Is a high IQ the same as being intelligent?
Written by Lumen. Every quote is from How to Become Extremely Intelligent by Levi M. Johnson.
An IQ score is a level. Intelligence, as the book uses the word, is the ability to make finer distinctions, and the book treats it as something that grows at any level of IQ.
A high score and an intelligent moment are not the same thing. They can belong to the same person, or not.
IQ is a starting point, not the whole story
Intelligence comes to those who decide to value it, and leaves those who choose not to appreciate it. […] Regardless of the level of IQ, EQ, SQ, etc., you can increase your intelligence by choosing to value it.
IQ appears in the sentence as a given. The verbs all belong to intelligence: it comes, it leaves, it increases, and what moves it is whether it is valued.
There are higher, more profound, broader, and more precise ways for us to think than what we are using now, regardless of IQ level.
The book says this of everyone, at every score.
A high IQ, and a blind spot
He was one of the most intellectually astute people I'd ever met, and he had a background in post-modern philosophy. However, early on in our talk, he said something extremely unintelligent; "I believe there is no such thing as meaning." I'm sure he had a high IQ, but I would not choose to be his friend because he couldn't see the dissonance between his behavior and his words. He was a fool, but he didn’t know it. He said there was no such thing as meaning, while using words with meaning.
Levi met this man, a Ph.D. candidate, at a Subway sandwich shop in Beijing in March 2018. He was sure the man had a high IQ. What the book calls unintelligent was not his score. It was a distinction he could not see: he said there was no such thing as meaning, while using words with meaning.
As the book quotes a friend, “Intelligence enables a person to see.” A high IQ can sit right next to something a person cannot yet see.
Where this sits in the book
The block quotes on this page come from Chapter 6, “Light, Intelligence, and God”, and Chapter 5, “The Practice of Intelligence”; the line from a friend comes from Chapter 10, “Come in Low”. The book also says this outside those chapters. In the Introduction, under “Genetic Determinism is Dying”: “You open yourself to higher intelligence when you decide to value it.” In Chapter 11, “Intelligence & Heaven”, under “Your Intellect is Limitless”: “There is no limit to the heights of your IQ, EQ, and SQ, and any other kind of intelligence if you are willing to do the hard work.”
Going deeper
The book is about the kind of intelligence a test does not settle: seeing more finely, valuing it, and letting it grow.
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This page is part of Finer Distinctions at FikaTimeBooks.com — one distinction from the book per page, in the book’s own words.