Many people who visit Quora ask how to distinguish highly intelligent people from the average. There are a lot of different perspectives on this, but one that I have found particularly reliable is to observe what people do in their spare time.
Those who highly intelligent are usually actively engaged in acquiring information about things that interest them, rather than passively absorbing media entertainment or just “filling time.” The highly intelligent are often voracious readers, focussing on a wide variety of topics including science, literature, history, technology and the arts. The less intelligent are the main consumers of the tabloids, lottery tickets, social media, and issues dealing with “who did what to whom?” kinds of issues. As Socrates is reputed to have observed over 2500 years ago, “Strong minds discuss ideas, average minds discuss events, weak minds discuss people.”
These are, of course, generalizations because many highly intelligent people watch some television, engage in some social media and may even purchase a lottery ticket on an impulse. The description above describes how the highly intelligent seem to spend most of their free time. In this post, WWM shares his perspective. https://qr.ae/py9HsH
