Summary

• Intelligence as Developed Potential: The view that intelligence is not innate but cultivated throughout life through the use of available resources to solve problems.
• The Value of Output: The idea that intelligence is only recognized when it results in solutions that are valued and often compensated by society.
• The Role of Social Interaction: How externalizing knowledge through interaction transforms personal study into perceived intelligence and inspiration for others.
• The Four Stages of Development:
  • The Attentive Person: The foundational ability to filter and receive signals from the environment.
  • The Interested Person: The shift from passive observation to active pursuit and preference.
  • The Motivated Person: The conversion of interest into goals and energy-driven action.
  • The Capable Person: The accumulation of resources and skills, acknowledging that physical or structural limitations (like the “dwarves in the NBA” allegory) can constrain potential.
• The Virtuous Circle: How proven intelligence attracts new resources, leading to higher-level results and further recognition.
• Effort vs. Natural Gift: A discussion on the balance between hard work and inherent physical or mental traits in achieving capability.
• The Limits of Information Transfer: The argument that while knowledge can be transferred instantly (as in The Matrix), true intelligence requires the capability to apply it, which cannot be downloaded.

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This week, I followed a discussion about intelligence on X.com and, since I read a considerable amount of Howard Gardner and Daniel Goleman in the first half of this year, I felt compelled to write a few lines about how I perceive and understand the topic of intelligence these days.

It is more than ever a personal phenomenon, even though it can be extrapolated or projected onto groups or companies through their products. I will discuss this further ahead, but for now, the focus is on the origin of knowledge: the individual.

I understand that the person is a potential unit of intelligence. It is only potential because:

1. intelligence is not innate to the individual, but something he may come to demonstrate if he develops other elements that we will see later;
2. It is a process that develops throughout life, according to the set of possibilities available in the place and time.

Therefore, in my view, we are not born intelligent. We develop intelligence throughout life as we allow ourselves to reach the existing possibilities where we live, with the resources we have at the moment we decide to use them.

Use them for what?

At the very least, for solving problems on multiple levels: from quenching one’s own thirst to organizing human expeditions to other planets.

Ideally, solving the problem should be valued and compensated with money in return. That is the “finish line” for what I understand intelligence to be. In other words, it’s also about the relationship between effort and reward.

A pause for reflection on this last point. A person who devotes themselves with great dedication to their own spirituality—someone who, for example, reads the sacred books of their religion for hours on end every day, consistently—is that person intelligent?

If she is secluded in her environment, does not listen to or converse with anyone, meaning she has only in her mind what she has read and reflected upon in the scriptures, she will not only appear, but will seem like an ordinary person, with no distinction whatsoever.

If it’s someone with any kind of social interaction, whether in person or over the internet, engaging with other people from a distance, perhaps what they learned from books may be externalized and turn into inspiration for others. In that case, there is a real opportunity for their intelligence to be noticed. If the other person perceives value in the content being shared, they might conclude that the sender is intelligent or, at the very least, more intelligent than themselves when it comes to turning text from ancient scriptures into inspiring messages for today’s life.

I realize, then, that there is a scale of intelligence that goes from zero or nothing to much or everything.

And in that sense, there is a set of personal attitudes combined with situations that help society infer a person’s level of intelligence (assuming that such inference is desired or that it “makes sense”; everything suggests it does in both cases, judging by what we see in social media discussions. As I mentioned before, that is what motivated the writing of this essay).

At first, attitudes define the individual seeking to be intelligent more than the sets of situations do. Imagine the same studious person of religion who decides, one fine day, to step outside their home and prophesy what they have learned. That first attitude has already changed their entire being. Now they are pointed down a path where intelligence can manifest itself and be perceived even in the most mundane situations.

But notice that even at this very early stage of development, the person has already sought out books, read them, reflected, and now moves forward to new actions based on renewed attitudes. She wants to change her self, at least in this facet of her life.

Let us then imagine earlier phases, even before obtaining the book for study.

The Attentive Person

It’s complicated to start with the element of attention, especially these days, since it has become conventional to say we live in an “attention economy,” but that is the starting point for any path toward intelligence.

The individual must be attentive to the thousands of signals that reach them through the most diverse channels, but mainly through their family—if they still have one—their community, or an external community via the Internet, which in this case is not limited to social media, as it can also be the Web as a whole, the larger network where people can communicate in the digital realm.

The signals that arrive may, therefore, with no guarantee that they will, pass through the gates of attention.

Open or closed doors to certain signals are the so-called “filter” we apply to all the matters that pass before us on a daily basis.

I write this at the start of my fifties, so I can venture to say that at the beginning of adult life, most doors are open to whatever comes. Over time, obviously, they begin to close—and lock!

What passes through the open doors may become the object of introspection and questioning on the part of the receiver, and may accumulate in the form of interest.

The Interested Person

The posture of a generally interested person is something that manifests when they are no longer just passively observing the things of the world.

Interest translates into a certain degree of pursuit, a minimal active effort toward what interests you.

Is it the expression of a preference? Not yet. Preference requires a certain degree of comparative analysis in the sense of preferring something over another thing.

The initial stage for the interested person is to be attentive and positively receptive to a large volume of signals, more so than a merely attentive person.

From a larger collection of references, the interested person can express their preference for one thing or another, but the initial filter remains pure and simple interest.

Some people show little to no interest in almost anything, despite living amid constant battles for attention with increasingly intense stimuli. Such a person is often called apathetic.

The Motivated Person

When personal interest reaches a certain level and triggers the individual to expend more energy in order to go beyond the point where they are, I understand that they were driven by interest.

Much is said about motivation. In Portuguese, some break down the word “motiv-ação” into “motivo” (motive) and “ação” (action), then conclude that the meaning could be interpreted as a “motive” for the “action,” driven toward or by the action.

At this point, we can imagine the emergence of aspirations, goals behind certain motivations. They are almost inseparable.

“What’s behind that motivation?” is a question that fits well for anyone who feels motivated. The answer should be clear and almost immediate if the person has a firm grasp on their own interests.

So, if a person is attentive, generally interested, and motivated to move forward in pursuit of their goals, why not chase them all?

The key to the answer may lie in the ability to reach them.

The Capable Person

One of the most heated discussions one can witness is the one between those who believe in a “natural gift” for a particular skill and others who believe in effort as the means to build that same skill.

When I was young, I believed that everything was possible, as long as there was effort. Going to the Moon, climbing Mount Everest, or learning to code just depended on a lot of hard work and personal dedication. On the other hand, I didn’t ignore the fact that players like Ronaldinho Gaúcho had a certain “gift” or an obvious ease in what they do.

However, one day, an allegory came to mind that helped me explain a situation that was the opposite of Ronaldinho’s so-called “gift.” A “gift” for the worst, for the unwanted.

I use this allegory quite a lot on social media, and now I’m making it official here in this essay: dwarves and the NBA.

More precisely: “dwarves don’t play in the NBA.”

The NBA is the National Basketball Association, the premier professional basketball league in the United States and one of the most famous in the world. It is the showcase of the pinnacle of human ability in the game of basketball.

There is one common characteristic that defines NBA players: they are not short in physical stature. For the most part, they are quite tall compared to the average population, fast, agile, and resilient to physical contact with other players.

Dwarves do not have those characteristics, and that completely eliminates their ability to play in the NBA alongside the other players.

No matter how much a dwarf had been attentive to sports since childhood and had become interested in basketball to the point of motivating himself to train hard for many years, his chance of evolving on the scale toward sports intelligence (and here an indirect reference to Gardner’s work that cites a bodily-kinesthetic intelligence) is very low, because he will always lack the capacity normally perceived in the most intelligent players of this sport.

In this situation, there is nothing the dwarf can do.

Other equally motivated people may build capacity through a wide range of resources: free time to practice, access to a sports court with a hoop and any ball, and later, a basketball. They will need resources to attract or be accepted among other players, in order to allow the formation of a practice group, and so on. It is a long process that, again, depends on motivation and, now, on resources for capacity building.

Attention, interest, and motivation are the foundation for seeking the resources that enable capacity building.

Low or high training defines the chances of detecting intelligence.

The Intelligent Person

Intelligence is neither created nor developed. That is a simplification of the process we have seen so far.

We can develop attention, interest, and ability from the most primitive level to the most sophisticated, including by using the intelligence of others.

However, to our misfortune, we cannot instantly activate a personal intelligence of our own.

Science fiction used fantasy in the film “The Matrix” to suggest a future in which a computer can transfer to someone the ability to solve problems quickly at the click of a button. Analyzing this process based on what we are developing here in this essay, the transfer could only be of pre-existing information, for example, how to fly a helicopter.

Flying helicopters in a recognizably intelligent manner goes beyond accessing and processing information about the controls and levers inside the cockpit. It requires other capabilities that cannot be converted into information but are equally necessary for demonstrating intelligence.

The world will reveal itself to you in response to your demonstration of intelligence.

Nowadays, with the hypersocialization of everything, the cost of obtaining that kind of recognition is extremely low. All you have to do is showcase your results, whether in the form of a text, a video, or photos from a trip, software, a rubble-grinding machine, or even a spaceship.

If these results offer some kind of valuable reward to other people, if they solve some kind of problem, deficiency, or desire, great—their creators are on the path to having their intelligence recognized.

Or maybe not. It could be that the results hold no value for anyone, not even for those who produced them.

This doesn’t mean that intelligence is unattainable. It just means that it’s further away at that moment.

Except in the case of dwarves, a return to capacity-building could be highly productive and, who knows, finally yield a result that attests to some value and, with it, a perception of intelligence.

On the other hand, if the results are so positive that they ensure the perception of intelligence and quickness, that is something to celebrate!

Proven intelligence attracts new resources and capabilities. These, in turn, generate new results at higher levels, which ultimately favors the promotion of those who possess this intelligence.

If intelligence is a virtue, this process is a virtuous circle.

This is a translated version of the original text written in Brazilian Portuguese. Translation was made using DeepSeek Chat model.