Chai's Blog

All from my favorite thinker and author Mor­gan Housel.

Gosh, that’s me too!

I’m at the stage in life where I stay out of argu­ments. Even if you say 1+1=5, you’re right. Have fun.

Keanu Reeves via Smart Things Smart Peo­ple Said

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I think there is a lot of val­ue in focus­ing more to devel­op smarts than intel­li­gence:

Intel­li­gence: Good mem­o­ry, log­ic, math skills, test-tak­ing abil­i­ty, rule-fol­low­ing.

Smart: High degree of empa­thy, bull­shit detec­tion, orga­ni­za­tion, com­mu­ni­ca­tion skills, per­sua­sion, social aware­ness, under­stand­ing the con­se­quences of your actions.

Both are impor­tant. But there’s a crit­i­cal dif­fer­ence in how each is val­ued.

Schools are good at teach­ing and mea­sur­ing intel­li­gence, so that’s what peo­ple tend to val­ue and aspire to. But in almost any field, smarts is what gets reward­ed long term.

Intel­li­gent vs. Smart

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Relat­ed to above idea, I think this explains why seem­ing­ly intel­li­gent goals and plans are still prone to deba­cles:

There’s a big dif­fer­ence between how some­thing should work in the­o­ry vs. how it actu­al­ly works in the real world, when tech­ni­cal facts meet human emo­tions.

A Few Things I’m Pret­ty Sure About