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Do you ever wish you were smarter?

I do.

It is not that I think that I am a complete idiot, but I know that I have struggled to apply what I know. And as I see it, if we aren't able to apply to our lives what we want to apply, we are lacking something. It might not be intellectual intelligence of course, it could be something else, but something it is.

Whatever it is,

I don't have enough of it.

Sometimes as a thought experiment, I try to imagine what it would be like to be very intelligent. But of course the irony is, it is unimaginable to imagine how to think like someone else. We can "feel" that we are doing it justice, but I imagine that all I can do is try to replicate the results I assume a smart person will get, and the feelings from the result. But, the feeling of actually thinking, escapes me.

Thinking hurts.

I mean that literally, not figuratively. You know when you have a headache but you still have thought work to do, and it just hurts to continue. It feels a bit like that to think these days, where I have to force my brain to spin, and often, it is like pushing a car up a hill, and the handbrake is partially engaged. I wonder though if the "pain" was always there, and now my brain just doesn't block it. Though, I think that if that was the case, evolution did a pretty lousy job of our development.

Though, it didn't really do a great job either, did it?

Not terrible, but we come laden with so many issues and ways to break physically, mentally and emotionally. We are fragile in many ways, and our brains make us more so, as while the imagination is powerful for innovation, it is also responsible for holding us back a lot also, as we perceive fears that might not be there. And, we confuse dangers, applying the same emotional response to walking on the edge of a cliff, to that of being embarrassed in front of others. And yeah, I don't really care if you think you are above these "base" emotions, because what I have found is that the people who believe themselves above them, are the ones that tend to be the most controlled by them.

Maybe if they reflected on their state more, they might start dealing with themselves.

I guess I am okay being an idiot though, because it isout of my control. What can I do about it? I know people who spend time collecting knowledge to make themselves smarter, but like me, they never seem to be smart enough to apply what they have learned, at least not for long, if at all. They know things, but it becomes trivia, therefore not applicable to life, other than to prove that books have been read, and information retained. They are good at pub quizzes though, where random bits of useless, disconnected, and unapplicable information has value.

Of course, it is not that all that information is useless, because we do get enjoyment out of knowing things too, but at some point, shouldn't the majority of what we spend our time learning be able to get applied to make our lives better, or life better for others perhaps? If collecting information for no reason other than to have it, it is like collecting sports cars, or beanie babies so that they can sit on the shelf, unused. There is no real difference, other than collecting information is generally cheaper.

But information these days is just at our fingertips wherever we go. What isn't at our fingertips is the ability to apply what we know at the right time when it would be valuable to be able to. Sometimes we might even realize this in hindsight, where we look back at a failure and acknowledge "I could have done" - but the moment has passed. If what we know isn't in our backbone when we need it, do we really know it?

It is also why I am pretty wary about taking any advice from people online, because "what they know" might just be some theoretical ramblings of a crazy person with no experience in the matter at all. It is easy to tell people what to do or what needs to be done at the academic level, even if it is speaking to a global situation. However, it is much harder to apply even the smallest changes in ourselves or our environment at the local level. Try it.

For the next month, put your shoes on using the opposite foot than you normally use.

This is simple and "should" take no extra energy, since you have to put both shoes on anyway.
Let's see how many times you remember in the next month.

If there was a tablet that could make you 50% smarter, would you take it?
What side-effects could you handle and still think it was worth it?

If only I was smart enough to invent that tablet.
Take it, get even smarter, and create one without side-effects.

Taraz
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