Beyond Smart

October 2021

If you asked people what was special about Einstein, most would say
that he was really smart. Even the ones who tried to give you a
more sophisticated-sounding answer would probably think this first.
Till a few years ago I would have given the same answer myself. But
that wasn't what was special about Einstein. What was special about
him was that he had important new ideas. Being very smart was a
necessary precondition for having those ideas, but the two are not
identical.

It may seem a hair-splitting distinction to point out that intelligence
and its consequences are not identical, but it isn't. There's a big
gap between them. Anyone who's spent time around universities and
research labs knows how big. There are a lot of genuinely smart
people who don't achieve very much.

I grew up thinking that being smart was the thing most to be desired.
Perhaps you did too. But I bet it's not what you really want. Imagine
you had a choice between being really smart but discovering nothing
new, and being less smart but discovering lots of new ideas. Surely
you'd take the latter. I would. The choice makes me uncomfortable,
but when you see the two options laid out explicitly like that,
it's obvious which is better.

The reason the choice makes me uncomfortable is that being smart
still feels like the thing that matters, even though I know
intellectually that it isn't. I spent so many years thinking it
was. The circumstances of childhood are a perfect storm for fostering
this illusion. Intelligence is much easier to measure than the value
of new ideas, and you're constantly being judged by it. Whereas
even the kids who will ultimately discover new things aren't usually
discovering them yet. For kids that way inclined, intelligence is
the only game in town.

There are more subtle reasons too, which persist long into adulthood.
Intelligence wins in conversation, and thus becomes the basis of
the dominance hierarchy.
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