What actually makes someone intelligent?

[General]

Random I know, but was watching someone who may have deemed themsleves intelligent or may in fact be intelligent trying to sound intelligent.. Obviously intelligence varies, different skillsets and industries/areas require different types of intelligence - but, are their still some basic underlying principles to what makes someone intelligent?

Is it just the ability for someone to achieve a goal? To get something done? To read the top of the academic career ladder? Is it an attribute you can put down to your self awareness and those things around you too?

Is it an ability to adapt a certain skill set to most things?

Is EQ - emotional intelligence, more of an intelligence to look for and desire than merely an academic?

Is intelligence something that has to be based in a lucid and controlled manner for the most part? Or are some of the brightest minds substance abusers/in mental homes or what?

Is it an ability to purely understand and recite as much as possible? Or is it to keep what is only relevant to your life and skillset to master these things? I feel the more time that passes those deemed heralded academics may find themselves being proven wrong countless times - does this discredit their intelligence or does it just come with the territory of the times?

Does innovation, the desire and ability to invent something unknown previously show the mark of genius? Again, not something that necessarily requires a mind for every detail ever taught.

Is intelligence realistically related to practicalities? Being pragmatically minded? is this what helps someone succeed the most in life?

Where is the intelligence in success over living a simpler life? Can they both be mutually as intellectually impressive?

Is intelligence linked to the ability to see a bigger picture/simplify it and bring it together?

Is intelligence a convuluted idea, which over complicates things which simply may be much less complex... and is this man made purposefully, or because our desire for development and evolution of sorts has called for us to overthink?

Is it a combination of all, if so, what is the order?

[Lighthouse]

Do you understand the managerial set up at Fulham? If the answer is yes, you is intelligent.


Intelligence is the ability to stop it hurting when you can do nothing about it.


I am stupid so cannot answer the question and it hurts.

[General]

So intelligence can be directly related to the amount of exposure and knowing you have?

Is it fact based or manipulation based? Or both?

You also mention the 'I'  - the quote 'I think, therefore I am' - does intelligence means the ability to cognitively speak and think? Change the direction of your actions or the actions related to your thoughts?

Is it related to self control?

[YankeeJim]

I wouldn't call it a combo but more something like the fingers of a hand. We all are better at some things than others. Intelligence in and of itself can be self defeating. I've met a couple of Mensa members in my time and both, while super smart, were incapable of handling any social problem. Part of the issue is that being smart ,pretty much means being able to recite facts or expound on some subject. If intelligence were everything, we could get Stephen Hawkins to manage the club and we'd never lose. To me being smart is one thing but being innovative; the ability to solve a problem or create something new is a superior talent. Life experience is a major element of this. Who was smarter, John Locke because he had innovative ideas about the freedom of man or Thomas Jefferson who put them into practice? The same could be said of Marx & Lenin. If I invent fire but never figure out I can cook with it, am I smart or just warm & hungry?

[Nero]

What actually makes someone intelligent?

Hanging around with people who are stupid. therefore you seem intelligent

[Lighthouse]

Tha absent minded professor is intelligent but has little common sense. The guy on the street with no money is no professor but has common sense to survive.

As Edgar Allen Poe said - All that we are and all that we seem is but a dream within a dream.

[LBNo11]

...some people are educated beyond their intelligence...

[The Bronsons]

Speaking as an emotionally-stunted loner who left Mensa because I didn't want to meet people who had to pass an IQ test to join a society... and is on his fourth beer...

I think "being intelligent" means you make good judgements that make you effective. Hence someone who is emotionally intelligent makes good judgements and is effective in social... and so on.

And "highly intelligent/genius" can mean two things.

One is just more of the above plus originality: an intelligent physicist understands Newton and Einstein; but Newton and Einstein were geniuses.

That's depth: the other is breadth. Da Vinci comes to mind: scientist, artist, engineer...

[L-Wizzy]

What makes someone intelligent,
Intelligence nowadays is the ability to lie, deceive and bull..hit enough that people start believing it

[nixie-ffc]

'I've met a couple of Mensa members in my time and both, while super smart, were incapable of handling any social problem.'

possibly because yankeejim, they were on the spectrum. they tend to be socially awkward and most aspies are incapable of holding their own in a social setting. im talking from experience here. here is bill gates showing signs of high functioning autism. he is not behaving like a neurotypical being.

Bill Gates Netscape Navigator lawsuit

majority of humans are designed to be workhorses, slaves if you like. humans have freedom and democracy. my ...

like lighthouse pointed with that quote: its all a dream.

[nose]

I think people confuse knoweldge and intelligence.
People that win mastermind and the eggheads maybe know and be able to recall stuff... but IMO that is not intelligent.

There is also the issue of people who are articulate and able to argue well, have the gift of the gab so to speak, being thought of as intelligent, but that too is not what intelligence is.

IMO intelligence is the ability to apply the knowedge and experience to the circumstances you find yourself in and take best advantage. That may be financial it might be social it might be the combination of the both. There are many less educated people that are intelligent but have insufficient learning to get the best from life, but many of the best business men started from nothing and lest school early.

There are plenty of financially successful people that have dreadful social lives, so that isn't very intelligent......  so for me it is not an exact measure but rather the effective application of your own knowledge and experience as applied to the task in hand.

there is also using your eyes and ears and not just accepting what the received wisdom is, the ability/desire to question, not to be steam rollerd by the heard, not to let go until you have satisfactory answers would also fit within the remit of intelligence.

I also think there is one other issue and that is realising that you don't know stuff and then trying to find out by asking people with knowledge... thinking you know everything, or assuming everything will be alright, or somebody else will solve a problem is just plain stupid.

That's what I think. At least that's what i think I think

[FFC1987]

Common sense.

[Fulham Tup North]

If you have to ask then there is no point in me explaining it to you! ! ;)  :hook:

[nose]

If you have to ask then there is no point in me explaining it to you! ! ;)  :hook:

i often say something rather like that , in my case s 'if you have to ask then you won't understand the answer'  and i got that from Charles M Schulz, the author. He wrote, the words being uttered by no less than Good Ole Charlie Brown!

[Neil D]

You also mention the 'I'  - the quote 'I think, therefore I am' - does intelligence means the ability to cognitively speak and think?

Not splitting your infinitives is a good indicator...

[somerset cockernee]

many moons ago at college, I met a bloke who could speak and read about 5 languages, good at maths etc. etc. but he was a smashing bloke and not up himself, anyway he would admit that he could work-out the square root of a tin of beans but couldn't open them

[Neil D]

many moons ago at college, I met a bloke who could speak and read about 5 languages, good at maths etc. etc. but he was a smashing bloke and not up himself, anyway he would admit that he could work-out the square root of a tin of beans but couldn't open them

That reminds of a similar incident - this one really happened - at University.  An intelligent language student invited me to her digs for something to eat.  She began with dehydrated packet soup which she poured into a saucepan and then lit the gas.  She was puzzled when it turned into a burnt mass of crud in the pan.  It never occurred to her that you were supposed to add water...

[TonyGilroy]

many moons ago at college, I met a bloke who could speak and read about 5 languages, good at maths etc. etc. but he was a smashing bloke and not up himself, anyway he would admit that he could work-out the square root of a tin of beans but couldn't open them

That reminds of a similar incident - this one really happened - at University.  An intelligent language student invited me to her digs for something to eat.  She began with dehydrated packet soup which she poured into a saucepan and then lit the gas.  She was puzzled when it turned into a burnt mass of crud in the pan.  It never occurred to her that you were supposed to add water...

Are you sure that's why she invited you?

Might you have missed something?

[NogoodBoyo]

Intelligence is being able to figure out what is going on on General's mind today.  He knows.  Others know.  I don't.  I am definitely not intelligent by this measure.
Nogood "there's twp you is, isit" Boyo

[SouthfieldWhite]

I've always believed that on the whole most really intelligent people have very limited common sense and people who are not that intelligent have more common sense

I wouldn't say I was intelligent, but believe I have alot of common sense, if you have both well done, but there's not many people out there who have a high degree of both