I believe that intelligence is a mainly product of your genetic makeup, a combination of mother and father, which could be negative or positive, depending on your parents. Can you be intelligent without considering the genes from your parents? No one knows.

Most intelligent people like to succeed in life by becoming scientists, engineers, etc. and it’s easier for them to get scholarships in order to get a higher education, which is important for our society as a whole to succeed.

Smartness, on the other hand (and according to studies done), can be acquired by experiencing things, and your experience (and hopefully your smartness) increases with age. Been there, done that. You get the idea.

I believe education gives you knowledge, but not necessarily intelligence or smartness.

The intelligence of famous scientists like Edison and Einstein was given to them by their parents, but their smartness came from years of trial and error and experimentation.

Would you say that philosophers (like myself) were intelligent? Or did their smartness come from years of experiencing life and pondering life’s mysteries?

Please let me know what you think.