Knowledge and intelligence: a few steps you can take to become smarter

What does it mean to be “smart?” When someone recalls obscure facts or demonstrates a remarkable feat of calculation, we say that person is smart. If someone demonstrates an unusual perspective, drawing from many sources to reach a conclusion, we may wonder how they are able to perform such mental gymnastics.

I think it is important to make a distinction between knowledge and intelligence. Knowledge is a measure of the amount of information someone is able to recall at will. Someone with a great deal of knowledge tends to have two things: experience and memory. Intelligence, on the other hand, is the ability to synthesize information into a useful conclusion. This includes drawing on premises to make a logical argument and using data to make a calculation. In computer terms, this is the distinction between memory and processing. In psychology, this is comparable to the concepts of crystallized and fluid intelligence.

I am fascinated by the work of brilliant people, and I want to use the distinctions I have laid out to distill the practices these people have in common. In short, I want to teach you how to be smart.

Let’s start with knowledge, as this is easiest to accumulate. Becoming knowledgeable is a two-step process: Recognize when you do not understand something, and then look it up. Every time.

When you encounter a subject, ask yourself if you could thoroughly explain it to someone else. If the answer is no, there’s no shame in that. No single person can know everything, but you can make an effort to expand your knowledge. To do that, you need to know how to research. Don’t know how an engine works? There has never been a better time to learn. Go online, and find a video of someone explaining it. Find a picture with all the parts labeled. Read until you understand how everything works together. If you encounter a word you don’t recognize, look it up. If you can build this habit, you’ll already be halfway to becoming the smartest person you know. But what is the other half?

The other half is intelligence. It’s what you do with that knowledge. It’s how you use it to form ideas. If you want to build this skill, you need to learn to pay attention to the world around you, and ask one question: Why?

Start with the things that interest you. Have you noticed that men’s bikes and women’s bikes have differently shaped frames? Why is that? If you’ve followed the previous section, your reflex should be to Google the question, but hold on. Can you think of a reason? Maybe a few? Spend a minute to try to decide the most likely reason. Now look it up. If you came up with the right reason, you just got into the head of the person who designed those bikes. That person was an engineer, probably spent hours on that design, and you just read their mind. If you were off, don’t worry. This isn’t something you learn in a day. But if you keep your eyes open, you can see the signs of all the ideas brilliant people have used to shape our world, and you can learn to think like them. If you can, find videos or articles where smart people explain their thought process, be it about designing objects or creating a philosophy. When you need a brilliant idea, you’ll know how smart people think, and you can use the same methods to turn your own knowledge into something entirely new.

That makes you a pretty smart person.

David Billig is a UF linguistics master’s student. His column appears on Wednesdays.