the.com/intellect
the rare engine that can argue itself into being completely, confidently wrong.
means the mind's capacity to reason, understand, and grasp ideas — the thinking faculty as distinct from feeling or instinct.
from From Latin intellectus, 'perception, understanding,' the noun built from intellegere, 'to comprehend' — itself a marriage of inter ('between') and legere ('to read, gather, choose'). So at its root, intellect is the act of reading between things, picking out connections others miss — a sense that traveled through Old French into English in the late medieval period.
- energy hog
- the brain burns 20 percent of calories at 2 percent of weight
- smart trap
- high IQ correlates with believing more convincing nonsense
- peak myth
- crystallized knowledge keeps growing into old age
- slow build
- prefrontal cortex isn't fully wired until mid-twenties
- chess limit
- no human has calculated past a fraction of possible games
stephen hawking — theoretical physicist who solved black hole thermodynamics despite als paralysis from age 21
marie curie — only person to win nobel prizes in two different sciences (physics 1903, chemistry 1911)
john von neumann — mathematician who founded game theory, quantum mechanics interpretation, and computer architecture in mid-20th century