Who's The Smartest Person On This Site?

submitted by Mcheetah from self.AskSaidIt

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[–]Hematomato 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (7 children)

Not to spoil the fun of this thread, but I don't believe in the concept of "smartest."

There are a dozen things my brain can do better than yours, and there are a dozen things your brain can do better than mine, and that's true for pretty much any two healthy people.

It's dumb to treat "intelligence" as a statistic. It's sort of like saying everyone has a quantifiable level of "competence."

[–]GuyWhite 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (3 children)

Then there are folks whose brains can’t do either of those dozen things. Those are the stupid ones with low IQs

[–]Hematomato 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

Yes, that's why I said "healthy." It's possible, whether through pollution or injury or genetic disease, to have a brain that doesn't work well in general.

But any two fully healthy brains will simply specialize differently from one another.

[–]jet199 4 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 0 fun5 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

Most low IQ people are healthy.

[–]no_u 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Not necessarily, as they're the target audience food and activities that are bad for them.

[–]no_u 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

Intelligence: the ability to acquire and apply knowledge and skills

There are standard tests that can offer a quantitative assessment of that 'ability'

IQ tests assess quick reasoning skills, working memory, fluid reasoning, verbal comprehension, numerical reasoning, logical reasoning, verbal intelligence and spatial intelligence and other forms of intelligence, which can be quantified when one considers the speed with which one responds.

But in partial agreement with you, there are indeed several types of non-IQ related intelligence that cannot be quantified in a standard way: https://psychology-spot.com/types-of-intelligence

[–]Hematomato 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Intelligence: the ability to acquire and apply knowledge and skills

Except that everyone is attuned to acquire different kinds of knowledge and skills at different speeds.

There is no one magic number that's going to measure how easily you can learn to play chess, write a villanelle, play the cello, solve a differential equation, sweet-talk a woman into bed, win an MMA fight, draw a map of your neighborhood from memory, give a speech, figure out how to invest your money, and understand your own addiction triggers.

They're all completely different skills. Everyone is good at some of them and shit at others. They are not governed by one statistic, Dungeons & Dragons style.

[–]Canbot 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

That's a nice theory, but studies have shown that people who are good at one cognitive test are usually good at most cognitive tests. Your scenario is only true between two very closely matched people. If one is significantly better at one task they are likely better at all tasks.

What conceals that fact is that anyone can study a particular subject and become better at it than someone smarter who has never put any thought into that thing. But that only lasts until they do.

IQ only becomes fallacious as a tool when you start assuming what people's IQ must be based on some proxy.

That said, being smart is not the most important factor in being the best admin. Arguably a less intelligent person will be capable and willing to dedicate more time to running the website.