I am the smartest person… ever!

I am the smartest person in the world. This is not extreme hubris; it's simply the way the world is.

(Despite the direction this is headed, this post is not intended to brag or flaunt. The purpose of this post is to explain how such a self-proclamation is supported. I'm actually a fairly unpretentious guy given my unsurpassed intelligence.)

Intelligence, and the measurement thereof, is subjective. Educational degrees and IQ tests are conveniently quantifiable ways to assess intelligence, and perhaps these are tools that others use to gauge intelligence. I find these parameters paint an incomplete picture by making sweeping assumptions that are highly fallible. Believing that a PhD automatically makes a person smart is speculative at best. Conversely, believing that all people who drop out of high school are stupid is close-minded. As for IQ test, do they measure all aspects of intelligence? IQ tests claim to measure logical reasoning, problem solving, critical thinking, and adaptation. What about people skills, self-confidence, artistic tendencies, and fecal obsessions? Shouldn't these be included in the measure of intelligence? I guess it depends upon how one defines intelligence.

Given: Planck, Braque, Confucius, Dylan, and Carnegie. Who is smarter? I could make an honest and viable case for all of them given that each individual represents a different facet of intelligence. The point is anybody can be the smartest person in the world depending upon how intelligence is defined. This begs the question: How, pray tell, does Shenry define intelligence so that he is the smartest person in the world?

Intelligence implies that there is something to be smart about. I, however, do not believe that anything exists to be smart about since knowledge of an absolute nature does not exist. A person who claims he knows and understands something is misled and incorrect, because all things are subject to uncertainty. I am the smartest person I know because I know that I know nothing. This is a slightly paradoxical statement given the self-apparent proclamation that I know I know nothing means I actually know one thing, that one thing being that I know nothing. However, this is not the case. Knowing nothing includes an understanding that I might actually know something, which means my denial of absolute knowledge denies itself to the extent that it allows for the possibility of the absolute.

And, this is why I am the smartest person in the world.

Now go make up your own definition so that you can be the smartest person in the world.
...and so it was written, shenry at 3/15/2004 12:39:00 PM.
...and so it was appended with .