Re: Smart kids, (empiricist on the prowel)

jason varsoke (jjv@caesun.msd.ray.com)
Mon, 24 May 1999 09:15:31 -0400 (EDT) 

On Sun, 23 May 1999, Camille Scaysbrook wrote:
> Thor wrote:
> > Be serious.  CAPABLE of being smarter, yes.  CAPABLE of learning more, 
> > faster, yes.  But smarter denotes accumulation of information & ability
> to 
> > use it.  
> 
> Well, I guess that drives a stake between your opinion on intelligence and
> mine (and MW's). If intelligence is how many dates of famous battles you
> can recite off by heart, how many times tables you can regurgitate, how
> many A's you can get on your report card - then obviously the person who
> has lived longer has the more information at his or her disposal. However,
> true wisdom - that is, the state of being Wise (heck, `It's a Wise Child'!)
> is something that I believe certain people are born with, an intangible
> which cannot be eroded or changed from birth but just covered or uncovered.
> I think this is the sort of intelligence Salinger intended us to believe
> Seymour has - however, the innate difficulty in portraying such a hazy
> value seems to have led him to plump for a more `worldly' wiseness for
> Seymour.

Ok Cam, I'm with you right up until the part about wisdom.  I don't think
wisdom is something you are born with.  You may have a proclivity for
wisdom or a certain brain structure (DNA structure) that tends to allow
you to process information and retain and use it in later situation to
forulate better than average solutions, but it's not apriori (yes I was a
philosophy major and that's why I can wield that last word =).  Wisdom is
just the combonation several abilities: to be able to switch perspectives
from one person to another, so you can see a more objective view of the
situation, or at least the multi-perspective view; to be able the
empathize with those perspectives and project how they feel about X Y and
Z; to retain knowledge from former experience; to be able to abstract from
that experience and apply it to the present/future.  These are the tenants
of wisdom as I see it.  A body has no wisdom if it has no experience.  You
may point to cases of apparent wisdom when a child knew nothing of a
situation (child give advice to elder at a funeral or something) but
really that child is not absent of knowledge.  He or she has just
abstracted things that normally we wouldn't associate with said
situation.  A child's mind is much more flexible than the adults.  Where
we are blind to connections they free associate.  This makes them wiser
and more foolish.  They have not yet learned the rules and are therefore
not restricted by them.  
   Wisdom is not intelligence.  I've found wise blue-collar people and
unwise PhDs.  Look at the film "Nobody's Fool" with Paul Newman.  That
character is wise, but not too smart.  Look at how he deals with the woman
walking the street in her night robe, in the snow.  The whole movie is a
showcase in wisdom.  But wisdom is learned though experience.  What is
innate is the ear to listen to what experience is teaching you.  And
possibily even that can be worked on.  
   The Hapworth Seymour is completely unbelieveable.  JDS does not
convince us that this little kid of what 7, is ready to write his Master's
theisis on life.  If Hapworth were ourside the JDS cannon we'd all say
"Hogwash."  It's only our dedication to JDS, our infautation with the
Glasses that even allows us to consider this character real.  Those
zealots in the crowd would probably have no problem believing that Seymour
also constructed a small cold fusion generator at that camp to help fuel a
sick little girl's dialysis machine when the power went out one night, and
then he disassembled it the following morning because humanity was not yet
ready for it.  I personally have a hard time stomaching "Teddy" much less
"Hapworth."  
   And yes, JS Mills has the highest IQ in recorded history.  But it's too
bad Seymour has to be brillant to be so wise.
   
Thor and company,
   As far as intelligence goes, define your terms first.  I think you'll
find people have different definitions of intelligence.  Some people
claims it's recall, some problem solving, some learning, some adaptbility,
some creativity.  Some definitions favor the adult, some the child.

-j