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By C. Jake Williams. June 11, 2008
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Intelligence is a queer concept. We strive for it, and yet we cannot adequately encapsulate it with words. We value those we deem to possess it, and yet often we fail to discern between knowledge and utter nonsense (bullshit).
Almost universally, the definition of intelligence includes the measure of the quality and especially the quantity of what one knows. "Ask him, he'll know," we say of an individual whose mind we respect when confounded by a problem ourselves. He's intelligent, in our eyes, so therefore he must possess a deep well of quality thoughts from which we can draw.
We are so like children in this line of thinking. I now suggest an alternative theory of intelligence.
Intelligence is the awareness of ignorance.
All parents innately know this idea to be correct, even if they disagree with my wording at first glance. Socrates, the Father of Western Civilization, of how the western world thinks and lives, also would agree with this theory. Socrates, in fact, nearly developed this very theory.
"I know nothing except the fact of my ignorance," Socrates said in the days of antiquity.
Below I will offer one description of my theory, followed by two methods of modeling and visualizing it.
During my second junior year at Utah State University, I came up with the idea that there are two types of people. The first are those who are ignorant, with the second being those who are ignorant of their ignorance. Allow me to explain.
Imagine a human moving in time not forward as is the case where every effect is preceded by its cause, but in the reverse direction. Imagine a human living his life from death to birth, from elder to infant.
The elder cannot possibly possess infinite knowledge. This is obvious, there is always more to learn. But he does know very much, which he has accumulated through his many years. The well is not empty, but there's plenty of room for more runoff to aggregate.
Moving away from inevitability and towards birth, however, the elder's (adult's, actually) collection of knowledge will decrease. He will know less, we would say, than he did as an elder. Moving back further, the child will know still less and we continue until a newborn, fresh from the womb, knows nothing at all.
One question with an obvious answer is ready for the asking: Which, speaking of the elder and the infant, is comparatively more ignorant? I doubt anyone will answer that the elder is more ignorant, as he learned throughout his life. Let us assume to this point we are unanimous (or nearly so).
We are ready for a second question, a more difficult to answer question: To what was the infant more ignorant of and the elder less ignorant?
Do not answer too hastily. Take a moment to more fully consider the latter question, for it is key to understanding intelligence.
First instinct, a result of previous and incorrect theories, will lead you to suspect that the infant lacked the answers which his elder came to possess. Your instinct is incorrect for the same reason that an effect is an empty concept without its corresponding cause.
The elder may well possess more answers than the infant, but this is merely a symptom of his real accomplishment: The elder knows more questions.
The infant was not only ignorant of the answers, but he was even ignorant even to the fact of their existence. Newborns are ignorant even of their ignorance.
Wise old elders, to the contrary, know more as to what they are ignorant.
As you may have deducted already, my initial thought on knowledge was incorrect. There are not two-and-only-two types of people in the world. Yes there are ignorant and ignorance-ignorant people out there, but there also lie and infinite number of stages between the two. Thus, two models of how to visualize intelligence were constructed.
The first model is a simple scale. This model lacks romantic aesthetic value. It will sufficiently describe the theory, but will not capture your imagination.
Consider a simple scale running vertically from absolute minimum at the bottom to absolute maximum at the top. As you can expect, almost everyone lies in the middle of the two. At the bottom, lie infants as similarly unintelligent non-infants. Have your parents ever callously accused you of "thinking you know everything?" What they were really accusing you of was being completely unaware that you are ignorant. God help you if it were true.
At the maximum lies the individual Socrates strived to become. "I know nothing except the fact of my ignorance," he said. He is no longer searching for the questions which can describe our world. Such a man is fully aware of his ignorance and can now search for the answers which extinguish his questions' burning. Such a person is Intelligent, capitalized here to illustrate is absolute nature. (Side note: Notice here that possessing all the answers is not required for Intelligence, although some answers are obviously necessary in order to learn higher-order questions. What's important is that answers are secondary to the primary source of intelligence, namely questions.)
The intelligence of an individual can therefore be measured by how high on the scale a person lies.
The second model is the one I'm quite proud of. Albert Einstein once said that the only difference between genius and insanity was that genius has a limit. I have always disagreed with that statement, even if it makes me laugh politely.
For this model, think of the shape of a nautilus, a spiral (especially an exponential spiral, as opposed to an Archimedean spiral).
A spiral is a curve of ever-expanding area whereby the further one moves along its course, the further one lies from both the center (starting point) and from any point on the previous revolution.
The center of the spiral represents birth, as you have probably assumed. As an individual advances intellectually, his life progresses outward in ever-increasing area towards infinity.
As a person learns more and more questions concerning the world, his lifeline progresses as well. (Lifeline, in this instance, represents a line segment drawn from a point on the spiral towards the center, ending when it intersects the previous revolution of the spiral.)
The lifeline will increase in length, which represents more topics for which the individual can seek questions of, just as the area behind the lifeline increases. That area represents the individual's well of accrued questions, along with some resulting answers.
Intelligence is not the measure of how much one knows, but rather how much one is aware he still has yet to discover. Intelligence is not thinking you know everything.
Intelligence is the awareness of ignorance.
You were there.