The smartest people you will never meet

Psychologist define intelligence by a certain criteria of abilities. and perhaps to a degree personality factors in how we perceive intelligence in another person. In day to day life, however, most people do not use a psychological definition of intelligence. Instead many simply consider it being smart which itself a term that is used so widely that you can truly wonder what it means. Think about it: it’s so easy to say “oh that's smart” or “she’s really smart“ when perhaps the word clever would be more appropriate. Similarly we could consider someone smart because they know all the solutions when problems arise but while this is being knowledgeable it the result of experience not cleverness. What I’m getting at here beyond semantics is the idea of who and what we consider intelligent.

“Intelligence is an umbrella term used to describe a property of the mind that encompasses many related abilities, such as the capacities to reason, to plan, to solve problems, to think abstractly, to comprehend ideas, to use language, and to learn. In some cases, intelligence may include traits such as creativity, personality, character, knowledge, or wisdom. Some psychologists don’t include those traits in the definition of intelligence.”

There’s a lot to take in here but this comprehensive definition demonstrates just how nebulous a term intelligence is. This should prompt in us the understanding that the umbrella of intelligence covers a wide variety of human activity, much of which we would not consider intelligence. For example, imagine a construction worker who encounters the problem of having to lift something too heavy for his equipment to handle. Let us then say that this worker figures out a way to combine two pieces of heavy lifting equipment (cranes) as a counter-balance system which allows the worker to effectively use gravity and leverage to move the object. This clever solution makes use of physics and ingenuity to see a way of using the equipment beyond their design. It could have failed but it worked. And if it did fail our worker could have used the experience to find a solution. But this worker is not an engineer. This is the guy that excavates the dirt, sets the concrete and is beholden to the company. Engineers and designers are considered highly intelligent people and they are but a question: how many would have thought to use two separate pieces of equipment in way they have not been used before?

Let's have some more examples. Imagine a small village in a part of the world that has yet to develop along the lines of a modern civil establishment. Which is to say that there are still dirt roads, little indoor plumbing and other amenities of city life. For most people in the large metropolitan meccas of the world the villagers are not even an after thought, they are no thought at all. Now let us imagine a fisherman who goes out each day to catch his daily meal. And this individual is a real problem solver. This is a person who can fashion a hook out of almost any material and can fix their boat in the midst of a situation. Sure a lot of this has to do with experience but at the same time there are novel situations which require creativity for soultions.