Tuesday 16 December 2003

Pic of the day: It's good for something, at least ... although in fact, even mathematics is partly a separate talent. (Screenshot from The Sims. Chalkboard from Fingermouse, CheapFrills.org.)

IQ is not everything

You probably expect me to say something like "being smart is not everything". But that is not what I mean. Admittedly, that is true too: There are other things in life that are more likely to make you happy. Faith, hope and charity; freedom and friendship; a healthy body and soul; true love and physical exercise, preferably in combination. But you already knew this, and much more. So what I want to say today is a something slightly less obvious: IQ is not everything you need even to be "intelligent".

It is a well-known fact that even intelligent people can do stupid things. I have even occasionally done them myself! There is usually a reason when the stupidity is out of proportion. Common causes are anger, greed or lust, or simply lack of patience. Sometimes curiosity can get the better of us, as well. Being able to rotate complex geometrical shapes in your head or solve equations easily does not eliminate these mistakes. But it does help. Or rather, being able to look a bit ahead helps. When we are able to see the consequences of our actions, it becomes easier to resist some temptations that are just plain dumb. It doesn't eliminate them completely: The stronger the emotion, the more likely it is to simply override our reason. There is a lot to say about that, but even this is not the single point that I want to make today.

My point is: To act intelligently, you need to be informed. Unless you have the necessary data points, no amount of calculation will give a reliable answer!

***

When children go to school, they learn a lot of things that they will never need. This is often considered to be a necessary evil: Since you don't know for sure what you are going to be when you grow up, you had better learn many different things. But that is not all of it. It is also necessary to build a platform of shared reliable knowledge. This platform will help you to make connections later between facts that are not obviously related to one another. Education builds a skeleton of knowledge, where you can place the many different kinds of knowledge you gather later in life.

Sometimes I see really intelligent people who seem to regard their intelligence as simply another way to earn money. If they could earn as much by simply looking good, they would not mind doing that instead. Being intelligent is not a way of life for them; being rich is a way of life for them, and intelligence is a way to get there. These people may be highly intelligent as measured by IQ, but they are not intellectual. They don't delight in learning and understanding, in sharing and comparing what they have learned. And as soon as they stray outside the limited area of their expertise, they revert to the stupidity you could expect from average people.

Some professions are not easy to isolate from the rest of society. A good example of this is economy, with which I am somewhat familiar. There are mathematical models that seek to describe how the various economic forces interact with one another. But in real life, economy is also largely about psychology. Markets don't react rationally. And sadly, politicians even less so. So you may feed your computers with statistical data and trust the results that come out from your models; but if you do not understand the winds that blow over society, you will most likely be wrong. You will most likely be very wrong. This has happened to the central bank here in Norway, and is still happening right now. According to the models, inflation should be 2.5%; it is more like 0.5%. (Frankly I don't see this as a major problem, but that's another story.)

But perhaps you have a job which is clearly defined and separate from your daily life. Even then, I believe it would be a good thing to be broadly informed. One thing is that it makes life more interesting. But more importantly, being stupid is dangerous. It is also kinda pathetic. Sometimes it's all pathetic and nothing but pathetic, such as when otherwise sane people believe that men have never been to the moon or that aliens were behind the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Sometimes the stupidity is dangerous mostly to themselves, such as when they respond to spam promising them easy money and bigger sexual organs. And sometimes it is dangerous to the whole society, when they join dangerous cults or political movements that live in an alternate reality. Vidkun Quisling, the infamous betrayer from World War II, was unusually intelligent and an experienced politician. Even so, he joined forces with the Nazis and committed high treason... not for love or money, but out of ideological conviction.

Most of us don't go that far. But ignorance still has its cost. Otherwise intelligent people make stupid mistakes that destroy their economy, their friendships, their marriage, their health. And they live their lives in a murky, confusing world. To love knowledge is the beginning of wisdom. And wisdom is to have the answer when you need it, instead of only before and after. Perhaps none of us will ever understand our way clearly; but it is worth a try!

After all, to the casual observer, ignorance is virtually indistinguishable from stupidity. The effect is the same: When you need the answers, you don't have them.