EDUCATED vs. SMART vs. INTELLIGENT

INTELLIGENT
Definition: The innate or natural capacity to reason, comprehend, analyze data, and solve novel or complex problems.
Core Focus: How your brain processes information and makes logical connections.
Nature vs. Nurture: Strongly tied to biological potential and cognitive processing power.
Example: Knowing that a tomato is technically a fruit.

SMART
Definition: The practical, quick-witted application of knowledge, often in real-world or social situations.
Core Focus: Street-smarts, adaptability, quick thinking, and resourcefulness.
Nature vs. Nurture: More informal and learned through experience and everyday observation.
Example: Knowing not to put a tomato in a fruit salad, even though it's technically a fruit.

EDUCATED
Definition: The formal acquisition of structured knowledge, manners, and skills through schooling, training, or study.
Core Focus: A stored library of facts, academic credentials, and disciplined instruction.
Nature vs. Nurture: Entirely shaped by environment, access to learning systems, and effort.
Example: Reading textbooks and learning the botanical classification of a tomato as a fruit in a classroom.

Key Takeaways
You can be intelligent or smart without having a formal degree (educated).
You can be highly educated (memorizing lots of facts) without necessarily being flexible or creative in problem-solving (intelligent).

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DangerGirl · 22-25, F

I'm all three, maybe even a higher fourth order.

dancingtongue · 80-89, M

My mother was a teacher for 50 years, and she always said an education was extremely important but that horse sense was even more important.

The problem we are having today, imo, is that the key component of "Intelligence" as defined above -- "capacity to reason, comprehend, analyze data, and solve novel or complex problems" -- is that it is not necessarily innate or natural. It involves the act of critical thinking, which can be learned naturally by observation of, and interaction with, people who are critical thinkers. Or by learning it through education. Yet we have had a whole segment of our society pressuring schools to stop teaching critical thinking, pushing for home schooling to keep their kids from being exposed to anything that might require critical thinking, and demonizing critical thinking as being un-Christian, socialism, communism, etc., etc.

A key element to the well-documented "dumbing of America".

Nimediapresentations · 41-45, M

@dancingtongue People's innate intelligence grows as it is used more. If a person is intellectually lazy, and he never puts his "natural" intelligence to use, his natural capacity to reason will atrophy. Yes, it's definitely a matter of nature/nurture. I do think humans are born drawn to certain mediums.

val70 · 56-60

I think that today's society is entirely screwy. Once one educated onself to be someone, but nowadays they don't think of it as a tool any more but something much more miraculous. Basically in this age of popularism and all out marketing it's never about thinking and arguing any more, but how one comes accross. Do I sound intelligent? You haven't seen me in action, haven't you, and that's because being smart is somehow thrown into the mix now too. Even my car mechanic needs to have knowledge of whatever is lurking in the deeps of the internet these days just fool himself that he's as smart as myself. Nothing to do with education any more, and all to do with being part of the wider whole. Moreover, intelligence doesn't garantee compassion, spiritual enlightment, nor self belief either.