Level of Intelligence

It’s amazing to me how many people use words without really thinking about what they’re trying to say. Especially adjectives and adverbs, we’re so fast to pile them up. One of the guys I work with always utters the word “interesting” which makes my skin crawl.

It’s not that I don’t like the word interesting, it’s just that it means nothing whatsoever in the context in which he uses it. I say, “One of the reasons we want to split up these services is to ensure we can have deals where each tranche can offer a different product.”

He goes, “Hmm, that’s interesting.”

Huh?

Recently, especially during this seemingly unending design phase, interesting has become my least favorite reply. “Strangle” isn’t the right word, but it’s the first word that comes to mind. (that’s what I get for reading Choke in one sitting.)

I’ve also been thinking about the use of “intelligent” a lot lately. What do you think qualifies someone as intelligent?

Since I am a programmer and grew up with a strong math background, I’ve always heard people tell me that my ability to add up two numbers in my head quickly makes me intelligent. Or the fact that I scored high on the Math SATs and GMATs. I must be intelligent if I know how to code or if I did well at school. If I can speak several foreign languages. For some reason, people surrounding me have always associated intelligence with either math or sciences.

What about people who are extremely good with history or geography? Are they not intelligent?

How about artists and musicians? Poets?

People at the top of an artistic field are often referred to as geniuses. Leonardo Da Vinci was a genius. But then again, so was Albert Einstein and I don’t think his artistic skills were well developed ( though I could be wrong about this as it’s just a guess). So genius, I think, is used for people whom we consider at the very top of their field. Someone at an extraordinary level. Which gives me the warm fuzzies cause it doesn’t seem to discriminate on topic.

Intelligence, however, doesn’t work that way. At least not in my experience. You’re a genetic engineer? You must be intelligent. You wrote an award-winning fiction novel. Well, you’re great but not necessarily intelligent. It just doesn’t seem all that fair.

I must say that I have the highest respect for people who know the words that show up in the GREs. I’ve been trying to memorize some of those words and my brain simply refuses to cooperate. The math and analytical sections are no problem at all but as soon as I hit the antonyms, I’m ready to give it all up. I don’t need a PhD that bad. Really.

If intelligence was all about math and analysis and GREs were supposed to test your level of intelligence, why have those stupid words at all?

Now I know you’re telling yourself that I have two flaws in my logic. One being that I assume the GREs are worth anything. And you’re right. I don’t think they are and I think that’s pretty common knowledge. But I was just using it as an example and not as a basis for my argument on why non-math and science oriented topics should also be included in measuring someone’s level of intelligence.

The other flaw you might want to point out is that I assumed that a strong vocabulary isn’t a sign of intelligence. And that’s exactly my point. What is intelligence? What makes you define someone as an intelligent person?

I guess I define it as someone with strong deduction skills, a solid and well-rounded set of knowledge and an ability to apply the knowledge to their life and work.

What do you think? Tell me.

Addendum on june 24: this article seemed to be adressing exactly the issues I was trying to raise, so I thought you might find it interesting.

Previously? Alone.