First of all, having expertise in a specific field does not equate to intelligence. For example, a sewer worker and an excavator worker are both veterans in their respective professional fields. Which one is smarter? It's hard to say. Therefore, the standard of discrimination should not be specific to a specific field, but should be universal.

Looking at academic qualifications, for example, is not necessarily reliable. Let's put aside Gates and Jobs who dropped out of school. Which one is smarter, an undergraduate or a doctoral student? It’s hard to say. Maybe an undergraduate student made good scientific research results during his undergraduate period, but did not continue to do scientific research after graduation and went directly to work. Then he must be dumber or smarter than a doctoral student? It’s impossible to tell.

For example, looking at family background is also unreliable. Because of my personal experience and friendship circle, many of my friends are from prestigious schools. There are many such places as Oxbridge, HYPS, etc. At many gatherings, the number of students from prestigious schools is much higher than that of non-prestigious schools. In this case, background itself is It doesn't have much discrimination. Although people who come from prestigious schools generally make people think they are smarter (see below for specific reasons), even people who come from the same school will have differences in intelligence that are easily identifiable.

So how do I identify smart people? I have six standards, divided into three categories: basic indicators, realistic indicators, and high-level indicators. The classification of basic, realistic and high-level is not to explain the importance and level, but to facilitate everyone's understanding.

Basic indicators

The first standard of basic indicators is metacognition ability.

Metacognitive ability is "cognition of cognition" and "knowledge about knowledge". Simply put, it is thinking about one's own cognitive process. Regarding metacognition, there is a lot of information on the Internet. You can find popular materials through search engines. If you are interested, you can also read relevant psychological literature.

People with strong metacognitive abilities usually have strong learning abilities because they have a good understanding of their own cognition and learning processes and can produce optimized solutions after rapid self-thinking and introspection. learning strategies.

They have strong control over their cognitive abilities and know how to use their cognitive abilities and existing knowledge frameworks to adjust and evaluate the intake of new knowledge. These people can quickly Integrate new knowledge into existing knowledge. In the words of Steve Jobs, it is to connect the dots that have been drawn, and people with high metacognitive ability can connect them very quickly.

The second criterion for basic indicators is the ability to make logical leaps of thinking.

The general conversation process is usually to talk about A first, then B, then C, then D...

But I found that when chatting with some smarter people, When talking, or when watching other smart people chatting, they usually do not take steps step by step, but jump in big steps, that is, talk about A first, then D, then F, then J... and so on. This ADFJ way of talking is logically the same as the previous ABCD way of talking. It is not a random jump of thinking, but some intermediate logical steps, because both parties in the conversation have thought of it in advance, and each look and action It’s tacitly understood, so you don’t need to explain every step, just say the next step.

For example, a friend who is a doctor, who I think is much smarter than me, came to my house as a guest. I was cooking in the kitchen, and the guests were chatting, and the topic of cancer came up. I just thought of a joke, and then said, "Wearing a helmet while riding a motorcycle can also increase the probability of getting cancer." This joke is actually quite straightforward, and I felt that the other party would definitely understand it, so I didn't add anything or continue. , and the doctor friend directly replied, "Yeah, last time I went for a ward round with the director, the director said that one of the old ladies was more likely to have cancer than other patients because she has the syndrome of having too many birthdays. ." Then everyone will smile.

The jumping rhythm is very comfortable when talking with people of similar intelligence, and the transition can be natural in logic. But if the rhythm difference between the two people is too big, and one party often has to add B and C after saying A before continuing to say D, or even add B1 and B2 in the middle, then it is another situation.

Realistic Indicators

The first criterion of realistic indicators is curiosity.

In fact, the metacognition and thinking leaps mentioned above are all smart substructures, and the most intuitive criterion for whether a person is smart is curiosity.

A smart person is usually full of extensive curiosity about various things in life, and it is this curiosity that gives him more opportunities to acquire new knowledge.

Curiosity and intelligence are a chicken and egg situation. No matter how strong a person's learning ability is, if he is not curious enough, he will not learn all kinds of new things; and if a person lacks a broad understanding of things, it will be difficult for him to see things he does not understand, that is, It is not easy to generate strong curiosity.

In the words of Socrates, "The only thing I know is that I know nothing."

The second criterion for realistic indicators is to explain it in simple language Ability to solve complex problems.

You can often see professionals explaining professional or technical issues in online communities such as Zhihu. They will enthusiastically spend a lot of time talking about the principles behind the issues and list various laymen's answers. It is difficult to understand the formulas, derivation processes and professional terminology. It is very hard to answer them by yourself. Most readers do not understand, and both parties are unhappy - "I have spent so much effort explaining it, but you still don't understand" and "You After talking so much about it, I still don’t understand it.”

And many of the very smart people I have come into contact with have done in-depth research in their own professional fields, and these smart people have done in-depth research in their own fields. The unique characteristic is that when explaining professional issues, they deliberately avoid using big words, slang and professional terms that others may not understand.

Deliberately choosing simple language illustrates at least two problems. First, the speaker knows how to put himself in others' shoes and can analyze and evaluate his own expression from the other person's perspective. This means he has the ability to evaluate knowledge learning. Secondly, many professional terms and big words are actually tools for experts to communicate directly. When the audience you are facing is not an expert, you cannot use these tools to "be lazy", which will impose higher requirements on the speaker. The requirements for knowledge mastery are also higher. Some well-known users on Zhihu in psychology, statistics, fitness and other professional fields usually have this characteristic when answering questions.

There is a very interesting annual science popularization activity called the flame challenge. The organizer will come up with a topic every year and then ask the contestants to make a video and put the topic in a language that an 11-year-old child can listen to. If you understand, please explain clearly. It sounds interesting, but it is still difficult to do. Previous questions include "What is flame", "What is color", etc. You can try to explain the question "What is flame" yourself, and then think about whether your explanation can be understood by an 11-year-old child. There are similar questions on Zhihu. You can go and see if the answers under those questions are clearly explained in simple language.

High-level indicators

The first criterion of high-level indicators is the attitude towards opinions.

This is specifically reflected in several aspects, such as less expression of opinions on areas that one does not understand. This is actually a side manifestation of the above mentioned that the more one knows, the more curious one becomes; and the ability to accommodate Different viewpoints, even completely opposite viewpoints, are actually a side manifestation of the ability to think from others’ perspective mentioned above; there is also the need to not be superstitious or stubborn, and when new information and evidence prove that one’s original viewpoint is wrong time, you can change your point of view.

These points are not difficult to say. In fact, everyone will say it, but it is really difficult to do it yourself, because it also involves social attributes such as emotional intelligence and face.

The second criterion for high-level indicators is attitude towards others.

Whether a person is kind or not is a very important criterion. Of course, to be precise, kindness does not mean intelligence. There are many smart bad people. In fact, if you want to be a successful bad person, you also need to be smart. If you are not smart enough, you will not be able to do too much bad things.

But "good guys" and "bad guys" are very subjective judgments. Under normal circumstances, everyone is a good person in their own hearts. Even terrorists do not regard themselves as bad people. They are freedom fighters and defenders of the truth in their own eyes, and they are very "noble".

So when I talk about kindness, it actually refers to the attitude towards others, that is, whether he can help others improve and improve through sharing, coaching, leading by example, etc., and achieve a win-win situation. Helping others improve is extremely difficult when you think about it. You probably need to complete all the previous five standards to almost the same level.

Of course, we cannot rule out the existence of people who are very smart, but insist that "not only do I want to succeed, but I also want others to fail." However, I am really not interested in such people. It doesn't matter whether such people are smart or not. , I will always try to avoid it.