It makes a ton of sense when if you concede that every single time you say it (well, really, say anything) it's done in context. You rarely say someone is "smart, without qualification" and even if you did it really absolutely means something more like "smart in most of the ways I admire and have observed that person performing".
Which is really total agreement with your point. "Smart" is as much a partial ordering as "friendly" is, for a lot of the same reasons.
Look around you - asymmetry is so painfully obvious that even pop theories propose to split intelligence into "book smarts", "street smarts", "social smarts", etc.
I don't see the connection. Asymmetry in the relation "is smarter than" simply means that it is impossible to have both "X is smarter than Y" and "Y is smarter than X" (for X != Y).
In the context of individuals of incomparable intellect, it is inappropriate to say that either is smarter than the other -- never mind that they are both smarter than each other.
I think I was considering a looser meaning of "smart", in the common language sense of "I'm smarter than you regarding dating, you're smarter than me regrading math". That pop theory removes the intuitive asymmetry by partitioning "smart" into supposedly asymmetric subrelations - "books smarts", etc. Each part of this partition is asymmetric.
Re:I Was Told I Was Very Smart
by zackattack on Thursday October 22, 2009 @12:59PM
(#897095)
Can you elaborate about intelligence in the context of signaling social status please? And provide links to books/reading? I am very interested in this
Hah, you can't be serious! Look around you - asymmetry is so painfully obvious that even pop theories propose to split intelligence into "book smarts", "street smarts", "social smarts", etc.
In reality, I don't think "smart" is a word that makes much sense, outside of the context of signaling social status (pIQ).