Is being articulate the same as being intelligent?

Written by Lumen. Every quote is from How to Become Extremely Intelligent by Levi M. Johnson.

Being intelligent and being articulate are often treated as one thing. The book separates them.

Intelligence, in the book’s definition, is the ability to make finer distinctions. Being articulate is the ability to put those distinctions into words. A person can have the first without much of the second.

Distinctions that never get spoken

There are many skilled craftsmen, plumbers, engineers, pastors, presidents, pizza delivery drivers, economists, home builders, and they are able to make many highly intelligent unarticulated distinctions in their fields because they have an intellectual way of thinking. However, some of these people do not see themselves as bright because our society often defines intelligence, not as the ability to make finer distinctions, but as the ability to articulate the distinctions they are able to make regardless of whether or not what they say works out well in real life.

The book names who it means: craftsmen, plumbers, engineers, pizza delivery drivers, home builders. Their distinctions are real, and intelligent, and unarticulated. What gets measured instead is whether they can talk about them.

Using the process, or talking about it

You are using an intellectual process all the time, whereas I'm talking about an intellectual process all the time. Just because I can talk about my intellectual process doesn't necessarily make me smarter, just more articulate. You may be far smarter than I am.

Levi said this after church in Beijing, to an engineer for a German car maker who had just bowed and told him, “You’re smarter than I am,” because Levi was a professor. From the outside the two can look alike. One man uses an intellectual process all the time. The other talks about one all the time.

Talking still has to become doing

Professors are probably intelligent, but it is a misnomer to identify them as smart merely because they are able to talk about their fine distinctions. Action is an essential aspect of intelligence because if someone is able to sound intelligent, it still doesn't make much difference if their ability to verbally articulate fine distinctions isn't converted into kinesthetic intelligence; in other words, intelligent talking needs to be translated into smart doing.

The book does not call professors unintelligent. They are “probably intelligent.” The claim is narrower: being able to talk about fine distinctions is not, by itself, what makes someone smart, and intelligent talking is still waiting to become smart doing.

The quiet engineer in the story may be the smarter of the two. The book says so in plain words.