Calling All Intelligent People

[milly143]

There are a lot of people on here who appear extremely intelligent and not just knowledged up on one particular subject but people who have a huge amount of factual information on many different, that they clearly haven't just copied and pasted from Google. So, how do you become to be so intelligent?

[MarkRae]

Yes she did. Some people have commented on being amazed by the ability to conjure up random facts. That holds not the slightest fascination for me, as I see it on a regular basis when I'm quizzing with people like the Eggheads, the Chasers, Mastermind champions etc. I respect it, of course, but nothing more.

But to watch my mother patiently listen to an Alzheimer's sufferer tell her the same story over and over again - now that was a source of amazement and total respect...

[BetteK]

Hey Milly143 we sound on the same wavelength. I'd always hate myself for not understanding or liking a poem or feeling intimidated by struggling through a particular book and feeling a failure for either giving up on it or battling through and not enjoying it but feeling I HAD to read it.
Now I don't care one bit if I dont understand a poem ... so what? I read those I do enjoy and have firm favourites but no longer beat myself up or feel inadequate (ok, I still do a bit!!!) I just move on to what I do like and enjoy. And I no longer pretend to understand something I don't.

As for certain quiz questions ... I'd struggle with anything math related but do despair at some seeming lack of knowledge on TV quiz shows - or even here in the quizzes and puzzles section but guess it all comes down to either you know it or you don't. The trick then is remembering it once you have been told!
Now, what was the cubed root of 216 again please LucyThomas7? ;)

[Booldawg]

Who was it that said 'Intellect, such powerful muscles but little personality' ? LOL, will leave it to the googlers or those blessed with superhuman powers of memory recall.

[chakka35]

Intelligence is a raw ingredient you are born with and is fairly insignificant on its own. Years ago I belonged to Mensa, a rather silly society for people with an IQ of at least 148, that being the only qualification.
I realised while indexing their magazine, among other things, that there were members who really could not think straight and who had very strange ways of arguing; some of them, frankly, were nut-cases. IQ is like flour in a cake; to make it useful it needs the other ingredients of discernment, maturity, discrimination, commonsense, judgment, and so on.

It soon became obvious that outside Mensa there were many more people with high IQs who were using them properly in conjunction with those other qualities. I left.

[LoftyLottie]

Agree with Andy about IQ tests!

Perception and the ability to analyse comes high on my list of what makes people intelligent.

[LoftyLottie]

Oh, I agree with Chakka too!!

[MarkRae]

6 x 6 = 36 * 6 = 216

The multiplication of any two numbers which end in 6 will always produce another number ending in 6.

[andy-hughes]

Don't worry Beetk - that feeling is on occupational hazard of living in our endless 'aspirational' society.

I think it's perfectly OK to admit that you don't understand something - even though some people put it forward as though it's a given - like finding Samantha Cameron attractive, and their baby a novelty.

In the same arena - why do some people boast about not having a television, as though this makes them simultaniously more erudite, and a better user of their free time that people like me who adore TV and watch many hours every week.

You should never allow others to undermine you as a person, do and think as you wish, and remember - we all put our pants on one leg at a time - a lot of differences are very superficial - none the less so for being built up into something special.

[R1Geezer]

You don't have to be intelligent to acquire knowledge but the two often go hand in hand. I find that if I'm interested in something then I retain knowledge about it if I'm not I don't but if I need to learn something that I'm not really interested in, i have a memory hook system that helps me remember the most tedious stuff if I have too. But mostly I am interested in a lot of subjects so I find I pick things up.

[prendy91]

by opening your mind and taking in information classed as important or usefull....by being able to read the way a person thinks and if they are having a dig eh....just because someone knows a lot more doesnt mean they are more intelligent just means the have taken what they class as usefull knowledge on board

[MarkRae]

The memory hook thing is useful for quizzing, certainly. Most people remember things like every-good-boy-deserves-favour and -Richard-of-York-gave-battle-in-vain.

Here's a good one: keep-ponds-clean-or-frogs-get-sick...

[horseshoes]

Mostly down to a fantastic school (grammar school) and having amazing teachers who captured our interest and made learning a joy. They instilled in me a thirst for knowledge, and a true love of books.

........ oh and age!

[The Builder]

I think you belittle yourself unjustly Milly. They say comparison is onerous..... unless you're comparing like with like.
As Mark and others have said, intelligence is not necessarily education and vice versa. Everyone is "wired up" differently, with differing merits.
I had a good education, including Classics, and I have the kind of brain that soaks up all kinds of stuff. I know how to use it too. Maybe that's intelligence.
My best friend and business partner of many years was in the F stream of a Secondary Modern, is dyslexic, and regularly defeats spell-checkers!
He has more "street smarts", creativity, and pure "nous" than I'll ever have.
His "IQ" level could never reflect that.

[R1Geezer]

On that cube root question Lucy, I saw it too and I just think they didn't know what a cube root was or surely they could have worked it out as mark suggests.

[MarkRae]

Nor could it have been 7 because two odd numbers multiplied together will always produce another odd number...