I'd broadly say the same thing to friends, but I don't think it really survives scrutiny. It's a useful tool for sure, in that it might inspire "smart" people t

I'd broadly say the same thing to friends, but I don't think it really survives scrutiny. It's a useful tool for sure, in that it might inspire "smart" people to try use their "smartness" to solve their personal issues in a way they wouldn't have considered, but I think I disagree that you can't be smart if you can't solve your own problems. Intelligence is obviously very broad, but if Terence Tao didn't know how to boil an egg, I'd still call him intelligent. Being able to solve internal personality/philosophical issues relies a lot on experience, whether through life experiences or reading other people's life experiences/analyses. You can be smart as all hell, but if you haven't read much Western philosophy, I wouldn't fault you for not coming up with useful conclusions from first principles. I suppose a counter is that, if you're smart enough, you'll recognise that a lot of people have had your problem before, and probably a few of them have come up with a solution, and maybe a couple of those few have written about it. Like the egg case, if Terence Tao was smart he'd Google "how to boil an egg" when presented with the problem.