Wednesday, March 01, 2006

Three measures

I've always had this hypothesis in my head about the three measures or types of cleverness, namely smartness, intelligence and wisdom.

For quite some time, I placed one on top of the other in a vertical manner, i.e. smartness is a proper subset of intelligence which in turn is also a proper subset of wisdom. In other words, an intelligent person would also be smart and a wise person would possess intelligence and be smart as well.

That of course didn't model reality very well. I often meet people who were for example, intelligent but certainly not smart. Similarly, I've met rather wise people who were neither smart nor intelligent.
So I tweaked my hypothesis a bit. First, I allowed the three attributes to be mutually exclusive. Then I allowed them to be independent of one another.

Mutually exclusive meaning the possession of one attribute does not exclude the possibility of inclusion of others. Independence meaning the chances of possessing one attribute does not affect the chances of possessing another.

This seemed to match reality more closely because I've met a wide spread of people with all sorts of permutations of these three attributes. For example, people who are intelligent but not smart, people who are wise and smart but are not intelligent. And if there was any supposed dependence between the three, I didn't detect any, e.g. people whom I find wise did not necessarily have a greater chance of being intelligent or smart.

Why am I telling you about this silly hypothesis of mine?

Well, for my Significant Other, I hope to find someone wiser than me.

Note that I am not saying I am wise. I am just saying I am attracted to wise women. :P I am also indirectly saying that I value wisdom more than the other two.


For the record, I think (key word) I am half-smart, three-quarters intelligent but only one-quarter wise.

On a different note, here's another belief of mine. It's a slogan that I live by which also revolves around the number three. This is with respect to money:

有借無還,下等人也。
有借有還,中等人也。
無借無還,上等人也。

At the current moment, I am
very stuck in 下等人 mode. But soon I will be promoted again. Soon.

Akan Datang: Ole!

44 days to go.

P.S. This is about as mathematical as I can get. Occupational hazard.

4 Comments:

Blogger Little Miss Drinkalot said...

Here's my take.

Intelligence, you are born with (or without).

Smartness, well, that depends how much effort you put into cultivating your intelligence.

And wisdom, can only be achieved with age and is not something you can learn from books.

Wed Mar 01, 10:25:00 pm 2006  
Blogger Acey Deucey said...

Interesting take.

It looks like we largely agree on what intelligence and wisdom are. And it seems like my definition of smartness is different from yours.

Thu Mar 02, 08:14:00 am 2006  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Well, to add my 2 cents to the discussion

Wisdom = Intelligence x Mindfulness

Mindfulness is the constant state of reflection of the events around us. Constant rumination and consideration of who and what we are.

The other two attributes, I largely agree with Acey.

Fri Mar 24, 06:34:00 pm 2006  
Blogger Acey Deucey said...

Mind if I ask who you are?

Fri Mar 24, 06:55:00 pm 2006  

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