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The results from this study are interesting but I am even more interested in the definitions of wisdom. I've been ruminating lately on the difference between kn

The results from this study are interesting but I am even more interested in the definitions of wisdom. I've been ruminating lately on the difference between knowledge (narrowly defined as a set of facts) vs experience. The most tortured analogy would be someone who has spent a lifetime reading books about swimming vs. a person who has spent all of their life swimming in pools/rivers/lakes. I realize this a non-standard and narrow definition of knowledge but I hope it is possible to bear with me since I can't think of a suitable synonym to separate phenomenological experience from book learning. It does seem that our conceptions of intelligence are related to facts/knowledge more so than experiences. Intelligence appears to be a facility to collect, organize, analyze and draw conclusions from a set of facts. In that purely analytic view of intelligence, knowledge is highly prized. However it seems to me wisdom is more closely associated with lived experience. For certain, there does seem to be a rough distinction between someone we consider "knowledgeable", someone we consider "intelligent", and someone we consider "wise". This supposes there is some aspect of phenomenological experience that is inherently different than the collection of facts and further some aspect of cognition separate from the organization and analyzation of facts. I am very interested in the sorts of things that separate my previous distinctions: knowledgeable, intelligent, wise. Could we realize a Turing-like test for wisdom?

tlb 7y ago
A definition that many HN readers are familiar with is at http://paulgraham.com/wisdom.html http://paulgraham.com/wisdom.html
ISO-morphism 7y ago
One of the definitions of wisdom that I've come to appreciate, similar to the article, is that "wisdom is taking your own advice." Upon reflection I've noticed that most of the time any advice that I give to others is tinged somewhat selfishly with advice to myself for a similar situation.
galaxyLogic 7y ago
Knowledge is a set of facts. Wisdom is knowledge about which facts are useful in which circumstances for deriving new facts which are useful in said circumstance. In other words wisdom is the ability to use facts to a good purpose.
- yesenadam 7y ago
  >Knowledge is a set of facts. This view, very common in the 20th C and beyond, is exposed and (I think) demolished in Oakeshott's essay Rationalism in Politics[0]. The rationalism he's talking about (which he says almost all political parties in the West nowadays espouse) is precisely believing that knowledge is a set of facts. That all knowledge can be written down in bullet points, and taught. Yet most knowledge cannot be. If I know how to ride a bike, to play a musical instrument, to do any complex activity well, most of what I know cannot be put and wasn't learned in such a form. It's "know-how", practical knowledge, distinct from the kind that can be put into words, "know-that". Let Oakeshott speak for himself a little: "The second sort of knowledge I will call practical, because it exists only in use, is not reflective and (unlike technique) cannot be formulated in rules. This does not mean, however, that it is an esoteric sort of knowledge. It means only that the method by which it may be shared and becomes common knowledge is not the method of formulated doctrine. And if we consider it from this point of view, it would not, I think, be misleading to speak of it as traditional knowledge. In every activity this sort of knowledge is also involved; the mastery of any skill, the pursuit of any concrete activity is impossible without it. These two sorts of knowledge, then, distinguishable but inseparable, are the twin components of the knowledge involved in every concrete human activity. In a practical art, such as cookery, nobody supposes that the knowledge that belongs to the good cook is confined to what is or may be written down in the cookery book; technique and what I have called practical knowledge combine to make skill in cookery wherever it exists. And the same is true of the fine arts, of painting, of music, of poetry; a high degree of technical knowledge, even where it is both subtle and ready, is one thing; the ability to create a work of art, the ability to compose something with real musical qualities, the ability to write a great sonnet, is another, and requires, in addition to technique, this other sort of knowledge. Again, these two sorts of knowledge are involved in any genuinely scientific activity. The natural scientist will certainly make use of the rules of observation and verification that belong to his technique, but these rules remain only one of the components of his knowledge; advance in scientific discovery was never achieved merely by following the rules..." [0] 1962. It's very readable, everyone should read it. It was embarrassing how much I learned from it. I even learned a lot about teaching music from it.
  - 7y ago
username90 7y ago
I view wisdom as "ability to choose goals" while intelligence is "ability to achieve goals". Examples: It is unwise to prioritize short term if doing so hurts so in the long term. It is wise to work less if you don't use the extra money for anything important.

tlb 7y ago

A definition that many HN readers are familiar with is at http://paulgraham.com/wisdom.html http://paulgraham.com/wisdom.html

ISO-morphism 7y ago

One of the definitions of wisdom that I've come to appreciate, similar to the article, is that "wisdom is taking your own advice." Upon reflection I've noticed that most of the time any advice that I give to others is tinged somewhat selfishly with advice to myself for a similar situation.

galaxyLogic 7y ago

Knowledge is a set of facts. Wisdom is knowledge about which facts are useful in which circumstances for deriving new facts which are useful in said circumstance. In other words wisdom is the ability to use facts to a good purpose.

yesenadam 7y ago
>Knowledge is a set of facts. This view, very common in the 20th C and beyond, is exposed and (I think) demolished in Oakeshott's essay Rationalism in Politics[0]. The rationalism he's talking about (which he says almost all political parties in the West nowadays espouse) is precisely believing that knowledge is a set of facts. That all knowledge can be written down in bullet points, and taught. Yet most knowledge cannot be. If I know how to ride a bike, to play a musical instrument, to do any complex activity well, most of what I know cannot be put and wasn't learned in such a form. It's "know-how", practical knowledge, distinct from the kind that can be put into words, "know-that". Let Oakeshott speak for himself a little: "The second sort of knowledge I will call practical, because it exists only in use, is not reflective and (unlike technique) cannot be formulated in rules. This does not mean, however, that it is an esoteric sort of knowledge. It means only that the method by which it may be shared and becomes common knowledge is not the method of formulated doctrine. And if we consider it from this point of view, it would not, I think, be misleading to speak of it as traditional knowledge. In every activity this sort of knowledge is also involved; the mastery of any skill, the pursuit of any concrete activity is impossible without it. These two sorts of knowledge, then, distinguishable but inseparable, are the twin components of the knowledge involved in every concrete human activity. In a practical art, such as cookery, nobody supposes that the knowledge that belongs to the good cook is confined to what is or may be written down in the cookery book; technique and what I have called practical knowledge combine to make skill in cookery wherever it exists. And the same is true of the fine arts, of painting, of music, of poetry; a high degree of technical knowledge, even where it is both subtle and ready, is one thing; the ability to create a work of art, the ability to compose something with real musical qualities, the ability to write a great sonnet, is another, and requires, in addition to technique, this other sort of knowledge. Again, these two sorts of knowledge are involved in any genuinely scientific activity. The natural scientist will certainly make use of the rules of observation and verification that belong to his technique, but these rules remain only one of the components of his knowledge; advance in scientific discovery was never achieved merely by following the rules..." [0] 1962. It's very readable, everyone should read it. It was embarrassing how much I learned from it. I even learned a lot about teaching music from it.
- 7y ago

username90 7y ago

I view wisdom as "ability to choose goals" while intelligence is "ability to achieve goals". Examples: It is unwise to prioritize short term if doing so hurts so in the long term. It is wise to work less if you don't use the extra money for anything important.