Your Intelligence
January 21, 2008
I will begin with the concept of intelligence.
The illusion that you have a fixed intelligence when you enter the world is one that is absolutely absurd. Intelligence, put frankly, is how much you have figured out about how to figure things out. Your intelligence expands when you figure out more about how to figure things out. If you ever cannot understand a concept being told to you, it is because you haven’t figured out how to understand the concept, not that you cannot understand the concept. So in order to figure something out, you must first figure out how to figure it out.
I don’t necessarily think that intelligence is fixed, but I do believe that some of us are inherently good at understanding certain things.
I’ve never been particularly good at math, though I try hard. The only thing I can figure is that I’m obviously just not naturally inclined to be proficient at it. Some things come “naturally” to me, others take a lot of practice. We’re good at things and we aren’t good at things. It’s not a matter of not understanding, at least, not to me.
I can understand something, I can even have the perfect idea in which to solve something, but that doesn’t mean that when I execute my idea that it will work, or that I’ll be able to do it.
Also, there are many types of intelligence. It’s not simply understanding things that is intelligence. You can know many things, yet in reality know nothing. Knowing and understanding are only a small part of what being intelligent is. And as a last note, intelligence is all a matter of opinion anyway. There’s no real set standard, because it all comes in many forms.