Quote: (01-31-2016 04:58 PM)Isaac Jordan Wrote:
Quote: (01-31-2016 12:29 PM)RoastBeefCurtains4Me Wrote:
On the other hand, I think there is a kind of ability to interact with the real world, to see how things work, to control yourself and get work done. Real smartness that is recognized by other people comes when you can harness your brainpower to accomplish real tasks, that are too complex or conceptually difficult for other people to do.
Raw brainpower alone doesn't enable this. A lot of people with high brainpower are dysfunctional, and are probably not widely recognized as smart. Smart people are the ones who can deliver solutions to hard problems.
For me, a large chunk of being "smart" comes to down to the ability to get what you want out of life.
I know plenty of people with higher IQs, who went to better schools, got more degrees, and excel at skills (like programming or engineering) that make my head spin.
But I can count on one hand the number of people I know who live the life of their dreams. I just so happen to be one of those people.
I run my own business. I have a sizable pile of fuck-you money in the bank, and a number of investments that should enable me to stop working entirely by ~40 (I'm in my mid-twenties). I wake up every day and do whatever the hell I feel like doing. I'm in the best shape of my life, I have a number of genuine friends from high-quality social circles, and the only time I'm without female companionship is when I choose to be. I fucking love my life, and the problems I do have are "good" problems, like trying to get rid of a stage-5 clinger after taking her virginity.
I could go on, but you get my point. Most of the "smart" people I know are up to their ears in debt, working jobs they hate, married to fat pigs they can't stand, living without any sense of purpose or joie de vivre.
Your average Mensa member might point to my degree from State U, or my SAT score, and claim they're smarter than me. And sure, by objective standards they may be more intelligent. But if you're not living the kind of life you yourself genuinely want to live, how smart can you really be?
I don't like this answer because it fails to account for people who get caught by a trap early in life that no one could reasonably get out of, and which has heavy long term consequences.
Smart kid grows up ugly and is mostly shunned by women, but then a cunning gold digger seduces him, and quickly sets up a half your stuff arrangement by early 20s.
Smart kid grows up with a much more malicious and violent than average school bully, and has no choice but to maim or kill him in self defense, derailing his education and staining his record under a zero tolerance policy.
Smart kid burns a bridge with an unlikeable family member or friend as a child, and the burned bridge holds a grudge which lasts until adulthood. He stalks smart kid through his adult life, gossiping to smart kid's classmates and colleagues and ruining smart kid's reputation.
Smart kid was pushed to join the corporate world in his adolescence without ever being taught how promotion works in that environment, and ends up forced into a role of productive and innovative but underpaid beta workhorse.
Smart kid was straight up born with a disfigured organ or a defective immune system and was fated to a life of being sickly or crippled before his life decisions could ever have a chance to matter.
etc.
Most of the smart people you knew who have lackluster lives have a struggle like that lurking in their past. Depending on the exact nature of the struggle, they might overcome it and become wealthy and independent later, or that might be physically impossible.
BTW "fuck you" money means you have so much money that by conservatively investing it, it outgrows your life expenses, such that no matter how young you are you never have to work again. If you're 25 and set to retire at 40 you're well above average financially but you're a long way from "fuck you" money. Also your life has plenty of time left to be derailed by some black swan shit.