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As a metaphor I'd suggest that (Wis = IQ * EQ) might be more accurate -- it is difficult for someone with low emotional awareness to make up the difference with

As a metaphor I'd suggest that (Wis = IQ * EQ) might be more accurate -- it is difficult for someone with low emotional awareness to make up the difference with intelligence alone, just as it is difficult for someone of low intelligence to become wise with nothing but high emotional awareness.

adamc 2y ago
I like that. It's a good metaphor. But I think you can be wise without being clever (having a high IQ). In my mind, people mostly ask different kinds of questions when they are looking for wisdom. They want to know how to make their marriage work, or how to have a happy life, not the most efficient way to sort a list. And those questions tend to benefit from both a greater EQ, and extensive life experience. Of course, there is such a thing as a "wise old engineer", but even there, what people are usually looking for aren't the technical details, but distilled experiential wisdom -- the "how to get started with so many unknowns" or "how do I navigate the treacherous politics of" or "how can I build a career when the things I'm gaining expertise in will be irrelevant in 10 years?" questions.
- asoneth 2y ago
  > I think you can be wise without being clever (having a high IQ). I think it depends on how you define "clever". Does knowledge of things like how to sort a list correlate with cleverness? I know wise people who don't have formal education, but I'd still consider them exceedingly clever. I built a wood shed many years ago. I looked up the recommended roof slope and used trigonometry to calculate the angles of my cuts. The next time I made one, someone with more wisdom showed me that you could simply assemble a flat roof with joists sticking out both sides, raise one side until it seems right, and then run a circular saw vertically along the side to create a neat edge.
  - adamc 2y ago
    I think of cleverness as a measure of how quickly or effectively you can solve a new-to-you problem. Which I think is utterly different from wisdom, which is mostly about reflecting and drawing inferences from experiences.

adamc 2y ago

I like that. It's a good metaphor. But I think you can be wise without being clever (having a high IQ). In my mind, people mostly ask different kinds of questions when they are looking for wisdom. They want to know how to make their marriage work, or how to have a happy life, not the most efficient way to sort a list. And those questions tend to benefit from both a greater EQ, and extensive life experience. Of course, there is such a thing as a "wise old engineer", but even there, what people are usually looking for aren't the technical details, but distilled experiential wisdom -- the "how to get started with so many unknowns" or "how do I navigate the treacherous politics of" or "how can I build a career when the things I'm gaining expertise in will be irrelevant in 10 years?" questions.

asoneth 2y ago
> I think you can be wise without being clever (having a high IQ). I think it depends on how you define "clever". Does knowledge of things like how to sort a list correlate with cleverness? I know wise people who don't have formal education, but I'd still consider them exceedingly clever. I built a wood shed many years ago. I looked up the recommended roof slope and used trigonometry to calculate the angles of my cuts. The next time I made one, someone with more wisdom showed me that you could simply assemble a flat roof with joists sticking out both sides, raise one side until it seems right, and then run a circular saw vertically along the side to create a neat edge.
- adamc 2y ago
  I think of cleverness as a measure of how quickly or effectively you can solve a new-to-you problem. Which I think is utterly different from wisdom, which is mostly about reflecting and drawing inferences from experiences.