Thursday, July 11, 2013

PostAWeek 27: Intellect – A Conceptual Understanding By David “Clever is a Subset” Dysart

PostAWeek 27: Intellect – A Conceptual Understanding
By David “Clever is a Subset” Dysart
By David “Scoring an 88” Dysart
By David “General Facts” Dysart
By David “Walking Encyclopedia” Dysart
By David “Visual, Musical, Mathematic” Dysart
By David “Wisdom Department” Dysart
By David “The Operational Aspect of Intellect” Dysart
By David “Genius Component” Dysart



I’ll be honest. If you know me, I have pretty low self-esteem and self-deprecating sense of humor. While I’ll recognize some of my weaknesses in this blog, I view myself as intelligent, so I might come off as an elitist jerk at some point. You’ve been warned...


When I think of a person’s intellect, I don’t think of it as a single construct. If you put a number on it, two people scoring an 88, they will look very different and get to that 88 in very different ways. Now, don’t be confused. When I say intellect, some people might think I mean what people call intelligence, which many people have broken into categories such as visual, musical, and mathematic. When I say intellect though, I’m talking about an even broader order of mental faculties that a person possesses.
Before I go into depth of each, I want to show you the topics together. Some of the broader categories in my mind are:


Static
Information
General facts
Knowledge
A body of facts relating to a field or subject
Being Well-Read
Broad base of facts and knowledge
Wisdom
A collection of life experiences leading to improved life decision-making

Operational
Intelligence
The mind’s operating system
Clever
Novel connections
Witty
Cleverness honed for humor



So Intellect can be separated into Static and Operational categories. Static is more content-based on what you know. Operational is your active ability to take in, comprehend, and use information and the world at large.

The first things to cover are Information and Knowledge. Information is the general facts that a person has. Being a Walking Encyclopedia, I’ve got a decent range of Information
Similarly, Knowledge is a body of facts a person has in a particular field or subject. This could include what a person’s learned about their major or their on-the-job experience or hobby. I get the feeling I underestimate my knowledge.
Being Well-Read is something I’m definitely not. Broadly, this is just accumulating Information from a multitude of sources. From Socrates to Tolstoy, a person who is Well-Read can pull from writers, philosophers, and scientists.

Wisdom is the know-how of living life and is the bridge between the static and operational intellects. I’m probably a bit light in the Wisdom Department

Now we move to the Operational aspect of Intellect. The main thing to understand here is Intelligence. It’s basically the operating system that your brain is running on. The more intelligent you are, the quicker you’re able to handle information, pick things up, and become adept at them. Granted, people are going to pick certain things up faster and certain things slower than others, but this is the basic or standard of doing so. I’m relatively intelligent and is my redeeming grace for my laziness (and probably facilitates it a bit)
I would almost argue that being Clever is a subset of intelligence. I don’t have a very tangible grasp on how to describe it (I need some more time with it), but it’s basically the genius component of Intelligence. Being able to make novel connections that other can’t. As for examples, The Doctor (Doctor Who) and Sherlock Holmes (BBC’s Sherlock) are Clever. I’m not nearly as clever as I should be or could be. Need to surround myself with more Clever folks and do so consistently so I have people I need to keep up with (who won’t let me dangle participles).
I wasn’t going to include Wittiness, but meh, why not. It’s basically harnessing cleverness for humor or less formal displays of Cleverness.

Things like memory are going to affect these things, but these are how I would break Intellect down. Any thoughts or opinions are welcomed





Listening to
Duck Dynasty

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New to the PostAWeek? These are the essential posts to see
3 – January Performer of the Month – The first official appearance of Chuck and Tom on the PostAWeek, and a good sampler of their style.

5, 6, 7 – The February Performer of the Month Trilogy – The only Performer of the Month to span 3 posts, Chuck deals with a Batman-quoting Tom for over 1,500 words in this three-bit of brilliance

8, 9, 10 – The Mile High Diaries Trilogy – My yearly pilgrimage to the top of Mount Etatslac chronicled for the future generations to tackle the peak, written article-style with pulled quotes and all that jazz.
           

I really should come up with something smart or clever to put here given the topic, but I say just go back to all of my nicknames this week and be happy with that.



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