A thought on my slowness in all things intellectual

[hmpf]

I wonder...

Could it be that I'm a 'relatively stupid' person who's learned to think like an 'intelligent' person through early, frequent, sustained exposure to 'intelligent' people and their mental products? And that this accounts for my slowness in thinking and writing? I seem to be able to come up with a similar level of 'quality of thought' as regular 'intelligent' people do, but it seems to take me considerably longer to do so. Could this be because it simply takes me a huge extra effort to be clever and erudite and deep and whatnot?

Putting lots of stuff in quotation marks here because I'm groping to express something I don't have quite the right words for. 'Intelligence' in the above sense, for instance, would be something rather more fluid and vague than the common sense idea of 'intelligence'.

Comments

[jantalaimon.livejournal.com]

I doubt that's the case, and here's why: granted, I don't know more than a few words of German, but from what I'm reading in English, I am extrapolating that you're able to be erudite and thoughtful in two languages (at least, assuming you don't know more that I don't know about :)). That alone takes a lot of intelligence, and I can say that no matter how long it takes you to come up with the things you do, for what it's worth, I've always thought that you express yourself very well.

Is it really so much that it takes you a very long time to put things into the words you mean to say, or is it that you get distracted by other things? Because I always assume it's the latter, probably since I myself am that way. XD And sometimes I'm just lazy, too. That can play a role. XD

[mischief5.livejournal.com]

Kind of jumping in here where I may not belong but...

No one can fake intelligence. You either have it or you don't. You have it. But there are differences in *how* people think and even in how one person thinks at different times and in different moods.

Person A may be highly focused, high energy, etc. and so may think "fast on their feet". Person B may be more laid back, more given to introspection, so thinking and writing comes slower by comparison. Yet if they both take the same IQ test, they register the same marks. Brilliance isn't always flashy or easy. Some people are "deep" thinkers. That's just how their brain is set up. And you also have to add in the type of people who are absolute geniuses but don't have the sense to come in out of the rain.

Then there's the other side of the coin. I happen to be Bi-Polar Type II. When I'm depressed, my thought processes slow down considerably and my creativity drops down to nil. When I get a little manicky, everything comes to me in bright colors and edgy words. I start turning out fic and art like crazy; it's good, it's sharp, it's fast. And it doesn't last. Right now, I'm in a "down" cycle and I'm trying to force myself "up". It isn't easy. I feel like I'm dragging myself through knee-deep mud. But I never question my intelligence. I know I'm smart; I just can't always access it as well as I'd like. That, too, is how my brain is wired.

We all take what we get. I can't compare my intelligence to yours because it's apples and oranges. You can't compare yours to the "fast" ones, because that's oranges and mangoes. It's neither better nor worse, just different. And that's perfectly okay. :)

[tiniago.livejournal.com]

Well, what on earth do you define intelligence as? I certainly wouldn't be able to give a hard and fast definition, and I wouldn't want to, but if I was going to quickly assess intelligence by anything then I'd assess it by looking at products. Quickness of thought and work is certainly one of the attributes that come under the umbrella of "intelligence", but it's in no way the defining one, in the same way that you wouldn't attempt to define someone's intelligence soley by their linguistic ability, or their mathematical one, or their ability to come up with witty topical puns. Is a painter who takes three years to complete a picture a "better painter" than one who dashes them out every week? (my general ignorance of art doesn't allow me to flashily use named examples here, but I'm sure there are plenty) You'd be hard-pressed to find a critic who'd agree. "And she/he is an extraordinarily fast worker, prodigiously produtive, capable of producing x number of amazing y in a week," is the sort of appellation that's added on approvingly by any judge after the main assessment of what has actually been achieved. Just an extra, flashy talent, nice to have, but not at all the meat and bone of what's going on.

Well, that's why I put 'intelligent' in quotation marks

[hmpf.livejournal.com]

Yeah, it's nearly impossible to define. But speed of mental operations *has* to enter the picture somewhere. Otherwise you'd have to say that someone who solves, say, a complicated logical puzzle in a day and someone who solves it in a year have the same intelligence (at least in the area of logical puzzle solving).

I guess what I'm wondering about here is how much of what we perceive as intelligence is innate, and how much of it is simply the result of practice. (And I think the 'innate' part may be relatively low in my case, and the 'practice' part may account for a lot of what is perceived by other people as my 'intelligence'.)

[beccatoria.livejournal.com]

No. And stop being silly.

Also, I should call you!

[herdivineshadow]

but surely creative intelligence and logical puzzle solving intelligence are diffent kinds of intelligence?

[beccatoria.livejournal.com]

To be a little less vague, I've had many real-time conversations with you about "deep" and "meta" type stuff and I've never found you to be slow.

So if you're dumb and slow about stuff, then I must be too, and at least that means I'm in good company.

With regards to actually writing things down and expressing things, people do that differently. I tend to write VAST tracts of stuff until...until eventually, usually two-thirds of the way through the essay, I finally realise what it is I'm trying to say, and manage to write it concisely. And then either I get rid of the first two-thirds or I let it stand and hope whoever's reading it finds it interesting in retrospect. So...I free-associate and just keep writing (notice that I'm doing that now?) until I hit on what it is I want to say. If I just think about it then I...don't manage to get there. You've probably noticed the same thing in my speaking tendencies? ;)

Kev, on the other hand, with sit quietly thinking about his next sentence for...minutes at a time, sometimes, if it's important enough and he thinks the sentence needs to be just right. It can be irritating when I'm trying to have a really important conversation with him, but I don't think it's a sign of low intelligence, just...cautiousness, maybe?

People are different.

Speed might have something to do with some sorts of intelligence, but I think you're equating that with the wrong sort here. Also, quality does not equal quantity, or I'd be singing the praises of Anne McCaffrey. And trust me, I'm not.

And most importantly - like I said - in real-time actual conversations, this is not something you seem to struggle with. I'd have noticed.

Well, I put 'intelligent' and 'stupid' in quotation marks...

[hmpf.livejournal.com]

for a reason - because obviously I am intelligent according to most definitions. And I'm certainly not stupid, not even according to *some* definitions. I was just trying to express the feeling that there may be degrees to what we call 'intelligence' that perhaps aren't part of the commonsense definition of it. And that perhaps a larger part of it than we commonly think is due to training, and not something you're born with. (And of course there are different *kinds* of intelligence, too - but that's a widely accepted fact already, so I probably don't need to go into that.)

And I really do *think* very slowly, at least in certain areas of thought. I can hold my own well enough in everyday conversation and even academic discussion, but a lot of that is just repetition of and extrapolation from knowledge you have. I'm reasonably good at absorbing, storing, and to some degree using knowledge - in some areas, such as remembering vocabulary and using language, I'm well above average - but I'm markedly less good at synthesizing, and actual original thought I can only produce slowly and with difficulty. I can do it, but it takes me inordinately long. But that, to me, is the area of thought that is the most indicative of 'real' intelligence, if you will; everything else is just skill, something you've learned through practice. And of course there are different levels of intellectual skills people can attain - it will take some people very little time to learn a new language whereas it will take others very long, for example - so there are degrees to this, too.

Gah, sorry, that's still vague and jumbled.

Re: Well, I put 'intelligent' and 'stupid' in quotation marks...

[diotimah.livejournal.com]

Found this via your 'intelligence' tag and am fascinated because I've always had similar self-doubts and contradictory views about my own 'intelligence'. Even to the point of thinking it's just something I have just 'imagined', that it's nothing more than just having grown up in an 'educated' household, learned to appreciate books etc.

I can hold my own well enough in everyday conversation and even academic discussion, but a lot of that is just repetition of and extrapolation from knowledge you have. I'm reasonably good at absorbing, storing, and to some degree using knowledge - in some areas, such as remembering vocabulary and using language, I'm well above average - but I'm markedly less good at synthesizing, and actual original thought I can only produce slowly and with difficulty. I can do it, but it takes me inordinately long. But that, to me, is the area of thought that is the most indicative of 'real' intelligence, if you will;

Same here. Indeed that's the main reason why I've often feared there's a difference between me and *really* 'intelligent' people. Which shouldn't matter too much if you have a 'healthy' self-esteem - but my supposed 'intelligence'/potential/abilities etc. have always been the aspect of myself I was proud of, since childhood, even. Believe it or not, this is one of the reasons why I never took a real IQ test - it would just be too much of a shock if the result would be significantly lower than expected (the other reason, by the way, is that I have my doubts about the possibility of defining and 'measuring' 'intelligence' objectively). Also, I have to add I don't at all value other people according to their IQs or achievements - this is more of a self-esteem issue.

Recently, however, I've come to realize that the 'issues' you describe might be due not to a 'low' or 'average' IQ (and I've always known that, in many ways, mine has to be above average, as I'm not just good at storing knowledge, but also at understanding and applying it). Rather, it's probably the result of a highly uneven profile of abilities, which some of the better and more thorough tests can detect. Somehow, I find that idea *much* less frustrating than the thought of just not being that smart.*g*