For years I’ve been wondering how so many intelligent people around me can shoot themselves in the foot all the time. My best guess is, despite their intelligence they never stop to think “What if I’m doing the wrong thing? How would I know?”. At least not consciously.
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this is a bit fortune-cookie but like: intelligence really is not at all the same thing as wisdom
i say this as a person who has always been very intelligent but has rarely been particularly wise 😅
my personal frame is similar:
sensitivity, smarts and strength are different variables
lots of people cargo-cult worship smarts & strength, and/but most people underestimate, undervalue, dismiss sensitivity
smarts w/o sensitivity will reason beautifully from incorrect premises
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Yeah that checks out. What do you think is blocking them from tapping into it?
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Yeah I always knew it in theory, but still kinda assumed that intelligent people would have it easier to arrive at wisdom, no? They have such great tools at their disposal?
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it did not help. if anything it made me so successful in the short term (and the short term was like until 3 years into grad school) that i could afford to keep being an idiot wisdom-ly. things didn't change until i hit a wall, stopped "succeeding," became desperate
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Also not the same as knowledge. Success in life requires a collection of learned skills, that a lot of people never manage to learn.
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