121–130 of 336 posts
How you define intelligence? The person who knows their audience and speaks in a way that connects with them is more intelligent than one who does not. And this is not measured by an IQ test.
When I was a kid my family would often chide me for using "big words" and told I was trying to "impress everyone" doing that. The truth is, I was just trying to relate something I'd learned and thought was interesting and every time that happened I was kind of shocked and left wondering how they'd missed the gist of what I was talking about. My own mother did it. I finally stopped sharing things I thought they'd atta…
I did it less but certainly kept using richer words with the friends that I knew would understand.
Just recently I sent mail to a work colleague with the content
For your edification.
Personal anecdote, but I wonder if my experience as a junior officer in the Navy helped with this. The last comments in the piece are that intelligent leaders should 1) seek creative metaphors and 2) speak charismatically. Coming to the fleet from a bachelor's in physics, I knew I was reasonably intelligent, but also that there were some people much smarter than me (at least my battered ego assured me of that). So, w…
Why did sailors try to drive through the closed base gate and test 440V circuits with their fingers?
In my experience really smart people can be arbitrarily wrong, perhaps moreso than less smart people, because they can create elaborate mental models to justify bad ideas, and someone significantly smarter than me can create difficult to refute arguments that serve as a bulwark against pushback. Remember that sophistry requires sophistication but is still little more than the smart person's stupidity.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
this is a crock. it was a crock when it was written and it's still a crock now. the idea that someone can for 8 years in the spotlight disguise themselves so much so that appear wholly opposite is ludicrous. it takes months for professional actors to produce 90 minutes of performance - the guy was on camera for literally weeks. he's not "smarter than you" this kind of revisionist nonsense is politically motivated - p…
It wouldn't be that big of an act. Even smart people can be naturally inarticulate. And a big part of the reason he was perceived as being dumb wasn't even him saying stupid things, it was just him saying things in a way that was stereotypically associated with lack of intelligence.
When I was a kid my family would often chide me for using "big words" and told I was trying to "impress everyone" doing that. The truth is, I was just trying to relate something I'd learned and thought was interesting and every time that happened I was kind of shocked and left wondering how they'd missed the gist of what I was talking about. My own mother did it. I finally stopped sharing things I thought they'd atta…
In the end you can only communicate with people at the same intelligence level (or whatever you want to call it) as you.
Simplest answer: IQ doesn't measure inter-personal skills, and people who are really good at one type of thing (measurable by IQ) are often not as good at other things (various proposed metrics of social intelligence).
My takeaway was that people don't like leaders that can't relate to them. Obama related well to one part of the country, and Trump related well to another part of the country. Trump's case being more surprising since he's tries very hard to come off as a class traitor. ex. Notice his love of the peoples food (fast food)
Question is why do we need a leader we relate to? We're not living in tribes any longer. The president of a country isn't likely to sit down and have a beer with us.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think there are different kinds of smartness. For example I am good at solving difficult technical problems. But I can only operate well in an honest and open environment and am prone to falling into traps built by politically savvy people. Being good at politics is also a smart thing but it requires different tools than you need for good engineering or science.
I'm in the same boat as you. I hate politics and back-stabbing environments. Why can't everybody just do what it's supposed to do in a work environment?
Being politically savvy/expedient is as much about knowing how to get along with people as it is getting what you want.
When I was a kid my family would often chide me for using "big words" and told I was trying to "impress everyone" doing that. The truth is, I was just trying to relate something I'd learned and thought was interesting and every time that happened I was kind of shocked and left wondering how they'd missed the gist of what I was talking about. My own mother did it. I finally stopped sharing things I thought they'd atta…
> "Why are you always trying to impress everyone by using big words." Yeah, I had similar experiences. I read a lot of books and absorbed their vocabulary, and sometimes it would slip out. I would just say what's on my mind, and that's what other people do, right? Then I would get into trouble also by pausing to weigh my words, people read too much into your pause before answering them. Or I just wouldn't say much, b…
http://virtualwayfarer.com/nordic-conversations-are-differen...
discussed here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8205907