How do I tell if somebody is intelligent?

It’s very difficult to assess someone’s intelligence during a brief meeting, but the longer you share conversation with that person, the more accurate will be your assessment.

Here are some characteristics I have found in the very high IQ people I’ve met although these are, of course, generalizations that will have some counterexamples. High IQ people are:

• usually open to discussing dispassionately, ideas that differ from their own and are slow to reach certainty on an issue.

• usually seeking information that disconfirms what they believe, rather than attempting to confirm their current beliefs.

• willing to change their opinion in the face of disconfirming evidence.

• usually more interested in talking about ideas and concepts than gossiping about other people.

• willing to challenge beliefs commonly accepted by the group (tribe) to which they belong.

• likely to mistrust dogma and social norms, preferring to set their own standards of behaviour and follow their own reasoned protocols.

• seldom aggressive in attempting to persuade others to their point of view, but passionate about the goals they wish to achieve.

• usually draw insightful inferences from their observations, identifying the essential elements in a clutter of information.

• are interested in a very wide range of topics spanning the natural and social sciences as well the arts and almost anything of an academic nature. Their reading is scholarly, and they have little interest in tabloids.

Those of “very high IQ” differ from those of “high IQ” mainly in the degree to which they exude the qualities outlined above.

By way of contrast, unintelligent people are relatively easy to identify. They tend to be dogmatic, reach certainty very easily, and resist changing their opinions, even in the face of disconfirming evidence. They tend to be very tribal in their willingness to buy into the beliefs of the fellow members of their group, and seldom differ in opinion from the consensus of the tribe to which they belong. This makes them particularly susceptible to conspiracy theories, belief in superstition, and antipathy toward those outside their group. The horizons of interest of unintelligent people are rarely broad enough to include great literature, history, science or mathematics. In short, they tend to respect “street smarts” over “book smarts.”

As noted above, these are generalizations to which there are exceptions, but over the past decades, I have been surprised at how often these stereotypes prove to be accurate.