How are being smart and being intelligent not synonyms?
Valmond@lemmy.world 6 months ago
People in this thread have a hard time understanding what intelligence denotes.
Hint: it’s not success or being smart.
chicken@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 months ago
Valmond@lemmy.world 6 months ago
To be smart you need to be intelligent, but being intelligent doesn’t mean you’re smart.
It has a broader definition.
TranquilTurbulence@lemmy.zip 6 months ago
To me, they certainly are.
However, many people seem to think that you can get smarter. There’s even a YT channel with a name like that, so I guess smart means something different.
Fair enough, we can split that nebulous concept into innate intelligence which refers to your mental capacity, and being booksmart, i.e. having read many books and knowing stuff. In that sense, you can get smarter by learning more information or mastering new tools.
Getting more intelligent happens naturally as children age, but eventually it’s all downhill. You can choose to drink alcohol and and reduce your intelligence that way, but I’m not aware of any method of increasing your intelligence. Many people seem to use this term in a very different way, so I might be in the minority here.
Either way, I would still argue that, intelligence isn’t something you can simply increase.
Echolynx@lemmy.zip 6 months ago
I think intelligence could be malleable to a degree. Neural plasticity is pretty powerful, and we’re still on the cutting edge of figuring that stuff out.
TranquilTurbulence@lemmy.zip 6 months ago
Yeah. Psychology is still largely qualitative at the moment, just like chemistry was in 1700s.
paraphrand@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Yet again, we have difficulty having shared definitions of the most basic words.
We really need to address this some day. So much conflict will go away once we stop arguing about the definitions of words.
Maybe words are too imprecise, and we need something else. But on the other hand, we have precise words for lots of things. But it’s considered elitist or whatever to use them. “$10 words” are often just very precise and replace a bunch of other words in a sentence.
kelpie_returns@lemmy.world 6 months ago
[deleted]paraphrand@lemmy.world 6 months ago
I know. 😔
I mostly share these feelings because it illuminates the issue a bit for some people who otherwise have not considered it.
AwesomeLowlander@sh.itjust.works 6 months ago
Cambridge:
Mirriam-Webster:
Oxford:
Could you share your definition that somehow contradicts all the major dictionaries?
Valmond@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Nah that’s about it, what’s your worry?