What Does Being Smart Mean

The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines smart as:

having or showing a high degree of mental ability

"Mental ability" is a very abstract term, and so we have metrics to quantify it like the intelligence quotient, or IQ. While IQ tests might be adequate tests to determine one's ability to recognize patterns, they miss many other traits like creativity. It is nearly impossible to perform some dimensionality reduction to something as abstract as intelligence into a single metric.

I believe being "smart" is a combination of having raw intellectual ability, emotional intelligence, and self-awareness. Narrow intelligence exists when you may excel cognitively, but perhaps lack the social and emotional awareness. However, I believe true "smartness" means having the ability to understand problems, people, yourself, and the ramifications of your actions.

The obvious objection to my claim is: what about people like Albert Einstein with an IQ of 160 who contributed to the theory of relativity, or the AI scientists at Anthropic who made my old software engineering role 10x easier? Are they not smart? I am redefining "smart" to include being more emotionally well-rounded.

Smartness should be defined by how well someone is able to navigate the real world, and oftentimes, this depends on more than just pure cognitive horsepower. Most of our day is spent working towards some goal alongside other people in the workplace: managers, interns, seniors, different departments, etc. How well we perform in our roles is dependent on how well we can manage and leverage these relationships.

This obviously extends beyond your career to friends, family, and probably the most rewarding but hardest thing to navigate: romantic relationships.

Raw intelligence gives you the capacity to solve problems, which is absolutely necessary in today's world where it sometimes feels as if we are Sisyphus pushing the boulder up the hill every day. However, emotional intelligence and self-awareness help you identify the right problem to pour your efforts into.

While studying engineering at university, I found that it was very common for engineers to just associate intelligence solely with one's ability to build something technically challenging or impressive. I was definitely a victim to this mindset as well. It is a very shallow way of thinking, and as I've grown older, I realize there is so much more to just simply "building".

The clearest counterexample to this mindset is building a product or service to sell to others. It is one thing to build the tool, but how do you actually get it into the hands of others to turn a profit? This is where you need to understand the perspective of the user, empathize, strategize your distribution plan, and understand where your own strengths can play into this.

"Being smart" is a layered concept. Oftentimes, people label and idolize others as being smart for their accomplishments, which is usually a reflection of someone's cognitive abilities. But true smartness includes navigating everyday human life, and pure cognitive ability alone is insufficient.