Questions like the one above plague every human being I am aware of. This is an important phenomenon to understand and accept: We of this species are all far more similar than we are different.
You are not the exception.
No matter who you are with, no matter their experience, age, education, whatever, (and ruling out a pathological personality disorder) they are almost certainly worrying about your perception of them at the same time you are worrying about how you come across. And much of that perception revolves around how smart people think you are.
So, Are you a ‘smart person’? Am I? How can we know?
There is no way to measure intelligence at a fixed point. This is because (we’re now getting ‘meta’) there are no fixed points in the first place. The past does not exist, nor does the future. There is only this moment right now, and it is an ongoing combination of our own experience and the input of our surroundings.
Let us do a little thought experiment to try and unfold that: Imagine you meet a famous sculptor. This famous sculptor has produced many incredible artworks across a variety of mediums. They are acknowledged by their peers as being at the pinnacle of the art.
And yet, your conversation is… awkward and boring. This is not hard to picture – it isn’t like trying to imagine an apple falling toward the sky instead of the ground, or wrap your head around non-Euclidean geometry or four-dimensional space, or working out the implications of Einstein’s special theory of relativity. Socially inept, lonely, ‘mentally ill’ geniuses are so common they are a trope to themselves.
No, in fact it is easy to imagine meeting someone who has accomplished feats we don’t understand, and yet they come across dumb. Incredible athletes, for example, may yet be sincere Flat Earthers. There are immunologists out there who are anti-vaxxers, and billionaires whose wealth is pure luck and circumstance.
What might you think of such a person? Say, a mathematician whose contributions to the concept of infinity have made them a worldwide celebrity, and yet you sit down with them and they start talking about their bodily humours – they woke up with too much phlegm, for instance, and here’s how that affects their personality, along with today’s star chart. Maybe they try to get you to check out Scientology or Raelism, or one of the many ridiculous religions I’m careful not to mock because of just how many people truly believe in them, thus making them mainstream.
Can we dismiss this mathematician’s intelligence? Of course not. We just recognize that intelligence is limited and situational. An amazing and creative potter can be illiterate and terrible at painting. That is allowed.
If it isn’t about past accomplishments, or particular skill sets, how do we judge a person’s intelligence? How do they show it? How do we show our own?
From what I have seen so far, there are two characteristics that ‘smart people’ possess. If you and I can take on these characteristics, that is if we practice them actively at all times, we will never again have to feel insecure about the perceptions of the other.
It simply stops being something to worry about. Really. If you catch yourself worrying about it, you can, using these characteristics, simply let that train of thought go. You can move on.
1. CURIOSITY
CURIOSITY: This is the numero uno. Asking questions, and listening carefully to the answers. Watching closely, wondering, experimenting. From an academic perspective, curiosity is the defining trait of intelligence. Even when we learn to communicate with other species, such as teaching great apes sign language, the difference is apparent in that they do not ask questions.
I will give a situational example of applying curiosity. It is thought experiment time.
You have been invited out stargazing with a group of people whose company you enjoy. You want to impress them, you want them to like you, you want to continue receiving invitations to hang with these cool, cool peeps.
BUT, you do not know anything about the stars. Constellation names from different cultures, how telescopes work, the difference between a star and our star… nothing.
Do you still go stargazing, even though these people might see how ignorant you are?
My friend, if you are actively curious, that question is not valid or even relevant. It has nothing to do with anything – it is merely the result of a self-generated story that exists only for you. You are imagining the perspective of the other, and mistaking the nature of intelligence.
The actively curious person can go anywhere, and do anything. You show up at stargazing, and instead of trying to impress everyone with what you know, you start observing, and you start asking questions. This process would be the same even if you were an avid, regular, knowledgeable stargazer. Unless you have been specifically brought along as an expert, or someone is asking you questions, curiosity should still rule.
You learn from those you are with by asking questions: “Have you stargazed before? Can you show me how to use this telescope? Do you have a favorite constellation? Why or why not? What should I be looking for up there?”
If conversation is not an option, fine: You just watch, as an actively curious creature. One obvious idea in this scenario is to stargaze, and ask questions of yourself, such as, What am I looking at?
2. FOCUS
Focus is where your attention is at. Most people will live their entire lives without ever realizing that they can choose what to focus on. That is not hyperbole, and bears repeating: Most people will live their entire lives without realizing they can choose what to focus on in the present moment.
Do you feel responsible for your thoughts and feelings? Do you understand that they can change moment-to-moment based on nothing at all? Do you realize that even though feelings are ‘real’, they are not a reflection of the nature of your reality?
Left to our own devices, we become swept up in the stories we are telling ourselves. This is rumination, a key characteristic of anxiety and depression. This is fortune-telling, mind-reading, oversimplifying, and jumping to conclusions – all cognitive errors that distort our perception of the world and ourselves more than they are already distorted by the complex bioelectrochemical machinery translating sound, light, temperature, proprioception, et cetera, et cetera, into the elements of consciousness itself.
The effect of focus can be demonstrated simultaneously with the effects of accumulated experience plus the environment. Here’s the environment, in the form of a prompt: Remember that time everyone was impressed by you? Focused on you, and heaping praise? How did that feel?
If I had not asked that question, you would not have recalled that memory and its accompanying emotions. But, despite being the poser of the question, I have no control nor inkling of what the prompt will bring up. It is dependent on what memories you have acquired, and how salient the prompt is to each one.
Nevertheless, you can feel it, can’t you? It feels good to remember such moments, and it feels good to imagine such moments. That feeling is happening right now, and it is real. It is the result of nature plus nurture.
Let’s reverse it. Imagine the worst day of your life (so far). Or don’t, and just make up an awful scenario. Your children are maimed in a fire. Your identity is stolen, and your life financials fall apart. Your loved ones reject you, and leave you alone and isolated.
Again, by focusing on the imagined (which uses the same central nervous system equipment as memory), you can control how you are feeling. Viktor Frankl wrote a famous book on this subject.
So, what story should we be telling ourselves?
The answer is, surprisingly, that it really doesn’t matter. Similar to applying curiosity, you do not need to pose any questions at all. You do not need to plan, create a strategy, form a narrative (this happened, which caused this, which resulted in that, and that’s why. That’s what it means). You do not need gender tropes to tell you how to behave, and how you fit in the group you are with. You do not need culture and religion.
Be curious, and focus on the external. Ask questions. Pay attention to what the other is doing and saying, rather than planning a response, or drawing conclusions, or worrying about how they perceive you.
In the absence of others, focus on what you are doing. What are you remembering, hoping, imagining, as you wash dishes, or work in your garden, or walk down the sidewalk?
Here’s another thought experiment I like to use to try and stimulate myself to paying attention: What if hotswapping bodies was possible, and I, an alien, had just been hotswapped into ‘this body’? (I am not a dualist, this is just an imagining.) How curious and interesting would sensation be, if it was the very first time?
What does it feel like to walk, and how do we keep our balance? What does the sun feel like, or the rain? How do we know which direction sounds come from? What is the sensation of temperature? What is it to stretch, to smell the roses, to recognize another person? How do I intuit what they are thinking? What do they need, in this moment?
When I am curious and focused on my surroundings, I come across as intelligent and engaged – without ever having a plan to present myself that way. No one around me needs to know anything about my background, my political stance, the places I’ve been, the certificates or degrees I’ve earned, et cetera.
You could plonk the world’s foremost quantum physicist down in the middle of, I don’t know, a basketweaving workshop, and leave them there for an hour, come back, see what happened. If that physicist spent the time explaining how smart they are, no one there is going to have a good impression of them. That is not how it works.
But if the physicist was curious and engaged, focused on the people, the activity, the moment, everyone will have enjoyed their company. And, they’ll have a very positive view of that person’s intelligence.
In the end, then, it does not matter that they are the world’s foremost quantum physicist. It could be a random off the street.
Stop asking yourself if you are smart, or if other people think you are smart. The question is a waste of time. Instead, practice curiosity and focus, and let your behavior speak for itself.
