Maybe so, but I’m just not seeing it. There are also people who I have been told are “wicked smart.” They weren’t.
I do know some people who are, yet when in a room or group with them it seems that they do not know that they are.
So, I’m a cynic, a non-believer, when someone is labeled or promoted as being three kinds of, or wicked smart, my cynicism is both fueled and validated when “smart” people do dumb things.
Keith Stanovich shed some light on this. He is an award-winning professor of cognitive psychology at the University of Toronto and author of What Intelligence Tests Miss: The Psychology of Rational Thought. One or two kinds of smart simply isn’t enough and professor Stanovich knows why.
The first kind of smart Stanovich calls the “autonomous mind.” This is exemplified by what we do absent thinking and reasoning. A warm smile upon seeing someone we care about, or an angry expletive after slicing the tip of a finger with the chef’s knife. It’s quick, reactionary and without conscious thought.
Stanovich’s second kind of smart is algorithmic. It is slow, logical, and mentally labor intensive. This is the intelligence that IQ tests measure.
The third kind of smart is street smarts (my label) which Stanovich calls the reflective mind. The is where reasoning ability lives. This is where we decide what to do with that which our autonomous or algorithmic minds tell us. This is the place where the value of other kinds of smart is put to good productive use – or not.
For me, the most profound aspect of the good professor’s research is the back-to-back testing of individual’s IQ (algorithmic minds) and street smarts (reflective minds). He found absolutely no correlation. High IQ does not prevent dumb actions.
The self-defined smartest guy in the room generally isn’t. People who really are three kinds of smart don’t need to tell. It is visible in their actions. I’m the Outsider and that’s what I think.
