a day ago
- Wisdom is defined as knowing what to do in most situations, reflecting a high average outcome across various scenarios.
- Intelligence is characterized by exceptionally high performance in specific situations, akin to peaks on a graph.
- The relationship between wisdom and intelligence is that they represent the average and maximum of the same performance curve.
- Conventional explanations for the difference, such as problem types (human vs abstract) or origin (experience vs innate), are insufficient.
- As knowledge becomes more specialized, wisdom and intelligence diverge, leading to a societal preference for intelligence over wisdom.
- The path to wisdom involves discipline and removing childish biases, while intelligence is cultivated through curiosity and working on hard problems.
- Wisdom tends to produce calmness and contentment, whereas intelligence often leads to discontentment due to unbounded performance expectations.
- Educational traditions often aim at wisdom, but may be ineffective for fostering intelligence because they rely on discipline rather than curiosity.