Intelligence

Everything you want in life is downstream of intelligence. Every problem you have can be solved with the right knowledge.

Intelligence is poorly understood. We don’t quite know what it is. But it is closely related to learning, and we know exactly what learning is.

The standard model of learning is that it comes from authority, that knowledge must be given. Lesson plans are created, knowledge is formalized, and we view learning as a form of behavior optimization—how we can best receive existing, verified knowledge.

But learning is not a behavior. You can give two people of roughly equal intelligence the same book, the same experiences, the same teachers, and they will learn different things. They will have a different depth of understanding.

So it isn’t about the actions. Learning is an attitude.

That’s why most people learn very little in school, and even less outside of it. A motivated person can learn more in one month than most people do in years, and it all has to do with their attitude. It’s all downstream of a genuine desire to learn.

So what is the attitude that leads one to learn so quickly? I’m tempted to say it’s an attitude of curiosity, but that wouldn’t quite hit the mark. Every child is naturally curious. They are always asking questions, always seeking knowledge, but at some point they lose it. Why?

Because learning is about agency. People naturally seek knowledge when they encounter a problem. They seek explanations for things. Rules of thumb do not satisfy. When they taught you in school that knowledge must be given, they took your agency from you. Now you are dependent on the authorities. Now you have to trust ‘The Science’.

When you lack agency, you stop tinkering. You stop breaking things and putting them back together. You stop thinking wrong thoughts and start thinking what you have been told to think. You stop solving your own problems.

The solution is to realize any problem that can be solved can be solved by you. Anything that can be understood can be understood by you. You are capable of thinking any thought.

The trick is in learning from those that came before without sacrificing your agency. Learning from others is not a passive activity. Every idea must be filtered through your own intelligence.

There is no authority. There is no source. There is nothing but a problem and the desire to solve it for good.