I perceive most people as stupid :D. I don't dispite them, I don't judge them, and I don't disrespect them for that, but that's how I perceive it.
Why are most people not intelligent... Why do people fail to use their minds...
Here is my own explanation
For me, Intelligence is composed of three factors:
- Genetics: The power of mind you inherited from your parents (the processor).
- The collection of knowledge: The experiences and the things you learned (the database).
- The way you think: The way you taught yourself how to tackle a problem (the algorithm).
This is basically how your mind is constructed or something. You inherited that from your parents, your parents have over the years of evolution developed a mind that is more powerful than some and less powerful than others. You can't be more intelligent in that aspect. This type of intelligence grows as you grow, you are born with a tiny brain but that grows as you grow, and probably settles down and doesn't grow more around the age of 20-21 or something. Since I am a computer engineer, I'd like to call that your processor. Once you're working with a certain processor, you cannot get it running any faster, it's the hardware. BUT!! that's not everything, there's still a huge difference of what runs on that processor and what kind of information does that processor has access to. Everybody was born with some hardware; so everybody has the basic platform to work with. I perceive this type of intelligence as the least affecting the overall problem solving skills (practical intelligence) of a person.
2. The collection of knowledge:
This is composed of all the things you learned over the years... You already know solutions to some problems, actually a looooot of solutions to a looooot of problems. This information acts as your database of solutions to the problems you know. You can pull out a solution you already know and use it right away (or modify it a little and use it). Everything there is ready, organized, efficient, and pre-thought (either by you or someone else). For example, if I ask you this problem 1+1=?. You will answer right away, '2', because you (or your math book's author) already thought about that and you know it. The extra-ordinary thing is, THIS IS THE TYPE OF INTELLIGENCE THEN ARE TRYING TO TEACH YOU AT SCHOOL AND UNIVERSITY. They are actually trying to teach you how to be more intelligent by teaching you solutions that other people thought out before. This is the source of all technology today. In the old ages, people used to think of solutions to many problems; but these were not documented or not communicated to other people, and eventually lost. So at some point, people needed to rethink something many times because the pre-thought solution was not communicated to them, or completely lost. When the world started discovering means to communicate, document, and centralize solutions the world already knows, knowledge started spreading and the world seems to be becoming more intelligent. But the fact is, it's not.. Human brain anatomy didn't change; we didn't evolve that much, physically, in the past 500 years. The good news is, you can learn this type of intelligence. Just don't let some problem slip through your fingers without KNOWING and STORING the solution for it so it's ready next time you need it. The bad news is, you use a mere small fraction of the knowledge you collected. People feel if they learn a solution there will be a very small chance (probability) to use it later, because it's very rare that you're faces of a problem you learned the solution for. This urges people not to KNOW or STORE the solution for a problem they faced before because it seems too much effort for a very little chance to use it later. But guess what?? If everytime you face a problem and know the solution for it, you just neglect keeping this solution neatly stored in your mind, you will end up with no database at all... If your database is small, this makes things even worse, it makes the probability of finding a solution for a problem even smaller.. and you feel that there's even less chance of using it later. Pretty bad isn't it? This, in my opinion, is the main reason people are stupid. People you know that you think have solutions for everything simply know how to never let something go without KNOWing how and why this thing behaves that way, and they STORE that in their mind. You use this type of intelligence when you quickly solve a problem.
3. The way you think:
The way people think is different. Some people think about the theory/idea behind the problem, try to find a logical way, then formulate the solution according to that. Others may keep trying any random pattern of solution till the figure out the one that works. There are many types of thinking patterns, many of them I don't know of. This thinking pattern is self-taught, nobody would teach you that. You probably have taught yourself this over the years. You might even have many thinking patters, you might even have one that you favor other the others. You thinking pattern along with your database are our most powerful problem solving tools. You might even have a database of thining patters along with information about when to use them. I like to think of the thinking pattern as the algorithm that runs on your processor. Your algorithm might be stupod and takes a lot of time, may be even never reaches a solution, and your algorithm might be very intelligent and finds a solution in seconds. Your algorithm might be even more advanved that it detects the type of problem and executes a different algorithm suitable for the type of problem. For example, if you tell me unlock a small bicycle lock which has a combinational lock which has only 1 disk with numbers. I would right away try all of them and see which works. There are only 10 possibilities, trying each will take 2 seconds, you have your solution in 20 seconds. I know this because I have an entry in my database saying "Brute force (try all solutions) => use it when you have a small number of solutions". If the bicycle lock had 6 disks with numbers, I might now think about how this lock works and try to find a flaw in the design that would get it open. Or I might think what is the easiest way to break the lock/chain. Again, this type of intelligence is self-taught, it grows over the years. The bad news is, people are still stupid, why? Because people BELIEVE they cannot get more intelligent, they believe it soooo deep in their hearts that they completely don't try or even think remotely of the possibility there might be a way to be a little more intelligent. So they don't try to improve on their way of thinking, sometimes don't even perceive they have a way of thinking. This type of intelligence is slow, tiring, and needs thinking. You need to take your time with the problem and understand it, then come up with a solution, sometimes even in the form of many partial solutions that individually won't work. Remember, you need to STORE the result you came up with after you use this type of intelligence in your database; otherwise it will be very expensive to use this type every time.
Conclusion:
Your mind, is your mind, it will not change and it won't grow. But, what you use your mind for is completely changeable, you can think in a completely new way, you can learn different types of thinking, know them and know when to use each. You can also store a very large database of pre-thought solutions that you can very quickly modify or use out of the box (sorry out of your mind). The biggest part of your intelligence is self taught.
YOU CAN GET MORE INTELLIGENT. VERY EASILY.
