The difference being intelligent and being clever
IzzyS
Posts: 11,045 Forum Member
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A friend I emailed kindly suggested I might have a high IQ. I know my general knowledge isn't great and I'm not very good at basic things like maths, so I tend to think I wouldn't necessarily do well in an IQ test, so she replied saying she believes there's different types of intelligence, which was an interesting thought.
I then saw a program recently called Satisfied Fool, where Karl Pilkington talks about intelligence and gets his intelligence tested - anyway the relevance being that at one point he's with Germaine Greer and she says that (something along the lines of) 'there's a difference between being intelligent and being clever'. Again, that really interested me, so I asked my friend what she thought. She reckoned people who can adapt well to tests and aren't easily distracted, who can apply themselves to certain things, their perhaps more clever? any other thoughts on this, how would you distinguish the difference between being clever and being intelligent?.
I then saw a program recently called Satisfied Fool, where Karl Pilkington talks about intelligence and gets his intelligence tested - anyway the relevance being that at one point he's with Germaine Greer and she says that (something along the lines of) 'there's a difference between being intelligent and being clever'. Again, that really interested me, so I asked my friend what she thought. She reckoned people who can adapt well to tests and aren't easily distracted, who can apply themselves to certain things, their perhaps more clever? any other thoughts on this, how would you distinguish the difference between being clever and being intelligent?.
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Someone can be very shrewd with everyday life and not be good at retaining facts or figures or solving puzzles or whatever.
Some people are lucky to be both. Don't know if its as simple as academic = intelligent, shrewd = clever.
There's a difference between academically intelligent and common sense intelligence.
Everyone is intelligent in their own way. I think plumbers and mechanics are highly intelligent, I certainly can't do those things. Any tradesman is intelligent as is a barber, chef, doctor, accountant, scientist etc.
On paper someone may not have any qualifications and may be judged as unintelligent, but that's simply not true. IQ tests, degrees and exam results aren't the only gauges of intelligence.
There's an internet meme wrongly attributed to Einstein that says, "If you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it would spent its life thinking it is stupid."
I believe there are many different types of intelligence, but I think the words "clever" and "intelligent" can be used more or less interchangeably.
I'm pretty intelligent from an academic standpoint; I can apply knowledge I've learnt about certain things such as mathematics or chemistry to unfamiliar situations and use what I know to work out the answer with a lot more ease than some other people. That's why I do well in exams in school.
However, I have very little strategic intelligence; when presented with a game such as chess I have incredible difficulty planning moves and predicting my opponent's moves and for that reason I have absolutely no idea what I'm doing. The same goes for almost any other game which requires any degree of strategy. My strategical ineptitude even puts me at a disadvantage in games the likes of Mario Kart.
There are many other "types" of intelligence such as emotional intelligence, common sense etc.
This is why I think IQ tests are mostly meaningless and are used mainly by people to massage their egos. I think they can be helpful from a medical standpoint when ascertaining whether someone has learning difficulties or not, but I don't pay too much attention to boasts of "I have an IQ over 120" etc.
That last bit is very good. I suppose in a way it boils down to street smarts and if you are smart/clever/intelligent enough to do what you need to get what you want in life.
This.
The super intelligent people I know are often the ones that have a miniscule amount of common sense.
I like to think I am about equal. Not the most intelligent person in the world but I do alright and I also have a decent amount of common sense too.
Maybe clever people are more innovative than intelligent ones.I'd suggest intelligence could be more restrictive than clever is.
Say you've never seen fire before, and you put your hand in it and get burnt. Is that stupid? No, it's just lack of knowledge. But if you see it a second time, and put your hand in it, that's stupidity. But if you remember your lesson and don't, that's intelligence.
I'd define cleverness as having imagination or inventiveness. Being able to see the answer to a problem by looking at it from a different angle.
But hey, that's just me.
Well, when she brought it up, she mentioned the way I explain things, how I put myself and my arguments across, in terms of using quite descriptive or eloquent vocabulary I suppose? and one of the first things I thought to say was that I hope that doesn't make me seem pretentious because I don't mean to come across that way (which is me being typically self conscious but there you go). She thought being particularly inquisitive is a sign of intelligence in itself, to an extent?.
Its funny because when I type out emails, I think im somehow less self conscious and find it easier to type long sort of flowing, explanatory responses to things, compared to when I'm posting publically on forums like here. Its strange, that.
I certainly wouldn't say im dumb or anything like that but I'm not very knowledgeable when it comes to high brow academia or some general trivia and that sort of thing - such as history and politics, those sort of categories you hear on quiz shows. However, I'm quite inquisitive and enjoy debating about current affairs, topical issues and so on. I like to think things through and can be somewhat philosophical at times I suppose but I don't think I have what would be regarded as an especially high intelligence by any means.
Im from that school of thought. I am more the common sense kind than an intellectual.
Mind you, my washing machine is supposed to be "intelligent"!
(P.S. It's not!)
I can be somewhat lacking in both at times
"Common sense is nothing more than a deposit of prejudices laid down by the mind before you reach eighteen." - Einstein (again!)
It's an interesting topic.
I suppose knowledgeable is a more applicable term there because its in relation to general knowledge. I lose track of the number of times I reply to messages by saying 'oh thats interesting'
Maybe I should have a look on Google for the dictionary definitions of both? why didn't I think of that before? I must be thick(!) pfft.
ETA - Ok, oxford dictionaries claims intelligence is
(source:- http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/intelligence)
and cleverness is
(source:- http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/cleverness?q=cleverness)
so really you can't be clever unless your already intelligent? ehhh?
My general knowledge is absolutely appalling, so I wouldn't necessarily say I'm "clever" in the classic sense. My memory also is pretty bad, so I don't often do well in non intelligence based formal exams. If I can work it out on the spot though, I tend to do well.
I am very good as maths though, and problem solving.
For example, I might do badly on a maths exam that requires knowing formulas. However, I am quite good at figuring out those formulas on my own. Since knowledge is faster than intelligence, I often work slowly, meaning I don't do as well. If that makes sense?
I'd also mentioned sitting tests with the artificial test situation not always working well with me. It took me a long time to pass my driving test, not because I couldn't drive or didn't know the required information for the show me, tell me section of it and so on but because of the pressure and anxiety it gave me, thats what affected my test score - well, I'd argue that anyway. I felt that I'd react differently in a test situation, to what I was faced with specifically because I know im being tested and somehow that makes me doubt my initial response because I feel I need to be sure im getting it right. I think it results in over analysis, over thinking things (which im already guilty of generally) and sometimes coming up with the wrong answer, when in non-test conditions I would have quoted the right answer - gah.
The best way to know if people are really knowledgeable about things would be some form of constant informal checks somehow, I feel but thats probably not really feasible in some cases?.
Its funny you mention formulas - I edit an MS Excel worksheet at work and I've used different formulas in it but being a bit unsure about maths, I had to look up the mathematical calculations required to start with initially. Once I knew that, it was pretty easy (from an IT point of view) for me to make the required adjustments to the file and I generate graphs from it and so on - I was quite impressed with being able to do that
I'd rather work slower and get it done right than speed through something and realise later on that it was all slap dash and littered with mistakes ( hopefully I don't have many typo's here to prove me badly wrong in this regard(!)
That's often intentional on twitter though, due to the 140 character limit people leave out letters from some words to make the sentence fit the limit?.
Beautifully put, sweh. Couldn't agree more.
Absolutely.
If you ever watch The Chase on ITV,the four "Chasers" are full of facts picked up from playing countless quizzes but I often wonder if they are truly expert.
Isn't "common sense" more like wisdom than intelligence? Like the old saying "an intelligent man can get himself out of situations a wise man wouldn't have got himself into".