The Difference Between "Intelligent" and "Well Informed"

It seems many people I ask struggle to tell the difference between being intelligent and being well -informed. Many people I know in fact seem to think being well-informed is being intelligent.

Nothing could be further from the truth!

Although the desire to learn and retain information can be a characteristic of intelligence, it is by no means a conclusion.

Being well-informed is a by-product of curiosity coupled with a good memory. That's all.

A book full of important information is not intelligent. It is well-informed.

Being well-informed is having the memory to retain information and recall it at will. Well-informed is a computer RAM chip's only claim to fame. It stores and recalls information. It is not a clever part of the machinery. The complex and smart part of the computer is its Processor. In other words, the processor makes sense of the boundless information stored in the RAM

An intelligent person's brain has the capacity to dissect and analyse all the information stored and make sense of it.  Being intelligent is having the gift of knowing what to do with the information and reaching logical conclusions with it.

It appears that the world's educational services continues to fail gifted children, or at least fails to bring out the best in them.

Education Authorities the world over try to turn children into clones of the educators who run and devise the system. Do we need a world full of professors? Especially given the fact that lots of professors are not very intelligent in the first place.

Many professors, scholars and so-called intellectuals are mere information-storage devices.  Or the human equivalent of RAM chips. Many have the intelligence of a gnat (no disrespect to the mosquito-like biting little fly) but think otherwise.

This is one of the reasons so many of these studied and well-informed people, albeit bereft of intelligence and logic, come out with such tripe as "God Hates Gays" and "Support Capital Punishment and Freedom To Carry Arms while at the same time they're against women's rights to choose abortion.

So, the easiest way to classify humans is by referring to people as "RAM"  or "CPU" types.

RAM = Random Access Memory (simple recording device)
CPU =  Central Processing Unit (efficiently handles stored information)

Lets take some famous people, past and present, and see if we can tag them correctly:

Barack Obama   = CPU
George W Bush     = RAM
Sarah Palin   = RAM
Nelson Mandela   =CPU
Pope Francis   = RAM
Albert Einstein   = CPU+RAM+
Richard Dawkins   =CPU+RAM+
Charles Darwin   =CPU+RAM+

Please let me know if you think of any other cases, especially RAM types.

:)

Intelligence v Knowledge

Oftentimes intelligence is confused with knowledge and vice-versa, but the two do not necessarily go hand-in-hand as far as I'm concerned.

I have met knowledgeable/well-informed people who have surprised me with their lack of logic and common sense. I can't say the same for intelligent people. I may one day be disappointed but so far so good.

The intelligent are always smart, quick thinking and interesting. The knowledgeable are at best interesting but more often than not, plain boring. Like an encyclopedia,the knowledgeable take comfort in their ability to memorise and recall vast amounts of information. We all know an encyclopedia is purely a book of recorded knowledge and not an intelligent item as such. Much the same as a computer, loaded with information but hardly a clever entity.

The intelligent find new ways to resolve problems, the knowledgeable refer to past experiences for solutions.
The intelligent adapt and evolve while the knowledgeable hold on to the past and dwell in their tedium.
The intelligent write the books that the knowledgeable read.
The intelligent question everything, the knowledgeable accept others experiences as truth.
The intelligent want to leave their legacy to others while the knowledgeable leave only their libraries.

And most importantly, the intelligent embrace science while the knowledgeable embrace history.
I know some are gifted with both knowledge and intelligence and those are the people we should all try to emulate.

*
Oh, I'm tired and in need of a good sleep...

Last night my f€&#ing neighbour knocked on my door at 2:3O am! Just as well I was still up playing the drums.

:)