Eli5: Why does general intelligence differ from person to person? I.e. Why is person A logically attuned and person B emotionally attuned?
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People are all slightly different, and your brain vs someone else’s is different hardware, you might have a faster processing time, they might have more active memory, you might have mildly delayed sensory input, or an undeveloped fear center, minor differences in your hardware adds up to very different behaviours.
On top of that, we’ve all then had totally different software installed…your experiences, traumas, education, all give you reactions, tools, methods, to situations and problems.
So if you’re got a person with overall weaker original hardware, with a lot of unhelpful or traumatic experiences, strong emotional responses, no education etc… they’re probably going to be blown out of the water by someone with the exact opposite, faster and stronger hardware, low emotional interference, education that started early etc..
I think in terms of emotion vs logic, I think it’s important to know that most people do most things without thinking very much, whether you’re smart or stupid or emotional or logical… very few people think almost at all about like 99% of the things they do.
You don’t ‘logically’ take a shower, or come up with a strategy to walk across the room, or put much thought into even most things you say or most decisions you make, they’re low effort things.
People also don’t tend to question things that already align with what they believe, but if it doesn’t align, they tend to double check it.
The less someone is driven by those beliefs and emotions or especially fears, the more they’re willing to consider and reexamine how things work.
If you combine all that together with more computing power to begin with, the result is going to be someone massively more intelligent than another person.
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