2.15.02, 1:40 pm

  • IM with sister

  • Tavie: http://www.tavie.com/2002_02_10_archive.html#9763934

    Tavie: Do me a favour

    Jink246: ?

    Tavie: do you have any thoughts

    Jink246: I just loaded it, you know our slow comp! =P tryin to read brb

    Tavie: sorry

    Jink246: well?

    Jink246: I know what makes a person UNsmart?

    Tavie: What?

    Jink246: (lipstick)

    Jink246: I have a theory

    Jink246: on it

    Jink246: that is absurd

    Jink246: but what makes someone smart?

    Tavie: tell me

    Jink246: focus, I guess

    Jink246: the ability to

    Jink246: doing anything right requires it

    Jink246: =/

    Tavie: So unfocused people aren't smart?

    Tavie: What aobut those geniuses with ADD that have a million thoughts running through their heads?

    Tavie: not smart?

    Jink246: people think they are retarded or label them as such because they can't pin their thoughts done. They do not have manageable/marketable/"useful" intelligence. So they are dismissed.

    Jink246: done=down

    Tavie: Not all of them, some of them have that to a lesser degree than others and can function

    Tavie: And they're considered really smart

    Jink246: then they CAN focus

    Jink246: if their ADD is to a lesser degree

    Tavie: or on meds?

    Jink246: they have the baility to

    Jink246: ability to

    Jink246: because of med

    Jink246: s

    >

    Tavie: so intelligence = focus

    Tavie: interesting

    Jink246: I guess =/

  • Steve, 2.15.02, 2:30 pm


  • StewStang: I think it's too big a word to pin down, personally.
    Tavie: Then why is everyone so certain about it? And everyone uses it so carelessly
    Tavie: "Well I'm stupid, she's smart" "He's smarter than me"
    Tavie: How do we KNOW?
    StewStang: Hmmm...fuck you've got me all confused now <g>
    Tavie: See
    StewStang: Yeah.
    Tavie: It's a problem
    Tavie: Especially because all my friends are certain they know where they fall in the hierarchy
    StewStang: I'm not sure where I fall.
    Tavie: "I'm not smart enough to know that". "I'm stupid, you're smart" "He's so smart, he's a genius"
    StewStang: I think the problem is that we're trying to qualify something that spans so many different things.
    Tavie: then we have to stop using it so casually
    StewStang: But it is the nature of humans to categorize...and this certainly one where we do.
    StewStang: It's a lot, in my mind, like beauty.
    StewStang: What is beautiful to one can be very much not so to another.
    StewStang: My brother is SO much smarter than me when working on "things." He's currently putting a go-cart motor on a bicycle. The things that he has been able to creat to make that possible have made me stand mouth agape at his ability...However, I imagine that this particular skill would be quite easy to dismiss, say, to Harvard law students.
    Tavie: yeah
    StewStang: Just because I recognize his genius, does not mean that others would.
    StewStang: Sometimes, I guess, it all comes down to "just knowing." I mean, we, being the creatures we are, base SO much of how we judge people on first impressions.
    StewStang: And those impressions can be wrong.
    StewStang: Fuck, I don't know...but I kinda understand your point now, and I'm gonna think about it.
  • Djin, 2.15.02, same

  • Djinifer: Intelligence is in the eye of the beholder, I think.
    Tavie: Yeah, but we use it as a qualifier so carelessly
    Tavie: "He's smart" "You're smarter than me" "I'm not smart enough for that"
    Tavie: And I don't know what it is we're using to measure it
    Tavie: But it'
    Tavie: s pigeonholing us
    Tavie: I want to know what the criteria is
    Djinifer: Our individual perceptions of "smart" it as measured against our own abilities can stifle our own potential.
    Tavie: I know. It's a problem.
    Djinifer: I'll have to think about it. Everyone has a different idea of what smart is. I don't think anyone is forming a list in their heads as to what it means specifically.
    Tavie: Then I think we use it to casually
    Djinifer: But, is there any way to standardize the definition?
    Tavie: I don't know. I guess not.
    Djinifer: I think maybe people use it in a wishful sense. They wish they had the knowledge of whomever they're comparing themselves to.
    Tavie: But it's a very charged term
    Djinifer: Everyone has in the back of their mind one or two persons at least who they consider as "smart"; someone they want to emulate.
    Tavie: I have a lot
    Tavie: I wonder how we decide this
    Djinifer: I have a lot too
    Djinifer: But, there are people who I can acknowledge as being smart who I do not agree with or want to be like too.....
    Tavie: Yeah, me too
    Djinifer: I'm tired
    Tavie: Me too

  • Ade, 2.15.02, ~3:30 pm

  • Ade: I think it meant something to you at the time and maybe it stayed with you as a sort of embodied understanding even if you don't recall the thing exactly [AND, btw, I think that's part of what I think intelligence is, but see below...]
    Ade: What I was saying at the time was that I think that intelligence is not about what you know, but the extent to which you're able to learn.
    Ade: And that IQ tests are bogus because there's no good way to quantify intelligence. And there are a lot of different kinds of intelligence. That you may have the ability to easily learn some kinds of things and not others.
    Ade: So Gina thinks she's stupid because she doesn't spell well. But we know that she is not at all stupid.
    Ade: And why you sometimes think you're stupid because you don't know EVERYTHING, but I knew you were brilliant when you were 15 because you hungered for knowledge and understanding. [And also you retained what you learned -- even if you don't remember everything you ever heard or read .]
    Ade: And that knowing stupid facts and understanding the patterns that connect are very different skills -- remembering facts is not as important in understanding than recognizing patterns (that's why I sent you Bateson, I think )
    Ade: And Einstein kept his phone number on a slip of paper in his wallet, because if he didn't HAVE to remember something, he wasn't gonna bother.
    Ade: And Bateson also talks about levels of learning. So learning simple tasks isn't as good a predictor of intelligence as the ability to learn HOW to learn [and learning about learning how to learn -- I think we'd call this META-learning, which is much more of an indicator of intelligence than rote memorization]. A student in my class who learns facts is gonna do OK, sorta, maybe -- but if a student learns how to learn what we have to teach him or her is going to be at a much greater advantage. And then, if they learn what went into how they learned what they learned ... well, then, they're likely to start wanting to teach people, I suppose, because at that point it's easier to show people HOW to learn -- if they're intelligent enough.
    Anyway, that's a pretty mushy way to describe it, I think. But then ... things get in a muddle.

  • Jodi, 2.15.02, 2:59 pm
  • I think that "smart" is the ability to learn. Someone can be smart without being formally educated, just because they've been able to pick up on the world around them. So it could also apply to smartness in social situations (knowing how to act, picking up cues from people around you), picking up new vocabulary words, etc.

    I think it differs from "intelligence" in that intelligence is based on an artificial and arbitary um... system? IQ tests, basically. Someone's decided what's important to know, but someone who may be very smart and thus can function very well in the society/situation they're in may do poorly on an IQ test because the background required to do well on an IQ test is not the background they're used to.

    More education wouldn't necessarily make someone any smarter (unless you think that education teaches people how to think better, which in some cases I believe it does), but someone who was smarter would be able to learn more quickly and more thoroughly than someone who wasn't as smart.

    Of course, ability to learn depends on a lot of things -- focus (like your sister was saying), interest level (I remember stupid facts about celebrities and entertainment after hearing one random comment, while formulas in math were a struggle to remember and comprehend even after years of math classes)... so someone could be smarter in some areas than others. I don't think it's an either/or thing -- it's not that you're either smart or you're not, but rather you can be smarter in one area than in another.

    I'm not entirely sure if this is what I think the generally accepted definition of "smart" is or if this is just my personal view, but it's the best I can come up with right now :)

    --

    Jodi ** http://meandering.blogspot.com


  • erin, 2.15.02, evening


  • sisterpuFF: the word "smart" is like the word "love" ... it means so many different things - what we really need is different words for different kinds. like you love your mom and you love your husband - those are different kinds of love, and they should have different names... on the other hand, generally how smart you are is classified by your ability to learn things.



  • sarah c, 2.15.02, 6:52 p.m.


  • i don't know that you could say a person is smart "in general". like others have mentioned, there's different areas of smartness - technical, social, trivial, having a neat appearance (literally {g}).. it all depends on what your personal values are. IQ tests are bogus, because they measure specific aspects of knowledge, what the test-writers feel are valuable. a person's background, education, culture, everything, affects what you learn and with what values attributed to them. that was one of the arguments for teaching eubonics, i believe, because children raised in a community where "proper grammar" wasn't valued, but in the school system they were penalised for not *having* the grammar structures by the book. the fact that they don't speak like the high-brow north americans doesn't mean that they're not smart, but to judge by how they entered the education system, those kids would be idiots. any system of measurement is going to have its inherent biases, and in IQ its all the more apparent. IQ tests shouldn't be valued nearly as highly as they seem to be.

    i think too much emphasis is put on "smartness". in our culture, "smart" far too often means going to university, getting a high-paying job, being able to breeze through any social situation with flying colours, and then becoming the "social norm" (which i don't believe it is by any means, especially not today) by getting a beautiful significant other, 2.4 children (one of each sex of course) and a dog. (though i think it's far brighter to have a cat - less work, less cost, softer fur.) what's valued as "smart" is what is valued by a capitalist society set on maintaining a certain level in the world, and what will make you the most money.

    of course, there are always excpetions. stephen hawkings is said to be the smartest guy in the world, which i (with my wealth of worldly knowledge) would tend to agree with Just Because. (although you could argue that his book sales alone have done more than enough for the consumer society, and then all his theories are an added bonus.) but what's smarter? the ability to come up with these amazing theories, to be able to talk at great length about the history of nouvelle vague cinema, or the ability to know not to stick a knife in the toaster? (not that i fear that mr hawkings would do such a thing, because as we already know, he's the smartest guy in the world!) it's all relative to what the situation is, or to what your personal values are.

    the sad thing is that even though i'm *going* to university is that i still fall prey to the idea that well, if they're at university, they must be smart! or because they use big words, they're brilliant! and because i don't have a mind that will allow me to pull up random theories to explain points at will, or the ability to write with an amazing vernacular, i don't feel near as smart as the other people around me. because the other component of smartness is an entirely superficial one - how someone comes across, and how much they believe in themselves. meself, i tend to be very tentative in putting forth ideas in fear that they *are* wrong and misunderstood and foolish. i find meself putting people up on pedastals just because they're the prof or that they can use language impressively. the thing with smartness is that it can also be a facade, just like being pretty or any other arbitrary measure our society uses. a reason to make people appear inapproachable, in my world. it doesn't mean that they actually are, but there's just something in how they present themselves and their opinions. some people hide behind big words and magnificent theories, but may not have their own ideas, which right there is a downfall, i think.

    i think that the ability to think critically should instead be one of the most important smartness values. not the ability to parrot back facts. which, at least in the academic world, happens half the time. basically like other people have said, the ability to learn from different situations and circumstances, and be able to come away with just a bit more of an understanding of the world. the ability to see the world through your *own* eyes, using what others have said before, but being able to add your own perspective on it as well is admirable. but whether that makes you smart... i would say yes, i think.

    so to stop this ramble (and because i really should be sleeping at the moment {g}), to sum up. "smart" is entirely subjective. overall, the commonest idea (though probably least actually recognised), like others have said, is the ability to pick things up and learn whenever you can, and depending on what your personal values are, and be able to relate them back to the world in a meaningful way. "smart" does NOT hinge on a random number, though a lot of us would like to think that it does. ending up in enrichment courses as a child doesn't not make you brilliant. it just means you could grasp some of the concepts in education earlier, that you had the ability to be a bit more critical, which doesn't mean that people can't develop that trait or lose it later in life. but the ability to take in your surroundings, interpret and extrapolate from them, and *use* what you get out of it, that's what makes smartness. i think.



    sarah :)

  • Toronto Steph's view


  • Beth, 2.16.02


  • So I looked up the word intelligence in my psychology book (yeah, that's utterly cheesy. Like I'm in fourth grade, and I'm starting my report by saying "Webster defines ____ as..." but I'm doing it anyway {g}), and it says this:

    The application of cognitive skills and knowledge to learn, solve problems, and obtain ends that are valued by an individual or culture.

    I guess I like that definition fairly well, because it's so ambiguous. Smartness does vary from person to person and from culture to culture. That's why there are so many kinds of IQ tests, I guess. Some test makers thought there were only two (or four or seven or more) ways a person could be smart. It's always too narrow, and that's why no one should put much stock in IQ tests (although most people still do). Western cultures usually think of intelligence along the lines of great verbal and mathematical ability, instead of say, practical abilities. A person who is bad at calculus isn't necessarily not smart, and neither is a person who can't build a house or hunt or fish or whathaveyou.

    I guess a smart person is someone who can do/make/say something that that person or other people value or can use. No one is always smart and no one is always not smart (I hope). Instead of saying, "you're smarter than me" or "he's not smart enough for that," etc., maybe we should try to be a little more specific or just shut up or something. {g}

    That's all I've got. {g}



  • Goose 2.15.02

  • This will be rambling and probably read like a lecture, I think, and almost definitely not properly answer your question.

    But here it goes.

    People have always told me that I am "smart." This particular attribute, if that is what it is, was first brought to my attention in the first or second grade: I could do multiplication problems quickly in my head, I was often bored by lessons, I was reading chapter books silently before many of my classmates could read out loud. But, so what? In the third grade my teacher facilitated a discussion about intelligence. (As short explanation, my third grade teacher is, sincerely, the coolest person in the world. She helped me form many of my opinions about the world, fostered my love of drawing and reading, introduced me to my beloved summer camp. Between the ages of 7 and 11 I considered her a second mother. I could go on, but...ah, digression over.) "My uncle," she began, "is incredibly funny. He can tell jokes at lightning speed. He lives on puns, punch lines, making other people laugh. I know very few people who can rival him in humor. He will never have a PhD, he never did particularly well on tests. But shouldn't the ability to make others laugh count for something? He is, in my opinion, one of the smartest people I know because he can make me laugh like nothing else."

    Society, I think, has made "intelligence' synonymous with "value" -- ie, the more intelligent you are, the more valuable you are. Education is certainly a factor -- and, thus, so is class. The wealthier you are, the better the education, the more prominent you are in society, the more power you wield, the greater your ability to effect change: the more intelligent you are. Race, too, is a key element. Talented white athletes are "smart," whereas talented black athletes are assumed to possess some sort of visceral, animal-like, physical understanding of the game. Similarly, gender: male artists make art, female artists make craft. Intelligent, typically, is what the upper echelon of society is; in order to match the status quo, then, others most emulate those who are white, male, educated, and in power. Etc, etc. This isn't what you asked about.

    My teacher's words have always, always been with me. If "intelligence" truly *is* synonymous with "value," how can I possibly feel comfortable knowing that I am more "valuable" than other human being? Surely the ease with which I can master a metaphor or chew a calculus problem does not make me any more significant, useful, or worthwhile than the boy with dyslexia, the girl who can't afford my wealthy private school, the child who wasn't handed _The Wonderful Wizard of Oz_ at the age of 6. But maybe that boy is a masterful soccer player, maybe that girl has memorized every single Backstreet Boys song, maybe that child can dismantle a toaster and put it back together in record time. I honestly believe that intelligence can manifest itself in many, many ways, most of which cannot be quantified.

    For example, I have incredibly awkward body language. I don't know when to hug, when to shake hands, when to stop politely laughing. I would say my social intelligence is certainly below-average. On the other hand, there are definitely people out there who can enter a room and radiate social skills, have snappy witticisms to spare: these people are intelligent, intelligent in how to interact with others, succeed in the art (craft?) of making friends.

    What I am trying to say, however poorly and (most likely) offensively, is that I believe everyone is exceedingly intelligent in at least one respect. Generally, such talent can only be exploited by those who put their mind to it. I have a good memory, making studying for biology tests easy, but I wouldn't do so well on these exams if I weren't able to focus my energies and study for five, six hours. But the girl who knows the harmonies of "Shape of My Heart" by heart didn't necessarily say, "Huzzah! I am a smart, smart BSB fan!"; rather, she found something she loved and she LOVED it to the best of her ability. Intelligence is not merely being good at something. It is loving to do that something, consciously or subconsciously.



  • Sarah C again, 2.24.02

  • that's another smartness thing, i think - the ability to associate. which goes hand in hand with the ability to learn, but the two don't always come together.

    > It's so TRUE. Everyone had such good things to say about it, even my > silly sister, that I knew I had to put them all someplace in case I > start forgetting what it's all about, again. I find it easy to forget > these things. (An inability to learn? ;)

    nah. ability to learn doesn't equal amazing memory. :) if it did, anyone who could finish a game of memory could be considered a genius, and i've been beaten at that game often enough to admit that i couldn't be a genius because of that. ;)


  • Steve, 2.26.02
  • In considering what it means to be “smart” and all that the word entails, I began doing some research into the psychological understanding of intelligence. I quickly realized that intelligence may have a definition, but that the understanding of what that word really means is completely up for discussion, and that there is no conclusion of what that word means. Indeed, a survey reported by Snyderman and Rothman in 1987 reported that only 52% of intelligence specialists believed that there was a consenus on what “intelligent” means. It takes no rocket doctor to figure out that if only 52% believe there is a consensus, then there is no consensus. However, we must further confuse this issue by pointing out that the true word at question is “smart” not “intelligent.” While many would believe their use is interchangeable, and to a certain degree it is, a true understanding of the English language shows that there really are very few TRUE synonyms. For example, to throw and to toss are synonymous, but the image they can conjure in the listener or reader’s mind are different. So it is with intelligent versus smart, and our goal must be to isolate those differences, and explain both words within their own particular contexts. I believe that intelligence is a scientific concept, relating directly to the power of one’s brain, whereas smartness is a social concept, related more to image than to any particular cognitive capacity.

     

    First, let’s explore intelligence. There have, over time, been many different psychologists who tried to explain what intelligence is. The first major theory was Spearman’s Psychometric Approach, and his g factor. Spearman argued that intelligence was the overall strength of the brain. He theorized that there was a common ability that crossed all tasks. His tests showed that the ability to perform one mental task well, correlated positively with the ability to perform other mental tasks. This common intelligence that crossed all skills of the individual was the person’s general ability, or g. Spearman also noted that people would generally excel at one particular task. That was the person’s specific ability, or s. Furthermore he noted groupings of intelligence. These were groups of tasks that seemed to correlate closely in tests. These groups were not as specific as s but not as broad as g.

     

    Spearman’s theory was dominant, and has been the basis for other theories, such as Cattell’s Fluid versus Crystallized intelligence, and Sternberg’s Triarchic theory of intelligence. Both of these are simply attempts to break Spearman’s g factor into smaller pieces. However, the theory I most closely ascribe to, and the one that steps beyond Spearman’s g isGardner’s Theory of Multiple Intelligences. Gardner simply defines intelligence as the ability to do something that other people value within one’s culture. He goes on to state that this means that intelligence is really a collection of different abilities that may not correlate at all to other abilities. Gardner himself distinguished between language abilities, musical abilities, logical and mathematical reasoning, spatial reasoning, body movement skills, and social sensitivity. This separates intelligence into many different skills. It also allows us to recognize that intelligence is not as simple as talking pretty and knowing how to add, but can rather be a varied collection, each person with her own particular subset of skills and talents. I tend to lean toward this one because it leads to greater diversification and appreciation for things that many times may get dismissed.

     

    With intelligence as closely defined as we’re gonna come in this little discussion, we now must move onto what “smart” is, and how it relates to intelligence. In giving this a lot of thought and consideration, I have come to the conclusion that smart has no direct relationship to intelligent, and that smart is more a word used to describe the impression one gets from another. Smart is, quite simply, the appearance of intellectual capacity. I would argue that the main thing that would encourage people to describe someone as smart is good language skills. The ability to verbally illustrate a point well makes the listener believe that you know what you’re talking about, whether you do, or not. One may be granted with a wonderful ability to understand political currents, but if they cannot talk about what they understand without using a lot of clumsy language, they will not appear to be smart.

     

    The next thing I believe to be important in “smarts” is how one appears to comprehend complex thoughts. If you explain a complex concept to someone, and they either appear like they’re really having to think hard to understand what you’re saying, or even worse they just “check out” and give up, then you will doubtfully consider them smart. The appearance of comprehension is one of the main things that will lead someone to being described as smart.

     

    Smart also relates not to how well one does things in general, but rather how well one does the things they have chosen to do. I once knew a programmer who was just a flat terrible programmer. He just didn’t get it. He was able to get by, mostly because he was not stupid and had the brain power to force his way through his job, but he never really understood exactly what he was doing, and was prone to making silly and sometimes downright unacceptable mistakes. This guy was not stupid. But he was never called smart by anyone at that company, not because he wasn’t intelligent, but because he could not perform his chosen profession well. Had he chosen to be, say, a mathematician, he may not have looked so stupid, but his likelihood to be described as “smart” hinged upon the environment in which he found himself.

     

    Now, note, this is not exactly what the dictionary would say “smart” means. The dictionary would indicate that the word smart actually does relate to intellectual capacity, and not so much to the appearance of having said intellectual capacity...but the reasons and the ways that people actually use the word do not coincide 100% with the dictionary definition.

     

    Also, you might note that as people use the word “smart” they are referring, generally, to an overall capacity, not unlike Spearman’s g, however when queried on it, most people probably more closely identify with Gardner’s Multiple Intelligences. But in actual every day usage, it is generally easier to just use “smart” to describe anyone who appears to be above average in some intellectual way, and to not delve too deeply into what was that person really has intelligence.


  • Kitana again, 3.5.02


  • Gregory Bateson

  • Jess Loyd, 3.2.02

  • A few points to ponder…

    -It’s not what you know that makes you smart, it’s what you do with what you know.

    -Smartness matters less than wisom.

    -No matter how smart you are, there will always be someone who’s smarter than you are (or who thinks he is)< and you shouldn’t hold it against him. No matter how dumb you are, there will always be someone dumber than you (or who you think is), and you shouldn’t hold it against her. And you should hold neither against yourself.

    -It’s a lot of fun to take advantage of stupid people. Oh, sure, it’s wrong, too, but that doesn’t make it any less fun.

    -Sometimes you can get farther playing dumb than you could if you didn’t. Don’t ask me how, because I haven’t tried it lately, but it is possible.

    -Intelligence is one of those inquantifiable qualities people possess, like beauty. Elusive butterfly that it is, it can’t be neatly contained within a number. And, like beautiy, it is completely subject to the whims and fancies of its beholder. What is brilliant to one is idiocy to another. One man’s trash, another man’s treasure. That still doesn’t explain the success of Tom Green.

    -Little acts of pure genius are all around us, being taken for granted on a daily basis, but you can find them to appreciate if you just look closely enough.

    -Maybe it’s much less important to actually be smart than it is to think you are, because once you think you are something hard enough and long enough, you become it.