They’re not mutually exclusive, but it’s useful to pull them apart.
For the sake of today’s specious argument, I define them like this:
Intelligence: ability to process information
Wisdom: ability to make good decisions
I know highly intelligent people whose lives are chaos. They’re pretty much incompetent.
They know stuff. They understand stuff. They impress others when they speak and all that.
But when given a problem to solve, they will somehow make it worse. When faced with an actual decision, it’s as if they can’t help but make the wrong one.
It reminds me of this:
“It’s the story of my life. You see, the quality of any advice anybody has to offer has to be judged against the quality of life they actually lead. Now, as you look through this document you’ll see that I’ve underlined all the major decisions I ever made to make them stand out. They’re all indexed and cross-referenced. See? All I can suggest is that if you take decisions that are exactly opposite to the sort of decisions that I’ve taken, then maybe you won’t finish up at the end of your life”—she paused, and filled her lungs for a good shout—“in a smelly old cave like this!”
Douglas Adams, Mostly Harmless
There’s an episode of Seinfeld called “The Opposite.” Same premise.
Intelligence sure seems like it’s important. But it’s often just a decoration.
It doesn’t matter how many degrees you have, how many languages you speak, how many facts you can recite, how many thesaurus-y words you cram into every sentence, or even how smarty-pants you act — if you can’t make good decisions.
Wisdom is applied intelligence.
Before you believe someone is “smart,” remember the difference.