How do you decide that someone is intelligent?

I consider it when I witness widespread knowledge, a quick yet accurate connection of facts across a range of information, facility with numbers and mathematics, and an ease with vocabulary and word formation and spelling.

Intelligence to me is the ability to manipulate data, evidence, and theory into an understanding of what is happening in a situation.

I find it highly attractive, and as good as the person. It’s not scary but it can be intimidating.

When they can ask me a question or respond to me with a minimum of, ah, uh, like, ah… ah… you know.

There’s no such thing as intelligent or very intelligent when I label people.
And I can’t say to someone you are not intelligent because you lack street smartness or because he’s not good at several things.
It’s good to be intelligent but I can’t label someone else by my standards because I can’t know what they’ve been through or what they know. A lot of factors influence this.

It takes some getting to know a person before I make an actual judgment. The only reason it’s easier to judge others sometimes is because they may do something in public or in the media that makes it easy to say “This person displays some intelligence” or “This person doesn’t seem very smart”.

Some people can just talk a good job others do a good job, I think the one’s who do a good job are the intelligent ones :-/

It really has nothing to do with IQ (to me anyway.)
My Niece, who has Down Syndrome is one of the wisest people I know. She has amazing insight and is able to use simple terms to communicate it. Her heart knows more than many people I know who possess a PHD.

A naturally enthusiastic and curious personality style.
Open mindedness, the ability to comprehend abstract thinking, lack of rigidity based on programming and unquestioned belief systems.
A “big picture” connection, a great sense of humor, and most importantly, co-corresponding EQ.
Intelligence without humor and emotional maturity is like toast without butter, dry and hard to swallow. lol

When I find someone interesting I usually think of them as intelligent. It is definitely an attractive quality.

I don’t know that I do, not a conscious decision anyway. It’s more of an instinctual feeling, an awareness that the person i’m conversing with isn’t as thick as two short planks.

I think most people are intelligent. I think that most people are intelligent in different ways. I feel like people who typically get filed under “intelligent” are just curious people who enjoy learning. Just because someone isn’t crazy about reading books or following up on the latest scientific studies doesn’t mean that they aren’t intelligent, but I feel like that is usually how people determine whether or not someone is smart.
Anyhow, I think it is extremely rare to meet someone that I think is not intelligent. And, yes, I find intelligence attractive.

I don’t generally tend to think of people as being “intelligent” or “stupid”. I think the same person could be brought up in two different environments, and turn out very differently. They might have different interests, different political or religious views, and they could react differently to the same situations – could that person be said to be “intelligent” in one scenario, but not in the other?

The exception is while driving… somehow I manage to have no trouble defining people as “morons” or “idiots” on the highway…

It’s often an impression I form just by looking at them. That may be confirmed or discomfirmed later, of course, but that first impression is most often in the ball park. What makes up that visual profile is hard to pin down, but it has to do with alertness, responsiveness, engagement with the environment, openness, actions appropriate to the circumstances.

It’s a chicken and egg thing—I don’t know whether intelligence tends make one alert and responsive, or whether being alert and responsive tends to make one intelligent. In any case they all seem to go together.

One has to be careful that one isn’t an intelligence snob.

Intelligence is fluid in the sense that it can be described as much by what it isn’t perceived to be as what it is often assumed to be. Well stated by @Judi, @Hibernate, @Coloma and @ANef_is_Enuf each in their own way is that intelligence is folded into a sense of wisdom and life sensitivities. One thing I love about the collective is this merging of wisdom as much as knowledge in an academic sense. I love the way various people put words together and all of a sudden a certain sentence crystallizes something that floated on an abstract level until that moment. The “aha” moments are so growth building.

It is said that only 3% of North Americans can retire without the aid of government support. What does this mean? How have all of us intelligent people faired? It reminds me of the old saying: “If you’re so smart, why aren’t you rich?” Entrepreneurs, for example often excel once they abandon standard educational routes.

@smilingheart1

Well us entrepreneur types often do what we do, because the accepted “mainstream” ways are soul killing. A few years ago I was semi-retired, now, I’ll probably be in the 3% that needs government aide. haha
Unless, those wheels are always turning I come up with the next creative idea to float my financial boat into the next decade, like buying into a heroin cartel or opening a brothel. lol

Hey, intelligence certainly cannot be measured by our narrow ideas of what constitutes “success”, plenty of thoroughbreds leading quiet lives in obscure pastures.

I consider my greatest “successes” to be in my personal growth, not my bank account. ;-)

You would make a marvelous Madame @Coloma!!

I think intelligent people have the ability to learn, process, retain and relay.
I don’t consider myself intelligent. Most of the things I know, I can’t relay to someone else. It all makes sense in my head but not necessarily when it comes out of my mouth.
Intelligence sprinkled with charm and dusted with humbleness is extremely sexy to me.

If they allow themselves to learn then they are intelligent.

@EnchantingEla Want to be my co-madam? haha
@bluejay Yes! Learning from our mistakes is certainly a mark of intelligence. :-)

HaHa That’d be a hoot! Sign me up @Coloma!!

@Coloma yet we are bound to repeat the mistakes of our past. I see no logic in calling us intelligent when we all repeat the same mistakes. I’m not talking only about war/famine/starvation/disease/nuclear tests etc I’m talking about small mistakes too. You have to agree that at least part of this happen to all of us on a global scale not only to some.

If they can shop in the grocery store and manage to pull their cart to the side so other people can get in or out. I know some may say it has more to do with manners but I swear some people just can’t seem to figure out that by moving their cart to the side they can continue to shop uninterrupted. I mean its not rocket science.
My point is if you can’t figure out how to maneuver through your life in the little details without getting in peoples way all the time than you’re an idiot.

@Hibernate

Sure. It’s called unconsciousness. It doesn’t happen anymore once one becomes self aware. Know thyself…that’s what it IS all about! lol

I haven’t repeated any of my mistakes this last decade. I’m wise, oh yes, I am! ;-)

I can’t explain how…must have something to do with how much they know and how difficult+obscure+broad that knowledge is but it’s not just that…it’s that plus someone being able to catch on in any situation, someone that has a high ‘emotional intelligence’ as well..someone that can consider disparate things but in a way that grasps their connectedness.

Personally, I think this is a very difficult question to answer. Part of it is that it is such a loaded question, and it always makes me wonder if someone would consider me to be intelligent, and if they did, would it make any difference? I’m myself whether or not someone else places some kind of value judgment on me. So would they think I’m not intelligent as a way of justifying not liking me?

I guess one thing the answers to this question have shown me is that the idea that someone is intelligent is a very personal thing. It isn’t very objective at all. After all, it’s not as if we walk around with IQ scores pinned on our foreheads. I guess some people do announce their IQ score at every conceivable moment, but my feeling has always been that if someone feels a need to prove they are intelligent, then they must be missing something. Scores aren’t that important.

What is important is how someone relates to the world. What is important is how complex their understanding of things is. But if they don’t understand things the way I do, then it’s harder to see their intelligence. I have to wonder where they went wrong. How could you be really good at analyzing the world and end up in the wrong place? I guess either they are getting bad data or they are bad a processing the data. It can be very difficult to figure out which is happening.

For me, intelligence is also about creativity and an ability to have fun. Do you know how to play? Can you play with words? Stories? Physicality? Music? I think that word play is what a lot of people would call humor, and I guess it’s hard to be funny without also being intelligent. You have to think quickly to be funny.

And you also need to know a lot. You need facts at your beck and call. This is important because you can’t support your ideas without facts. Although, it probably takes a pretty intelligent person to make up stuff from nothing and have people believe them. Although those people usually fall under the category of people called “politicians.” But some of them are also business people, and probably we’ll find wonderful fabulists in all walks of life. Or maybe they aren’t so wonderful.

If I like someone, I will, no doubt, consider them intelligent. If I don’t like them, I’ll probably fault their intelligence. Maybe intelligence is really just a proxy for whether a person is a friend or not?

Not my decision to make.

I do believe if someone says they are intelligent, they are bragging and are obviously insecure

I decide based on what they say, and pretty much the same critera as @zenvelo : “I consider it when I witness widespread knowledge, a quick yet accurate connection of facts across a range of information, facility with numbers and mathematics, and an ease with vocabulary and word formation and spelling.” To that I’d add the ability to make complex deductions based on evidence and experience, a good memory, the ability to understand and form logical arguments.

By the same criteria I can say I’m not intelligent because I can’t do those things (except the spelling).

I don’t agree with people describing other skills (such as artistic talent, empathy, good manners) as intelligence. They’re good skills to have but they’re in no way connected with having a sharp and clever mind.

@downtide I’m not arguing with you, because this question is not about that. However, I am curious as to why you don’t think artistic talent or empathy do not require a sharp and clever mind.

Shit. Maybe I should just ask a question about how do you gain artistic talent. But that’s probably been asked.

I guess I’m inclined to see intelligence as a situational phenomenon more than as a quality that inheres to a given person. In different situations, it isn’t always the same people who will be brilliant. I’m dumb as a brick in some situations, but know exactly what’s needed in others.

That, I think, is why awareness and responsiveness play such prominent roles in my conception of intelligence. You have to be in tune with your surroundings in order to know how to best respond. Being lost in some mathematical reverie while driving among pedestrians, for example, is just plain stupid. In that situation, it doesn’t matter in the least what you’re capable of when you’re not behind the wheel.

I always say that everything is intelligent enough to be itself.

Turkeys may not be AS intelligent as Dolphins, but, they are intelligent enough to be Turkeys. haha

There are also many different types of intelligence, not just academic.

We need all kinds of intelligence and the brianiac mathematician is no more or less intelligent than the artist, writer or painter. Just different manifestations.

@jonsblond Sometimes that may be true, but, it is also true that having a healthy self confidence and knowing and championing ones strengths without being boastful or arrogant is a sign of good self esteem.

We should never be afraid to shine! :-)

@Coloma If you didn’t know me, and I came along and told you I had a deep understanding of human relationships, would you think I was saying something you would agree with if you knew me?