W.I.T. #48 - Intelligent vs. Smart

Is there a difference between being smart and intelligent, and if so should you work toward being one vs the other?

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VIDEO TRANSCRIPT:

John Scherer:

John: Is there a difference between being intelligent and being smart? That's what I'm thinking about. You. Earlier this week, I had a conversation with a friend of mine talking about, we were catching up. We hadn't talked to each other in a while, talking about what's going on in our lives, about my kids, how they're, you know, what, what things are going on with them. We started a conversation a little about some of the things I'm trying to teach them, things that I think are important in life. And that evolved into a conversation. We were to discussed artificial intelligence and some of the things going on these days in that world and how powerful that is. And I made the contention to my buddy that there's always going to be a place in the world for people that can think, that can communicate with folks and have certain human skills, that the technology is not going to take over. John: And so that was a great conversation with that buddy of mine. And then I was looking through some articles that I had saved here, and this one came. I found an article from earlier this summer from Morgan Housel. Morgan's a financial planner. He's got a couple of books out. I'm reading right now, the psychology of money, an excellent book. And this article actually was titled Intelligence versus Smarts. I thought, oh, interesting. John: And I'll pull up just a little snippet here from that article. We'll put a link in the show notes to the entire article. But I thought that this definition or these descriptions of intelligent versus smart were pretty interesting. I'll let you read those things. I don't need to read them out loud to you, but related things, of course. Right. But two very different things, even though they're related. And it hadn't struck me when I was having that conversation with my buddy, or as I think about this, just in general. John: But this really does apply to how I think of things anyway, in the world that those things on the intelligence side, number one, that's what we learn in school. Right. Those things are more easily measured. They can test for those. That's what we learn in school. But you can have those skills and not necessarily be successful in life. But if you have those skills of being smart that are listed out there, that that's really the recipe for success and working to develop those things. No, we can't test for them. John: We can't arbitrarily decide if you're good at them or not. But those are the things that the technology is not going to be able to replace. Right. I've experimented just a little bit with artificial intelligence. And man, it is amazing. Some of the things, especially in language, it used to be, hey, you better learn how to write. That gets you ahead in life. I think that those days are likely changing on things, right? That the facts and those sorts of things which used to be really valuable certainly are less valuable these days with the Internet and it seems like are going to be increasingly less valuable. John: But how to apply them, how to connect with other human beings, I don't think that skill set is going to change and that's going to be the next generation of things. And again, just for me personally, as I think about my sons and how I want to encourage them to think about life and what's going to make them successful, just interesting, that thought process of what's different these days and what is not going to be taken over by technology and that idea of being smart, I hope I can help them be smart. Intelligent too would be great, but intelligence might be a commodity in the future. So that's what I'm thinking about today. As always, I'm interested in knowing what you're thinking about. If you're watching this on YouTube, drop a comment in the comment box or shoot me an email directly. And as always, thanks for watching.

John Scherer CFP® is a fee-only certified financial planner based in Middleton, Wisconsin. John has over 20 years of experience advising clients on personal tax, investment, and financial planning. You can reach him by email at john@trinfin.com.