Are You Smart or Wise?
First of all it isn't stated anywhere in the essay that the common goal of both being smart and wise is to be able to act in unknown situations. Were we talking about known situations, the ability to act would really be only about how much experience one has gathered and how much knowledge one was able to extract from the experience. By extracting knowledge from experience I simply mean learning how to act the next time the same situation occurs.
Both wise and smart people have to extract knowledge from their experience, but in my opinion the difference is how they use the knowledge.
Wisdom
I see wisdom as the ability to appropriately apply the knowledge to the unknown situation. To see what's common and what's different between the current situation and what one has experienced in the past. Acting is then based on heuristics of how to adapt the behavior which worked in the past to this new situation.
Intelligence
Whereas intelligence is according to me more about the ability to generate possibilities how to act, to predict what effect the actions will have, and efficiently search though the alternatives, which includes evaluating only the relevant ones and expanding them further while disregarding the irrelevant ones.
Of course what I described here were just simplifications, because no two situations are identical, so everybody has to be wise to some degree and also wise people usually consider more alternatives. But I hope you get my point.
I am curious to see what you think about both the essay and my reply to it.
This was very interesting. I enjoyed reading it too.
My initial thought about the difference between wisdom and intelligence, argued in Is it worth being wise? is that they're just compartments of the same thing. Words. Probably found in the same paragraph in any thesaurus. Splitting hairs.
Smart vs wise.
I agree with your take on wisdom, @hr1 . Wisdom is distilled knowledge, born from experience. After spending a lot of time with much older people, I learned that time doesn't equal wisdom. Plenty of dumb old people. Reading 'wisdom' memes doesn't imbibe you with wisdom either. I'd add that wisdom isn't always about making the right choice. It can be about considering and understanding, not necessarily linked to actions or choices. Not necessarily with a goal in mind.
Smarts or intelligence: if you look at 'street smart' this is about distilled knowledge and experience applied to real life.
This sounds more like neurosis to me. I don't think it's to do with variations in employment.
I disagree with Paul Graham about the path to wisdom being through discipline. I think you distill information, store it. When new or conflicting info comes along, you consider it alongside all the stuff you've stored. Then you calibrate everything as a whole. This is continuous.
Half of his physicists are on Prozac. Lol. Half of everybody's on Prozac! Them's the times we're in. Big Pharma's eating everyone.
Thanks. It was interesting to chew over these matters.
PS I know I'm late to the party but it was just too juicy to not say anything. Thanks for posting it.
OMG!!!!!!
you nailed it man. I personally like the way you simplified the whole thing and I think you are making so much sense. If each individual can make these opinions of yours a point of reference whenever they are in positions to give verdicts and views about issues, they definitely will be regarded as great men and women. thanks for this post.
I LOVE IT
Fantastic post @hr1 I agree with your responses. As for me I would say wisdom is about doing the right thing and knowing what that is. Making the more ethical decision and reaction. I am called an old soul because I always do what's "right" and go deep into the reason of why it is better for your overall life, mankind, ect. That is where I see the difference in wisdom and intelligence is just the common correct answer, the status quo if you will.
Great post I loved this and I love wisdom! :)
I prefer being wise to being smart. I have searched about some examples to compare between smart people and wise people you may want to know. Smart people- they acquire and apply knowledge quickly. Wise people take more time but they will understand it deeply.
Smart ppl process information in systematic and logical way. With the wise, they process logically and emotionally.
Smart ppl want to talking to express their opinion but wise ppl want to listen and add comment.
Smart ppl may impose their thought on others sometimes. But wise ppl accept the differences.
Smart ppl base on their knowledge to solve problem. Wise ppl base on their judgement and intuitive to solve problem.
Interesting topic for sure! I like your description of intelligence being the ability to generate possibilities for how to act. To me intelligence is removed of any ethical or moral component (thanks @bitdollar for mentioning ethics as I don't think you can reasonably discuss this topic devoid of ethics.) So that would mean that intelligence could be used for nefarious purposes - like the typical example of AI gone wild. But wisdom? I'd be curious if anyone would argue that wisdom could be used for evil. So maybe we can say that intelligence is simply the ability to reach an intended outcome by applying known information, while knowledge encompasses that plus the ability (learned or inherent?) to assess the situation for the best possible outcome. Which obviously leads to the question of who decides what is "best". And that, I'd say, is where wisdom comes in. :)
Thank you for sharing your thoughts at a time when I am looking for posts to read in my feed. I finally have found content from you in my feed.
Why do I say that? Because many of my posts have been receiving upvotes from you and I always wanted to read from the angel supporter. Haha!
Wisdom & Smartness
I think after reading your post and thinking about both, I can say the following.
Loved reading the post and I wish more people would read genuine content like this so I'll just resteem.
To me, intelligence can be destructive on the world where wisdom cannot be so. Let's pretend there are two people, one with only the intelligence to build an atom bomb but lacking in wisdom. The other person has the intelligence to build the atom bomb but also has wisdom. The wise person would not have built such a thing even with the intelligence to do so. Where the intelligent person is just looking to "further his craft" without any concern for how it would affect the world.
This is why our modern world has been taught to celebrate intelligence much more than wisdom. Intelligent people can be much easier manipulated by those in power to further their ends and those with wisdom cannot.
A story from Utah Phillips goes as so: He was hanging out in a town doing nothing productive when a man came up to him and said 'Why don't you get a job?' Utah being a well read man and being aware of the Socratic method asked him 'Why?' the man replies 'You can earn some money that way' Utah continues with his socratic method and asks again 'Why?' The man says 'you can earn so much money that you could save up and live good and never have to work again' Utah replies 'Thats what I'm doing now'. That is wisdom to me.
Nice POV to be honest. I read the essay, for real what I thought was wise, wasnt so wise after all.
That sentence above, to me, can also be applied to being intelligent. More than often, I believe wisdom is the ability to see what cannot be seen, to look between the lines and make judgement based on the situation. He has a ton of experience and a ton f knowledge in any given area.
A wise person can see the outcome of your actions to a high degree before you take it(like the way an elder tells you youll hurt yourself if you do that )
An intelligent person, is just what you describe in your post.
Then again, being intelligent, is a step in the right direction for being wise.
this sums it all.
Very interesting post boss, I am glad I saw you post today.
I agree with you on some parts. Here is my take on the difference between them:
For me Intelligence is the ability to find solutions. While wisdom comes from experience. Wisdom is the knowledge we have gained from past situations.
"First of all it isn't stated anywhere in the essay that the common goal of both being smart and wise is to be able to act in unknown situations."
I think the "goal" of intelligence and wisdom is problem solving.
To illustrate the difference let's suppose we have two individuals with the same intelligence who are asked to do a sophisticated job.
The one with wisdom will do the job better, because he or she had done a similar job before and could apply that knowledge for this job (which is your point).
In other words, to me intelligence is the ability to find solutions, while wisdom is knowledge that we have gained from a past experience to solve a particular problem.
This was a really good thought to start my day! Also I wanted to thank you for supporting so many steemians!
You are a hidden hero of Steemit!
Nice to meet you! I am a new-bie from S.Korea, and got to visit your blog with curiosity, whick your voting-up my post had made. And accidently I saw this post and I think that it is very critical analyze and makes sense to me. Especially the part of pointing the difference for "situations".
Though my english is bad, plz excuse me and I will often visit here and read good posts. Have a nice day :-)