#7 In The Classroom - A Primer On Intelligence
Intelligence, Learning, Getting What You Want
"A rich mental simulation of the future that allows you to get what you want"
-Michio Kaku's definition of intelligence
After the last Certainty Summit, a graduate asked whether or not he should pursue a doctorate.
It might surprise you to hear that I think it's a great idea. I have considered, over the years, getting a Ph.D.
It's something I've discussed with Dan Nicholson and Dr. Jeff Spencer a few times. It still sits in the back of my head as a "later" thing. Every now and then it creeps to the forefront of my mind. While tedious and time-consuming, the process can be a force multiplier.
I am pretty open about how I feel about academia, in general:
To be clear, I am not throwing stones at all academics or intellectuals. Only those that remain ignorant of the fact that the classroom and reality are different. Theory and application are different things.
They can coexist if they are prioritized.
Imagine a professional athlete that couldn't tell the difference between practice and a game. They wouldn't be in the pros for very long. Of course, a professional knows the difference.
What if they operated as if performing in practice is more important than performing in a game? They won't be getting any playing time.
Prioritization informs both practical definition and direction.
We don't practice to get better at practice.
We practice so that we're better in the game, not the other way around. We learn in a classroom so that we can function better in real life, not the other way around.
A series of questions to ponder:
Who is more intelligent...
The student that can recite the Good Samaritan to a captivated audience but treats others like garbage or
The student that keeps forgetting the sermon, but always treats others with kindness?
How about...
The college student understands the various theorems of thermodynamics inside and out. He is even asked to help teach it. But can't ride a bike. Or...
the college student that is barely passing but rides his bike everywhere?
One more...
The group experts in germ theory that forget to boil their water when they travel to a third-world village or
the villagers who boil their water, clueless about microbes?
Who do you consider more rational or intelligent?
It depends on what they want.
If the priority is to be a kind human, the student that is kind is more intelligent. If the priority is to sound like a good human, the student with the golden-tongued kid steamrolling strangers is more intelligent.
If the priority is to be able to ride a bike, the student that can ride the bike is more intelligent. Even if he doesn't know why it works. If the priority is to sound smart or test well, the student that has mastered the theorems of aerodynamics is more intelligent.
If the priority is survival, the uneducated villagers are more intelligent and rational than the experts.
Most would agree that scientists are more intelligent than illiterate villagers.
Reality disagrees.
This has been and always will be the issue I have with academics and intellectuals. They stay ignorant to two important things:
- theory and practice are different things
- practical application must come first to be considered rational or intelligent.
[Finally] A Practical Theory of Intelligence
If what is good for survival is rational, what is intelligence?
At the Certainty Summit, Dr. Todd Snyder gave his graduate presentation called:
"How To Upgrade Your Intelligence"1
It started exactly how I would expect an academic to start a presentation. A lot of words, definitions, facts, and theories. Here is the third slide:
Typical classroom stuff.
But Todd quickly diverges from the expected path and goes on to tell two stories:
Story 1: Working with a kid that was low intelligence by nearly all testing types. Todd noticed that even though the kid didn't know the answers to the questions, he could answer them correctly. He would listen closely to Todd's voice as he asked the questions. This kid could guess the answer based on how the question was asked. So a few things happened here:
First, the kid realized that if he answered correctly he could get what he wanted. Then, he figured out a way to answer the questions correctly.
Story 2: Working with a kid that was high intelligence by nearly all testing methods and types. He also noticed that the kid was extremely OCD. He wanted everything perfect, and he wanted to pass his tests so badly that he couldn't finish any of the tests he was taking. His perfectionism caused him to keep circling back to each answer multiple times and run out of time.
This kid recognized that by testing well, he would get what he wanted. But was unable to do it.
Todd asked himself a better question, a version of:
"Who is more intelligent...The kid that has figured out how to get what he wants or the kid that can't?**
**This is a question that one would ask only after contact with reality. A pure intellectual wouldn't consider something that threatens their position of intellectual superiority.
And then Todd proposed the most practical unifying theory of intelligence I've heard:
"Intelligence is the ability to get what you want."
This is practical.
It's saying:
"You can find a million and one ways to convince yourself and others that you are intellectually superior to someone else. But if you can't get what want, who cares?"
And it brings us back full circle to "it depends on what you want".
Remember the villagers from the example above?
Let's assume that what they want most is for their children to stop getting sick and dying.
Whatever gets them to boil their water before drinking it makes them more intelligent.
Teaching them germ theory does not - unless they can understand it and it leads to them boiling their effin' water.
Telling someone something they can't understand is not increasing their intelligence.
The merely intellectual will call them less intelligent for knowing nothing about microbes. The merely intellectual doesn't do so well outside the classroom.
Reality disagrees with the merely intellectual.
In reality...
intelligence is the ability to get what you want.
The villagers want healthier children and safer families. Whoever gives them the ability to have healthier children and safer families has made them more intelligent.
"If intelligence is the ability to get what I want, CCA has increased my intelligence" Dr Todd Snyder
Does higher education make you more intelligent?
It depends on what you want.
Does a lack of higher education make you less intelligent?
It depends on what you want.
Do things that make you more intelligent, and increase the probability that you get what you want.
That is how you become more intelligent
Simple. Practical. Profound.
Try it on.
You’ll notice a lower volume of posts lately, we are focused heavily on the direct mail newsletter. It’s a better product and, frankly, it’s a lot more fun to mail people stuff. It’s also been on a waitlist most of the time, which you can join here:
Nic
Ps. We're building a whole framework to "increase the intelligence" by engaging the field over at the Guardian Academy. You can check that out here.