03/11/03: The Nature of Intelligence

[juju]

What is the nature of intelligence? What do people mean when they say to me, "Gosh, you sure are smart!" Do they mean that I have a great deal of knowledge, brought on by the fact that I've spent many hours studying certain subjects?

I wish this were what they meant. If that were so, then I'd consider it a compliment. I think my hard work does deserve praise. But I know this isn't what they mean, because many times their comment is immediately followed by, "I could never understand all that stuff." This statement implies that being smart is simply a matter of genetics.

I want to say to them, "Really? If you had spent every single waking hour since you were ten years old sitting in front of a computer, you still wouldn't understand a damned thing about them? I find that pretty fucking hard to believe."

Most people seem to think intelligence is genetic. Some people are smart, and some people aren't, and that's just the way it is. It's true, your brain is an organ, the structure of which is encoded in your DNA. But the amount of knowledge contained in it is not dependent on genetics -- it's dependent on time spent learning. Sure, how fast you learn is dependent on genetics. But people blow this factor way, way out of proportion. Time is a far, far greater factor than genetics when attemping to accumulate knowledge.

Take, for example, math. Many people are not good at math. I've noticed that most of these people blame their ignorance of the subject on their own brain. They think they are not capable of learning it, and no amount of study will ever change that. It's just not in their genetic cards.

The highest math class I ever acheived in high school was Pre-Algebra. I was horrible at math, and I understood very little (if any) of it. I feared it, and I didn't think I'd ever be able to learn any of it. But when I decided to go to college, I found that my degree required College Algebra and Pre-Calculus. I discovered that I needed three developmental math courses before I would even be allowed to take College Algebra. The first thing I remember learning in those classes was how to factor. I had never even heard of it before. But I was told that it was a very basic thing.

So I took the developmental classes, as well as College Algebra as 8 week courses, taking two math courses back-to-back per semester. One semester I had Developmental Math and Beginning Algebra. The next semester I took Intermediate Algebra and College Algebra. The next semester I took Trigonometry, and the next semester I took Calculus I. Within 2 years, I had gone from not knowing how to add or multiply fractions to successfully figuring derivatives.

That taught me something. I thought I just wasn't capable of learning Math, but the truth was that I just needed to start at the beginning and work my way up at my own pace. It's all cumulative. If you're missing a building block of knowledge, of course you're not going to understand the higher stuff. That doesn't mean you can never understand it. You've just got to start at your own beginning and work your way up at your own speed.

I watched how people learned in college. Everyone who did well and made good grades studied a lot (yes, I asked them). Everyone who didn't do well either didn't study, or was missing a crucial bit of prerequisite knowledge. I really watched people, and I saw a definite correlate between studing and understanding the material. Never did I see anyone who just instinctively knew the subject matter. Sure, if you don't know they study a lot, it seems that way. But it's just not so.

I know that some people are mentally retarded, and that affects the speed of their learning. Yes, I accept the fact that there are varying speeds of learning for different people. I'm saying that that's not nearly as significant a factor as time spent learning. In fact, unless you're one of the very few people on the extreme end of the scale, then genetics is virtually irrelevant to the speed of your learning.