How do smart people know things (and eliminate their own mistakes)?

People who are not very smart may wonder how “smart people” know things. I’ll try to explain.

All people use trial and error as their method of learning to some extent. It is the most “animal” way of doing things. “I don’t know, but I’ll try it.” Sometimes, it seems to be the best way to get to some answer. Unfortunately, trial and error is a long process and the results may not always be the same in seemingly similar circumstances. For instance, hitting on a gay man the same way as you hit on a straight man will not create the same response, even if both men looked similar to the eye. The more complex things get, the more trial and error will NOT bring you the answers you’re looking for.

Still, we all learn from NOT getting the desired outcome when we assume a previously learned action would do it. Another example, approaching a True Emotion Mirror the same way as you’d approach a Trail Companion* will not bring about the same response. No matter how good you might be in picking up men or women in general, your strategies will fail with a True Emotion Mirror. Therefore, another approach is required.

I’m talking relationships because this is primarily a relationship blog, but the same is true for, say, a sales speech… Or… figuring out how atoms interact. The same assumption may not apply in all situations. (I’m no scientist, but…)

Well, it doesn’t work!

One way to realizing you have made a mistake or a false assumption, is, of course, that the strategy doesn’t work. It fails, over and over again. You’ve eliminated the possibility you’ve made a mistake in the process, forgot something, you try it again, and still, it’s a no-go. Therefore, you have to go through all possible differences in the situation. Working with computers is a great way to learn how to troubleshoot. You know the computer won’t give you the right response for the wrong action like people sometimes, incredibly, do. For instance, you can coax a person to kiss you, even if they don’t feel attracted to you. Computers won’t.

Therefore, eliminating the error requires checking all the variables, which means things that are different this time around. If something doesn’t work in this situation, when it seems to be exactly the same or similar enough than last time, you must go through all the things that are different to last time. Did I change themes since the last time I tried to use the same plugin on a WordPress installation? Does this plugin work the same way as the other one I tried to use for the same function? Did I install ANOTHER plugin since the last time I tried to use this one? It requires memory, and sometimes, memory just won’t serve. Then, you’ll need to start eliminating potential errors, in this case, by disabling plugins and finding out which ones will still work – back to the bricks and mortar approach; trial and error.

Pattern recognition and understanding relationships between people, pieces of code, or things

OK, now we get into the difficult stuff. This type of intelligence and understanding requires a lot of KNOWLEDGE and EXPERIENCE to back things up. Some of this is in-born result of experiences in previous lifetimes (if you ask me) but some must be relearned. The less you’ve dabbled with something like this, the more you have to spend time relearning it. In relationships, you may be the master of flirtation and picking up Trail Companions*, but choke when it comes to True Emotion Mirrors. Or, your relationship skill set might be the opposite. You may think everyone around you loves you unconditionally as you’ve only experienced Precious Soulmate relationships (parental love) or True Emotion Mirror relationships, and you have NO IDEA how to deal with someone who doesn’t love every cell of your being from the day they meet you.

The more skilled a person gets over time, the more complex situations they can analyze and solve. They can OBSERVE a situation and notice things that are going wrong, and explain why. They will learn from OTHER’S mistakes as well as their own. Rats are considered smart animals because they learn from other rat’s failures. If there’s a dead rat that smells like a certain poison, the other rats know not to take the bait… I read somewhere. I haven’t fact-checked, but apparently, rats know pretty well not to repeat other rat’s fatal mistakes. Smart people observe the mistakes by OTHER people, too, and QUIET people are often sitting back learning from foolish people’s mistakes. This is why some of the smartest people seem quiet and withdrawn when young, only to grow up to be roudy and loud – they sat back to observe, let their less intelligent siblings and schoolmates do stupid things, mapping out their playground: “OK, this time, these are the rules…” Once they know the playing field, then they get up and ace the game, without ever making many mistakes at all… Themselves.

A lot of smart action is to NOT take the trial and error approach but to take sit back and observe -approach. To shut up before saying something you can’t take back, for instance, and trying to observe, gently explore, discuss things, rather than probe and prod to find out where the right lever or the right button might be located… Hitting a lot of explosive ones while at it. Here’s the thing. For a dumb person, for every one right button, there might be one wrong. For a smart person, for every one right button, there are a hundred wrong ones… And by the time you’ve discovered the right button, you’ve already pushed so many wrong ones that that person is forever beyond your reach.

Same thing with computer programs. The more complexity there is in a program, the more errors you will make before you hit the right button… And by the time you get to the right button, your document is already so corrupted there’s nothing to salvage.

Acquiring more knowledge and seeing relationships between things

A low IQ person sees a relationship between an action and its direct result. One step ahead -intelligence. The more intelligent you are, the more steps you can predict in creating a result you want. Obviously, it would seem that the more steps you CAN take, the less intelligent you are, but when the steps in between are WRONG ONES, as in, result to a failure in the attempt to creating result, the process gets more difficult. So you need to see the relationship in doing A in the hopes of reaching J… And e, f, and h are missing.

The other way of being intelligent is observing J, and knowing how A started it. Then, when you have multiple factors involved, you need to see how things line up when the route to the result isn’t direct.

2-point difference to 10 point difference

I can explain intelligence to another intelligent person quite simply with this example, but let’s see if it helps someone less intelligent.

Imagine the universe as a combination of dots and lines that connect these dots seemingly randomly. (Sorry, Nassim, I know that’s just wrong.) A person with an average IQ can see something like 3 point difference between connected spots without thinking too hard about it. They may think “I want coffee. I don’t have any” and find a solution to the problem with relative ease.  A dumb person goes to Starbucks because they can’t make their own coffee and nobody has taught them how to do it, a smart person has their own coffee bean supplier and a grinder at home, and they’re making their own blend – for the fun of it. But the point being, dumb person: I need coffee – I need to find someone who makes coffee. One point difference to a solution. A smart person, “I want coffee” – they have multiple options, go to Starbucks if I’m busy, get coffee home and make some myself, or get a custom blend from my local coffee importer, grind it, brew it, and drink it. This is, obviously, still pretty simple maths.

Now… A smart person can observe a situation and see a correlation between A and E without a problem. At one glance. A super-intelligent person can see 10 steps or more ahead without a problem. To someone of a lower intelligence, what they see MAKES NO SENSE AT ALL. In addition to that, experience and knowledge plays a part. I can see a person’s character in one look, I can tell what they like, what they don’t like, what their internal struggles are without ever talking to the person, but I still may make a miss here and there in another type of things, like what kind of books they enjoy. Usually, when they explain, it makes sense to me, however. Now, another type of person might take a look at a new person, and know exactly what to sell that person. I might not know what brand of pants a person might buy, which is a much SIMPLER problem than what I can do; I would know exactly how to make him feel understood and accepted, simply by looking at him. I’d also know why I might not be able to, even if “I could”.¹

Further, intelligence tests are somewhat sketchy, as people’s IQ is so personal. I can recognize and see nuance between very delicate emotional differences, and I can order things in that field at a high genius level. However, looking at dots on a paper, I feel like I have nothing to hold onto. Sure I’ll still score higher than average, much higher in fact, but I feel like I’m working with something with my hands tied behind my back.

How does a smart person know something is a mistake/not correct?

This was the question put to me by a spirit. This is such a weird question to answer but I’ll try. I said I’ll have to check stuff I’m about to teach people myself because I cannot trust its origins considering the information I was given by spiritual teachers on the Internet was quite… Frankly juvenile. I could instantly see several problem points in the “theories” I was interested in, and I simply felt that it would be easier to rewrite the whole thing than try and correct what had already been written. Hence Free Spirit Theories. However, HOW DO I KNOW someone else’s spiritual experience, for example, is wrong?

First of all, one examines the known possible OTHER explanations that an experience might be about. Sleepwalking while lucid dreaming, lucid dreaming without realizing one is dreaming. Lucid dreaming while WISHING TO PROVE that some supernatural event is possible. (On that note, I have a theory that schizophrenia, the real schizophrenia, is a condition where a person is lucid dreaming while awake.) I noticed a lot of things were the same thing explained with different words, or different things labeled with one word. I noticed a lot of things were in a direct collision course making it so that both beliefs couldn’t be true in one Universe. Then, I had to logically conclude which of the beliefs couldn’t possibly be true. Example… “Twin Flames are two halves (splits) of the same soul at the same time as we are all (all beings that exist) splits from God.” Which is it? And what makes one split more a Twin Flame than another random splinter of God?” I personally don’t believe EITHER is true, per se.

When I studied the teachings of several spiritual people, I noticed that their teachings didn’t align together. However, if both people are studying THE TRUTH, their teachings should align. Therefore, I had to explain WHY do these people make mistakes, and why is my theory superior. How can I avoid making the same mistakes as those people? One of the most important aspects is EGO, the NEED to be proven superior for the sake of superiority, and that, obviously, becomes a problem. One has to keep one’s ego in check, and know that being PROVEN RIGHT is not the same thing as BEING RIGHT, and INSISTING to be right is even less so… Even guarantees a failure to discover the actual truth.

I noticed that A LOT OF SPIRITUAL TEACHERS are misguided DELIBERATELY through their egos. Their NEED to be THE ONE would have them led astray by their own spirit guides and their own “angels”. This is so that only the worthy will be given the actual answers. For as long as you accept that YOU ARE THE CHOSEN ONE without criticism, you will be led by the nose like the ass that you are. You’ll be made into a FOOL, not a hero.

1. Curious? When MY LOVE isn’t specifically important to a person, they might accept my admiration of him easier than a man who is already head-over-heels in love with me, suffers from bad self-esteem, and has bad experiences with women in the past. Then, the fact he is head-over-heels in love with me, renders me incapable of fixing anything for me, as he’d mistrust every word I say – particularly the loving, soothing ones he so desperately WANTS to hear but is unable to trust to be genuine and honest and considers them manipulative and calculative, and there’s nothing I can do about it. ↩

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