What follows is an old piece attempting to describe intelligence through a few facets. I’m in the process of writing another version of this piece, but I think most of the ideas hold. It’s a touch verbose though.

When speaking of intelligence, many distinct characteristics tend to be conflated and swirl into one another–I wish to clear such ambiguity and set some definitions for different parts of “intelligence” and “smartness” that are used interchangeably, casually. Firstly, the terms: intelligence, smartness, curiosity, speed, and efficiency.

Intelligence

Intelligence is the ability to collate information: to be intelligent is to be able to learn. It is rather the simple and limited definition, and that is deliberate. Common connotations of intelligence include a large pool of information (which I take to be smartness) & speed (which can again be split into speed and efficiency), but clearly I think those to be separate matters. To be able to acquire knowledge is quite the useful skill, especially when it is efficient and fast, however we shall delve deeper into those definitions later. By “learn”, I am also assuming that this acquired knowledge is able to be applied–it is not useful if you “learn” something and cannot use it, and so I will not call that learning. A more intelligent person would be able to collate more information than a less intelligent person in the same time/with the same effort.

A key part of intelligence is synthesis–the conversion of raw, abstract knowledge into something usable by the self. If all it took to learn something was to consume it, the process of acquiring knowledge (intelligence) and knowledge itself would be trivialized. Since that isn’t the case for most, there is some level of interpretation/internalization that is required to process information, and that can be further spun out from intelligence as synthesis. Synthesis is an important part of being able to learn, even if one has the time and curiosity (more on that later), learning is aloof from simply those two resources. Synthesizing information is key to intelligence; intelligence has many components, but synthesis is certainly one of the most critical as it allows for one to acquire information beyond simply interacting with it, allowing one to take information and compress it into something accessible.

Smartness

Smartness is a measure of information stored: to be smart is to remember a lot of information. Herein “smartness” is used as a general term, but the definition clearly lends itself well to specificity as well, and this scalability is something that one can note across all these definitions. You can be smart about/in/with a subject and not so in a different subject. Most importantly, you can be smart without being intelligent and vice-versa. To be smart and unintelligent (perhaps in regard to a certain topic), would mean that one knows a lot about something but isn’t very good at collecting information. As such, this combination is often paired with people who have a lot of experience–being exposed to a topic for such a long time leads to them collecting a lot of knowledge by brute force instead of elegantly, intelligently. To be intelligent without being smart would mean that one can collect information quickly but hasn’t–or hasn’t retained it. This could be seen with someone who has a good bit of experience in a field and is learning about a related field. They will probably catch onto things quickly, but simply do not have the background just due to their inexperience. Here it is noted once more that smartness has no time component whatsoever–it is simply the measure of how much someone knows about something. Being smart is good, so is being intelligent; neither are strictly superior to the other. Ideally, of course, one is both.

Curiosity

Curiosity is a measure of how much work someone will put into something, of their own volition: to be curious about something is to willingly put time into engaging with that thing. This is rather the major departure from the common usage of curiosity, so let me extend my talk on it.

To be curious about something typically means one is interested in it; however this definition is too vague for my liking, so I will take it one step further–if one is interested in something (enough so, at least), they will put time and/or effort into it. As such, we can come to the definition that curiosity is the measure of effort/work that one is willing to put into something, willingly. It is common to shelve your complaints and do things, regardless of how you feel about them, simply because you have to. For these kinds of things (e.g. job, schoolwork), it would be wrong to say people are curious or interested in what they’re putting effort into. If they had the choice to skip, they would. Once one’s agency is fully restored and one still wishes to put effort into something, then they are curious about that thing. This definition lends itself to some statements which seem odd at first glance, like musicians being curious about their instruments/music, artists curious about their modes of art, authors curious about their stories and the like. However, I think that such a definition still holds. I am curious about writing, in both senses: I wish to learn more, I will put effort in. I want to know more about writing, and I’m willing to sacrifice time and energy to further that goal. Clearly that is the heart of curiosity, and it is only one step away from the typical usage of the word.

Curiosity is important because it plays the role of a motivator, a vis major at times. Even if one is both smart and intelligent, one can still have no interest in anything and so will not utilize both their earlier defined skills: it doesn’t matter how easy it is for you to learn things if you don’t wish to put effort into a subject. Whilst it is relatively easy to be smart and not be curious about a subject, it is still a waste: one can easily know a lot about something they do not care about, something they have no interest in. Again, one can look at schooling to see how students can recall things that have no care for. However, looking further at students will reveal that often, when one is smart but not curious, the degradation of the smartness–the rate at which one forgets what they know–increases rapidly. There isn’t much point to knowing a lot about something you don’t care for, and one naturally forgets about such things as they are deemed useless. Short-term memory may be unaffected, but to store such “useless” facts long-term is rather rare. Interest has a great role in intelligence, and to a lesser extent smartness, mostly affecting long-term smartness whilst looking about the same for short-term smartness.

Speed and Efficiency

These two sections are intertwined in a way more so than smartness and intelligence, and so I will discuss them together.

Speed is a measure of how fast one can do something: to be speedy is to do something in less time. Efficiency is a measure of how much effort it takes for one to do something: to be efficient is to do something with less effort. Clearly, the two are inextricably linked for one without a bit of the other is rather a waste. Arguably the same can be said about smartness and intelligence, but I feel that speed and efficiency are linked closer together; it is easier to convert smartness to intelligence (and vice versa) than to convert speed to efficiency. Speedy things ipso facto cannot take a lot of time, but they can approach unlimited energy. Generally, the faster you go, the harder it is to go faster. The same goes for efficiency, but then you’re holding for effort with unlimited time.

Speed is one of the things most conflated with “intelligence” (general usage, not prior definition.) People who do things quickly are often lauded–in some sense speed is a valid measure of merit as to do something takes practice, effort, & skill. However, the import placed upon speed is oft far too high, and its close cousin efficiency is too often overlooked; doing something quickly and effortlessly is far more impressive than simply doing something quickly–speed, however, does not take into account effort whatsoever. It is usually hard, as an outsider, to observe efficiency.

With both speed and efficiency brought into question, it is important to bring up a sort of inverse: laziness. Laziness, I believe, should be ascribed to those who do not put in enough effort to fulfill some base obligation. What this brings is twofold. Primo, laziness is in the eyes of the beholder. I think this is significant because there are things which drain some people more so than they drain others, and recognizing those differences is important for a robust definition of laziness, and of course by extension “intelligence” as a gestalt. Additionally, laziness is paired with efficiency, not speed. The line between laziness and efficient is drawn by the results of these actions–a lazy action does not complete the set out goals, perhaps compromising on them and in turn fulfilling these new, lesser goals (which could, by definition, remove the label of laziness–but only if one accepts the new goals and elects to ignore the initial ones.) An efficient action does fulfill those goals, and if these goals are to be rectified, it would not be simply due to the amount of effort required. (i.e. you chose to do a less thorough check of something not because you do not wish to do a thorough one, but rather because the conditions surrounding the event lend it to be credible to not necessitate a thorough check. In essence, effort is not the sole concern.)

Talent

Moving on from the base descriptors of gestalt intelligence, I think talent is a fascinating concept which allows for a fuller expression of how these concepts can manifest in certain people with regard to certain subjects.

Talent is one’s base affinity to all the prior defined characteristics: to be talented at something is to have an affinity for intelligence, smartness, curiosity, speed, & efficiency for that thing. Talented people tend to be called “smart” or “intelligent” as well, but within this namespace those two have been prior defined, and so we can see that talent is less of an attribute of gestalt intelligence and more a natural disposition to it. Talent, unlike the aforementioned attributes, is innate and immutable. Talent can be extremely useful in that it allows for more talented people to essentially “start” with a higher aptitude of the aforementioned characteristics than less talented people. However, I am of the opinion that talent, unlike the attributes above, is not to be respected at all. Talent is wholly intrinsic, and so talent is something like beauty or height–whilst this discussion is veering slightly away from the heart of intelligence and into respect, I think that intrinsic qualities like those should not be respected at all as they have no bearing on whom a person truly is. Regardless, talent is fixed and so, like the entire piece but most prominently here, this work needs to be seen at a granular level. These attributes do not hold across the entirety of a person but can be applied to different facets of people, different subjects. Failure to do so is abusing the definitions as they are defined solely with such views in mind. In that vein, I would argue against calling someone “talented” on a whole, but rather “talented at” with this definition making it clear what (appropriately precise) sub-field one is speaking of. Herein the usage of field should be interpreted as vague–I do not necessarily mean a field of study such as math or chemistry or whatnot, but also social skills or life skills or such. The preciseness of what constitutes a “specific enough” sub-field such that these definitions can be applied fairly is not something I can give a hard and fast rule on, and I also think there is some leeway in that sense.

Conclusion

It’s hard to fully describe intelligence, and I think its even harder to measure it, especially outside relative terms. I think these defined distinctions are important as they allow for more precise dialogues on matters of intelligence, splitting up some conflated terms into hopefully more atomic ones.