Is It Worth Being Wise?

February 2007 A few days ago I finally figured out something I've wondered about for 25 years: the relationship between wisdom and intelligence.

2007年2月 几天前，我终于弄清楚了我思考了25年的一个问题：智慧和智力之间的关系。

Anyone can see they're not the same by the number of people who are smart, but not very wise.

任何人都可以从聪明人的数量上看出他们是不一样的，但不是很聪明。

And yet intelligence and wisdom do seem related.

然而智力和智慧似乎确实相关。

How?

如何？

What is wisdom?

什么是智慧？

I'd say it's knowing what to do in a lot of situations.

我想说的是知道在很多情况下该怎么做。

I'm not trying to make a deep point here about the

我并不是想在这里深入探讨这个问题

true nature of wisdom, just to figure out how we use the word.

智慧的真正本质，只是弄清楚我们如何使用这个词。

A wise person is someone who usually knows the right thing to do.

明智的人通常知道该做什么是正确的。

And yet isn't being smart also knowing what to do in certain situations?

然而聪明人不也知道在某些情况下该做什么吗？

For example, knowing what to do when the teacher tells your elementary school class to add all the numbers from 1 to 100?

例如，当老师告诉你的小学班级将 1 到 100 的所有数字相加时，你知道该怎么做吗？

[ 1 ] Some say wisdom and intelligence apply to different types of problems—wisdom to human problems and intelligence to abstract

[ 1 ] 有人说智慧和智力适用于不同类型的问题——智慧适用于人类问题，智力适用于抽象问题。

ones.

那些。

But that isn't true.

但事实并非如此。

Some wisdom has nothing to do with people: for example, the wisdom of the engineer who knows certain structures are less prone to failure than others.

有些智慧与人无关：例如，了解某些结构的工程师的智慧比其他人更不容易失败。

And certainly smart people can find clever solutions to human problems as well as abstract ones.

当然，聪明的人可以找到解决人类问题和抽象问题的巧妙解决方案。

[ 2 ] Another popular explanation is that wisdom comes from experience while intelligence is innate.

[2] 另一种流行的解释是，智慧来自经验，而智力是与生俱来的。

But people are not simply wise in

但人们不仅仅有智慧

proportion to how much experience they have.

与他们拥有多少经验成正比。

Other things must contribute to wisdom besides experience, and some may be innate: a reflective disposition, for example.

除了经验之外，其他因素也必须有助于智慧，有些可能是与生俱来的：例如，反思性的性格。

Neither of the conventional explanations of the difference between wisdom and intelligence stands up to scrutiny.

对于智慧和智力之间差异的传统解释都经不起推敲。

So what is the difference?

那么有什么区别呢？

If we look at how people use the words "wise" and "smart," what they seem to mean is different shapes of performance.

如果我们看看人们如何使用“明智”和“聪明”这两个词，他们似乎意味着不同形式的表现。

Curve "Wise" and "smart" are both ways of saying someone knows what to do.

Curve “Wise”和“smart”都是表示某人知道该做什么的意思。

The difference is that "wise" means one has a high average outcome across all situations, and "smart" means one does spectacularly well in a few.

区别在于，“明智”意味着一个人在所有情况下都取得了较高的平均结果，而“聪明”意味着一个人在少数情况下表现出色。

That is, if you had a graph in which the x axis represented situations and the y axis the outcome, the graph of the wise person would be high overall, and the graph of the smart person

也就是说，如果你有一个图表，其中 x 轴代表情况，y 轴代表结果，那么智者的图表总体上会很高，而聪明人的图表总体上会很高。

would have high peaks.

会有高峰。

The distinction is similar to the rule that one should judge talent at its best and character at its worst.

这种区别类似于这样的规则：人们应该判断最好的人才和最差的品格。

Except you judge intelligence at its best, and wisdom by its average.

除非你判断智力的最佳水平，并根据平均水平来判断智慧。

That's how the two are related: they're the two different senses in which the same curve can be high.

这就是两者的关系：它们是同一条曲线可以很高的两种不同的意义。

So a wise person knows what to do in most situations, while a smart person knows what to do in situations where few others could.

因此，聪明人知道在大多数情况下该做什么，而聪明人知道在很少有人能做的情况下该做什么。

We

我们

need to add one more qualification: we should ignore cases where someone knows what to do because they have inside information.

需要再补充一项条件：我们应该忽略某人因为拥有内幕信息而知道该做什么的情况。

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