Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

Don’t confuse knowledge with intelligence.

Knowing what a trireme isn’t a sign of intelligence, it’s trivia.

Being able to figure out how to build a trireme is intelligence.

And I don’t mean looking up instructions and doing, I mean being able to reconstruct the knowledge from baser principles. This is not to say you or your son aren’t intelligent, just that knowing about triremes isn’t a sign of it.



Just a funny story. Exposure to vocabulary is an important factor in learning to think.


Has nothing to do with IQ. Knowing fancy words can only fool some people to think that the speaker is smarter; but it won't influence the actual IQ.




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: