Intelligent v/s the Wise

Looking at smart people I have started observing what makes some smart people different than the other? How does one describe the specificities of different kinds of smart people? The ultimate adjectives, which seem reasonable measures are the intelligent and the wise.

I am a big fan of the wise instead of the intelligent. How does one characterize the two? Through my understanding, here are my distinctions between the two.

Firstly, let me make clear distinction between data and information. Something purely factual (a first hand reading of any situation) is data. It concerns with hard reality. We generate information through collection of data. The study of information creates knowledge. Thus the intelligent are those who are controlled by and in control of knowledge. The intelligent work within set knowledge systems and operate through this understood and accepted system. The intelligent will be able to help you with all kinds of things that exist in the real world. They talk of facts and their synthesis. You can trust them on the authenticity of information. Their skill lies in memorizing and processing the memory to get the right information at the right time. They work exceptionally well within structured environments. These are the people made for the cities – they can impress people and make their way out of situations, through legal and technical knowledge in their respective fields.

However, the intelligent could make mistakes in non-structured environments. They are highly susceptible to fall into traps of incorrect decisions in places where no formal knowledge systems exists. Wading through such field is the expertise of the wise.

It is yet difficult to define if the wise make their way through intelligence. Let’s assume that the wise are intelligent by virtue of their ability to contextualize any kind of data (they do not understand data through knowledge structures). They operate in the field of information, more basely, in the field of data, making their own meanings and readings that are highly contextual to different environments and situations. In this view, the wise are intelligent not because they can memorize all the data, but due to their ability to grasp new data for a particular scenario efficiently and quickly. The wise work with human response and behaviour. In this sense, the difference between the intelligent and the wise is similar to the nature of scalars and vectors respectively – while one is, in essence, quantitative, the other has multiple transforming aspects (like direction, momentum and acceleration) to it which makes it quantitative in the realm of (in  the purview, subset) of qualitative.

The wise are thus able to foresee new knowledge systems / structures and are able to take tactical decisions. Due to their ability to contextualize any kind of information, they are always at their toes and are able to take logical decisions, which bear results for the time being. The wise may not be able to give long term decisions, they may be able to frame a decision that is relevant for the immediate action. In long term, thus, the wise may make mistakes. But also, they may give creative outlooks towards the future. There is a value to this creativity, this leap that the wise takes for the future based on the assumptions of the current. The intelligent may be strategists. They may not conceptualize futures based on current conditions, but imagine new conditions for the future. In doing so, the intelligent miss out on a lot of humour and wit. But the intelligence of their decisions can be harnessed through following their plans.

Another important distinction one can make is the amount of rationality that the intelligent show versus the wise. The intelligent would always have a high level of rationality as compared to the wise since they rely on very safe back up like factual information. The wise use personal logic and bring in a lot of subjectivity to the interpretation of existing data. Also, they rely more on personal experience than objective case studies. While the intelligent would build up a decision based on a range of case studies, the wise would use personal history to give an output.

This post is under construction. It may continue if more ideas occur. Meanwhile, suspended.