I meet people who though less well educated, are smarter in various aspects. I also meet people with advanced degrees who only have smarts or knowledge in a very narrow field. I'd guess that smart people, on average, tend to become better educated. But, lack of formal education does not preclude "smart". .............. is this an answer? or a non-answer to the question posed?
You are not making any sense, brother. (my bold) Yes and no. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
May I point out, Magical man, that you totally flubbed the title of this thread? I know you can't edit it, but if someday the Big Crunch really happens and then the Big Bang again :yawn: and we do this all one more time, maybe you can tie a string around your finger and remember to title this thread, "Intelligence versus Knowledge'. There's a dear!
knowledge does not equal intelligence. knowledge is the accumulation of information where as intelligence is the ability to perceive new and novel things based off of the information at hand.
The definition of smart is knowing a lot of information. The definition of "a lot of information" varies from person to person. So being smart is quite subjective. Being intelligent is knowing what information you have and knowing how to use it properly (with intelligence comes maturity I guess you could say). You don't necessarily need to be smart to be intelligent, you just need to know what you know and how to use that information you have obtained.
There are two primary types of intelligence: fluid intelligence and crystallized intelligence. According to psychologist Raymond Cattell, who first propounded these two concepts, fluid intelligence is defined as "…the ability to perceive relationships independent of previous specific practice or instruction concerning those relationships". Fluid intelligence functions independent of knowledge and is essentially the capacity to think logically and critically, use inductive and deductive reasoning, solve problems in novel or unfamiliar situations, recognize patterns, think abstractly, etc. On the other hand, crystallized intelligence is essentially the capacity to apply one's general knowledge and experiences. Crystallized intelligence is roughly commensurate with knowledge, vocabulary, one's ability to use words and numbers, etc. Fluid intelligence and crystallized intelligence are strongly correlated with one another. While correlation does not imply causation, it's reasonable to surmise that a person who possesses above-average fluid intelligence also possesses above-average crystallized intelligence and vice versa. Most IQ tests that I have seen are designed to measure fluid and crystallized intelligence rather than one or the other. Therefore, a person's IQ—depending on which test they took to obtain it—may serve as a reliable indicator of their fluid and crystallized intelligence. I opine that there's likely a point at which the correlation between IQ and crystallized intelligence (e.g., knowledge, vocabulary, experience, wisdom) diminishes in significance. For example, it's very likely that a person with a 120 IQ is more knowledgeable than a person with an IQ of 75. However, is it just as likely for a person with a 180 IQ to be more knowledgeable than one with a 150 IQ? Not really, it seems.
