“It takes something more than intelligence to act intelligently.” Fyodor Dostoyevsky,

Intelligence – whatever the hell that is – seems to play a big role in life’s journey. But intelligence depends on many parameters.  If you’re striving to be a leader of a street gang of thugs you need a different type of intelligence than if your goal is to become the department head of a university.  The people you need to impress in each group respond to different stimuli.  You have to be ruthless with the professors whereas you can get some compassion and understanding from the thugs.

Supposedly, IQ tests measure intelligence, but they have generated controversy.  There are claims that they have a cultural bias – a claim not far from the dichotomy illustrated in the first paragraph.  But to continue this post let’s assume that we have an agreed upon understanding of what intelligence is.  We may not be able to define it but we recognize it when we see it.

I believe there are at least three elements of intelligence.  One – and perhaps the most important – is the ability to logically follow a line of thought, e.g., proving a theorem in mathematics.  The second significant factor is ability to memorize, e.g., learn the vocabulary of a foreign language.    The third element has some impact on intelligence but in a different way than the first two – creativity.  Most professions require at least two of the three.  A physician needs to be able to think logically to diagnose a malady and he/she also needs the ability to memorize the names of all those medicines, diseases, organs, nerves, hormones, bones, medical instruments and procedures.  But a doctor doesn’t need to be especially creative unless he/she is involved in medical research.  In fact, creativity may be a hindrance in treating patients.  The patient wants something tried and true that’s going to solve their involuntary chronic peptic disgorgement.  Painting the patient’s fingernails with cinnamon and having him/her rub their tummy counterclockwise is very creative but probably ain’t going to do the trick.  Even the placebo effect has limitations.

A professional musician has to have (together with talent) the ability to memorize and to be creative.  At the highest levels they have to memorize huge amounts of music and are often judged on their personal interpretation – their creativity.  If they compose, creativity is essential.  But the ability to be logical plays a much more minor role.  There’s a blurry line about the memorization function in music.  Some speak as if the brain doesn’t do the memorization but the “muscles” do.  I’ve tried to learn to play a musical instrument – any musical intrument - and have failed miserably.  I came closest with the triangle but there’s not much music written for solo triangle.  I have to think about each note – “This finger goes here.  That string gets plucked.  Push that valve quickly three times.”  You get the idea.  A musician doesn’t do that.  They let their fingers do the walking – or whatever.  It’s like using a computer keyboard.  If you have to think about it, you’ve failed.

A linguist has to be able to memorize vast amounts of vocabulary but they don’t have to be terribly creative or logical unless they are involved in research.   In addition to failing at learning a musical instrument I’ve also failed at learning a new language.  I’m terrible at it.  I’ve always made the excuse that my problem was centered around all of the grammatical exceptions and flimsiness of the rules.  How could anyone know when to use “estar” and when to use “ser?”  Why have the three words “die”, der”, and “das?”  So I, confidently, decided to learn Esperanto – which is the most successful artificial language (except for FORTRAN) and has NO grammatical exceptions.  In fact regularity is taken to an extreme.  All verbs end in “i” and are conjugated exactly alike.  All nouns end in “o” and so on with the other parts of speech.  A fantastic and logical approach.  I eagerly anticipated going to Esperanto conventions and conversing adroitly with other citizens of the world.  And then…  Even if you learn the grammatical rules – not all that hard – you have to learn the words.  Logic or creativity is no help – you have to memorize and memorize and memorize…

So I’ve discovered one of my shortcomings – I have very little ability to memorize.  I should’ve realized this in the fourth grade when it took me two weeks to learn each week’s spelling words.

The truly great people have all three – logical thought, creativity, and the ability to memorize.  I think the ability to memorize gets short shrift on IQ tests and yet is hugely important in many professions.  I took a test once to join the CIA  (I can’t tell you if I was hired or not.  It’s classified.) and the test did tax memorization skills.  It was done in a clever way.  Read a paragraph, go to different topics, and five pages later ask about the paragraph “What did Joe tell John?”

Some people lack the ability to follow a logical path.  This is the underlying cause of our political system being the way it is.  The only requirement to be a politician is to be creative.   They have to have a story for everything.  Logic has nothing to do with it.

©2014 Lester C. Welch