Levels of "Wisdom"

[choof]

Re: Levels of "Wisdom"

I think I'd still call that "measuring wisdom." Not in the normal sense, as in there isn't some kind of "WQ," but it's still a measurement of some sort.

I like the four temperaments thing, though. Definitely melancholic and phlegmatic.

As far as my level of wisdom, I couldn't say. I definitely don't meet the first three, and I really don't feel that I'm intelligent enough for the fourth category.

[choof]

Re: Levels of "Wisdom"

Honestly I have no idea what the PR stands for.

ps I'm totally taking this out of context

[stargroup100]

Re: Levels of "Wisdom"

I think I'd still call that "measuring wisdom." Not in the normal sense, as in there isn't some kind of "WQ," but it's still a measurement of some sort.

And I'm saying that this isn't a measurement, but more of a categorization.

It would be difficult to give some sort of measure for a person's intellect in this way, but you can categorize the level of depth of their thinking by particular characteristics.

[choof]

Re: Levels of "Wisdom"

The idea of a wisdom quotient is kinda funny tho. Do you think it could work?

[stargroup100]

Re: Levels of "Wisdom"

Well to be honest I don't think this qualifies as wisdom. That's why I put it quotes in the thread title and explained.

And intelligent quotients don't mean much either. They can sort of separate people into categories below 120-ish, but anything higher and using that measurement as an evaluation of intelligence is ridiculous.

[Reach]

Re: Levels of "Wisdom"

I like the idea but I don't feel like there's much of a consistent foundation for these tiers outside of maybe Tier 2 and 3. Much of it relies on perception of ability without any objective assessment of ability. As such, as you've pointed out to an extent, this is more for fun than actually categorizing anything properly.

Tier 1 applies too subjectively because many people respond this way not because of capacity to respond, but because they don't give a shit about the topic matter and or are not well versed enough in it to comment either way. Obviously you'd have to differentiate between these for this tier to matter at all.

Tier 4 and 5 are just too nebulous and perception dependent for my tastes IMO. In tier 5 you emphasize traits such as 'down to earth' and 'very mature' and 'optimistic'.

These aren't really objective traits; they're entirely subjective and down to interpretation. Many people will consider someone 'down to earth' and someone else won't. Definitions of maturity vary so wildly I doubt you could find any consistency here.

If anything I feel like this is only pandering to people smart enough that they seem really smart to the average person without being so smart as to alienate them. Many of the most extremely intelligent people are not well received by their peers in terms of idea sharing etc because people have nothing in common with them and therefore have no objective way of assessing their ability.

This is a bit of an aside but most people you would probably consider really smart and extremely wise are only about 1 standard deviation above where you fall intellectually. People are not accurate whatsoever in differentiating and assessing the ability of people significantly smarter than they are.



Anyway, criticism aside I enjoyed the read and your ideas.

And intelligent quotients don't mean much either. They can sort of separate people into categories below 120-ish, but anything higher and using that measurement as an evaluation of intelligence is ridiculous.

I'd agree for the most part if you move this number up to 140ish.

IQ is well correlated with life outcomes and academic performance right up until you get close to the ceiling of the test (which is 145 for most basic tests and 160 for most of the bigger batteries like the WAIS).

And to be fair, even tests that have used extremely dubious normalizations to measure IQ well beyond 160, even they've shown half decent correlations between IQ and outcomes in the stratospheric range. (I think it was Silverman that did a longitudinal study that looked exclusively at 160+s if I recall correctly).


Now, whether you want to call what the test is measuring intelligence or not is another debate entirely, but whatever it is measuring is fairly useful and can be measured fairly accurately.

[Arch0wl]

Re: Levels of "Wisdom"

I'm pretty much with Reach on this. Tiers 4-5 are measuring effectively personality, not ability. Further, real-life philosophical gurus have been far from relating to the average person; Nietzsche would hardly fit into tier five. There are other obvious but unanswered questions, e.g. how are you measuring any of these traits like maturity, since ways of measuring these things differ and even people who measure these things professionally aren't always in agreement.

[Spenner]

Re: Levels of "Wisdom"

Is it possible to be a mixture of tiers?

Absolutely. You can have mental "hotspots" for certain subjects which you immediately have insight on and a backbone of evidence for based on realistic intuition.

I don't think there's a tier of wisdom really. Either people are insightfully sound, insightfully unsound, or on the approach of one of the two. But it is also contextual. Spending time delving into a variety of subjects and just exploring things in the manner of which your mind allows will expand the subjects which your intuition can dissect.

[stargroup100]

Re: Levels of "Wisdom"

Finally I'm getting some fun replies to this.

Tier 1 applies too subjectively because many people respond this way not because of capacity to respond, but because they don't give a shit about the topic matter and or are not well versed enough in it to comment either way. Obviously you'd have to differentiate between these for this tier to matter at all.

That's simple actually. Apply the "Why?" test. "Why don't you have an opinion?"/"Why do you not care about this topic?"
If they have a rationalized answer, they're not tier 1. But you are right in that if they don't give more rational discourse you probably couldn't further analyze their level of understanding.

I edited the tier 1 example to try and get across the fact that it is not because of an approach towards a particular issue that classifies people.

Further, real-life philosophical gurus have been far from relating to the average person; Nietzsche would hardly fit into tier five. There are other obvious but unanswered questions, e.g. how are you measuring any of these traits like maturity, since ways of measuring these things differ and even people who measure these things professionally aren't always in agreement.

Well, I did mention that philosophers and physicists especially are prone to falling into tier 3. When I described the tier as "Philosophical Guru" I'm not referring to the academic field of philosophy, but rather a general kind of real-life wisdom.

And you're right, it would be difficult to measure things like maturity, but I'm not necessarily saying that these traits are requirements to meet a particular tier. Some traits are the result of being able to understand certain things. For example, understanding certain kinds of social interactions very well could imply that someone will seem mature, because if they were being immature that would demonstrate that they are not applying what they understand.



I would say the separation between tier 3 and tier 4+ mainly comes from being able to put things into larger contexts in addition to breaking down details. One example of this would be realizing that two topics that seem unrelated actually have a very direct correlation, and that in turn implies many other things being related as well.

[iCeCuBEz v2]

Re: Levels of "Wisdom"

I try my best to learn as much as possible about the things that interest me.... just for the sake of curiosity and self-enlightenment

I feel like I have an open mind and while there are a lot of topics that don't interest me, I try not to generalize and draw conclusions to ideas outside my scope of knowledge. If someone talks about something I don't have definite knowledge about I just sit back, listen and learn.

Pseudo intellectuals are pretty much the worst people ever. I'd rather hang out with an idiot that at least knows and admits hes one than someone who always has their two cents to put in even if they know nothing of the topic.

arrogant pseudo intellectuals just make me cringe hngggggggg

on a funny note: I was playing Bioshock Infinite the other day and in one part of the game there is a blackboard with 'fancy scientific mathy' stuff to make it look complicated.

what was hilarious though was one of the 'functions' I saw on the board was (sinx)^2 = 2sinxcosx [i dont know how to write exponents in this forum lmao]. I was like lmfao that isn't even correct its supposed to be sin2x, which would be the double angle formula for the sin function. I was like they obviously did it on purpose to see if anyone would notice. It's funny that the equation is wrong. It's even funnier that the formula is hardly complex, and is taught in most precalculus classes in high schools.......

[Reach]

Re: Levels of "Wisdom"

but rather a general kind of real-life wisdom.

And you're right, it would be difficult to measure things like maturity, but I'm not necessarily saying that these traits are requirements to meet a particular tier. Some traits are the result of being able to understand certain things. For example, understanding certain kinds of social interactions very well could imply that someone will seem mature, because if they were being immature that would demonstrate that they are not applying what they understand.

I know this is a response to Arch0wl, but I have a few points to make.

I come from a background in psychometrics (BS.c in Psych, I basically specialized in that though), so I actually really like stuff like the list you've made here.

But using terms like 'a general kind of real-life wisdom' or 'certain kinds of social interactions' just doesn't cut it in that domain because it has no scientific (or more specifically psychometric) value. It's too vague. You've left it open ended to the point that it basically comes down to what someone thinks.

Now I know the point of this list isn't to be used per say as a psychometric assessment tool, so you never really intended to be specific to the point of this being able to be used as a diagnostic tool. But I'm thinking that's the line that Arch is coming from; the list isn't specific or rigorous enough to actually be used in a reliable and accurate way. You'd have to majorly refine pretty much all of your terms and come up with concrete criteria that are reliable.


I feel like what you're leaning towards here is very akin to what most people would describe as emotional intelligence, except you've gone in one direction with it. However, if you're familiar at all with the concept of emotional intelligence you'll know that it has been a train wreck in the psych community because all of the metrics that people have developed have been pretty much garbage in terms of their accuracy.

As it turns out, it's really hard to measure stuff like this accurately. Measuring personality and 'intelligence' has been 100x more successful. Some people hypothesize that this is because when attempting to measure EI and EI related ideas, personality factors and intelligence end up confounding your measurements (some people think it's just a combination of personality and intelligence and not actually a thing at all).

To name a few problems you can run into when you're not extremely specific with your criteria: Not actually measuring what you intend to measure (e.g. as above, measuring personality instead), measuring something else we already have metrics for, and extremely weak reliability /predictive power.

[Wayward Vagabond]

Re: Levels of "Wisdom"

I'm a seventh degree wisdomlord

[SC_coolguy44]

Re: Levels of "Wisdom"

I think I'm blissfully ignorant. I have the view where you don't need education to be smart and I stress that a lot and I get a lot of my research about certain things from my friends points of views about certain topics (but will read into the odd thing every now and then). I also have the strong opinion quality from the 2nd level of wisdom which is Natural Idiosyncrasy.

[Cavernio]

Re: Levels of "Wisdom"

I don't think these tiers are very leveled, I think you think more people fit into tier 1 than actually do, and I think you're amalgamating things that aren't really related.

[devonin]

Re: Levels of "Wisdom"

I'm also amused that as you presumably want to move -up- these levels through reflection and education, you first have to become academically gifted, and then become no longer academically gifted.