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My anecdotal observation is that very smart people have few early childhood memories, whereas less smart people have many early childhood memories. Possibly the

My anecdotal observation is that very smart people have few early childhood memories, whereas less smart people have many early childhood memories. Possibly the brains of the smarter people accomplished a more efficient restructuring in which essentially all storage resources became available for adult memories. If this were true, I wonder if anyone would try to exploit it in contexts such as job interviews. Specifically, could the ELI5 concept be repurposed? Do I ask an applicant to "Explain When You Were 5" and, if they have a coherent response, put that person at the bottom of the pile?

FooBarWidget 9y ago
That assumes that "smart" is what you need. What about things like discipline, consistency, honesty, cooperativeness, etc? For example some smart people think that only they are right, and if you task them to do something they don't fully agree with they lose all motivation, even if the "right" in that context is subjective and/or a matter of taste. In some organizations and jobs, the ability to work together as to allow business continuity and redundancy is more valuable than the heroic contributions of any one person. Some smart people also hate unchallenging work, but not all work can be challenging -- indeed a lot of my work as an entrepreneur and supervisor is boring but it is necessary. You also assume that "smart" has a single definition -- or a good definition at all. What about two different people who are smart in different ways, but only one of those ways is correlated to childhood memories? What if you are simply observing someone's communication style, and merely interpreting a certain communication style as "less smart"? For example, some people are extraverted and respond really quickly, but on the other hand they didn't really think things through, miss details and change their minds often. Other people could be described as more introverted, don't respond quickly and need to think about something for a couple of nights, but when they come back to you they've really given it a thought and understand all the details and don't change their mind quickly. People in the former group and more easily perceived as "smart" and "a leader" while people in the other less so. I've seen the definition of IQ. I've studied a bit of psychology. The more I know about those two the more I think that the concept of "IQ" and "smart" are bullshit. There is often no "more/less smart", there is only "different".

FooBarWidget 9y ago

That assumes that "smart" is what you need. What about things like discipline, consistency, honesty, cooperativeness, etc? For example some smart people think that only they are right, and if you task them to do something they don't fully agree with they lose all motivation, even if the "right" in that context is subjective and/or a matter of taste. In some organizations and jobs, the ability to work together as to allow business continuity and redundancy is more valuable than the heroic contributions of any one person. Some smart people also hate unchallenging work, but not all work can be challenging -- indeed a lot of my work as an entrepreneur and supervisor is boring but it is necessary. You also assume that "smart" has a single definition -- or a good definition at all. What about two different people who are smart in different ways, but only one of those ways is correlated to childhood memories? What if you are simply observing someone's communication style, and merely interpreting a certain communication style as "less smart"? For example, some people are extraverted and respond really quickly, but on the other hand they didn't really think things through, miss details and change their minds often. Other people could be described as more introverted, don't respond quickly and need to think about something for a couple of nights, but when they come back to you they've really given it a thought and understand all the details and don't change their mind quickly. People in the former group and more easily perceived as "smart" and "a leader" while people in the other less so. I've seen the definition of IQ. I've studied a bit of psychology. The more I know about those two the more I think that the concept of "IQ" and "smart" are bullshit. There is often no "more/less smart", there is only "different".