Re:I Was Told I Was Very Smart
by chrischen on Friday October 23, 2009 @03:15AM
(#898405)
I think that relates to how smart is synonymous with lazy: it's because smart always try find the easy way out.
The hard way to do something would require a lot of effort, but actually very little brain power. An example would be trying to modify a set of data. The hard way would be to do it by hand. That's the most obvious method and thus requires little brain power to arrive at. However the faster way is to write a Python script that does it.
Probably part of the de-emphasis on smarts is society's general attitude towards innate intelligence. We don't like to believe that some people are simply born better than others, so we stress that more effort is better instead.
There's no arguing the fact that not everyone is equally gifted in terms of brain power, so I think it's kind of silly to try to ignore intelligence. Intelligent people are creative, open minded, and flexible. But an intelligent person who's allergic to actual effort is the real problem we want to avoid. Also we're probably more equal in intelligence than we are in our ability to work hard. So in practice, this is probably why effort is a better indicator of ability to succeed than intelligence is.
The hard way to do something would require a lot of effort, but actually very little brain power. An example would be trying to modify a set of data. The hard way would be to do it by hand. That's the most obvious method and thus requires little brain power to arrive at. However the faster way is to write a Python script that does it.
Probably part of the de-emphasis on smarts is society's general attitude towards innate intelligence. We don't like to believe that some people are simply born better than others, so we stress that more effort is better instead.
There's no arguing the fact that not everyone is equally gifted in terms of brain power, so I think it's kind of silly to try to ignore intelligence. Intelligent people are creative, open minded, and flexible. But an intelligent person who's allergic to actual effort is the real problem we want to avoid. Also we're probably more equal in intelligence than we are in our ability to work hard. So in practice, this is probably why effort is a better indicator of ability to succeed than intelligence is.