

Intelligence is so overrated, knowledge and persistence are so underrated. - skowmunk

If there are two people with the same inherent intelligence, wouldn't the person with more knowledge APPEAR to be more intelligent?<p>Wouldn't the one with more knowledge be better at solving problems, because he has more knowledge that he can use intelligently to solve a problem?<p>If one were to agree with that, applying the same rule, wouldn't it be possible that a person with lesser inherent intelligence but enough of more knowledge out do a person of greater intelligence but with lesser knowledge, if the positive delta of intelligence is enough to overcome the negative delta of intelligence?<p>And how much influence does persistence have on the breadth or/and depth of knowledge one gains in one or many domains, as compared to intelligence?
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s14m
Should the intelligence and knowledge be treated differently? A person to be
acknowledged as 'intelligent' in certain field must have a deep knowledge
about that topic and vice-versa. Nobody comes into existence already knowing
about Dijkstra's algorithm, s/he has to learn it actively.

~~~
skowmunk
From some hard learnt life lessons, this is what I realized

Its best to differentiate between:

1) inherent intelligence 2) knowledge 3) apparent intelligence (which I define
as a product of inherent intelligence and one's accumulated knowledge)

It benefited me the most when I focused more or less solely on knowledge
accumulation and its usage than the other two.

While evlauating others too, like prospective employees, I found it best to
evaluate one's hunger to accumulate knowledge and readiness to apply it.

Those, who focus mostly on their 'intelligence' I found it a pain to deal with
them.

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lsc
Actually, the market forces I see right now value experience and knowledge
over intelligence. I can hire people who are vastly more intelligent (but also
vastly less experienced) than I am to work for me for a very small fraction of
what I can charge for my own time.

However, people who are as experienced as I am, even if they are clearly less
intelligent, can usually command wages similar to mine.

