Are You Intelligent?

Intelligence is a fraught topic in intellectual circles. Defining what we even mean when we refer to intelligence is hopelessly mired in all kinds of misaligned definitions, and even political controversy. But there’s no denying that there is such a thing as intelligence, and it is unequally distributed.

Whether or not we can all agree about whether some people are more intelligent than others is beyond the scope of this post. But more importantly for your purposes, we’re going to dive into the distribution of intelligence across your lifetime.

It turns out, intelligence isn’t constant across your adult life. And it’s more complicated than just noting that forgetfulness is positively correlated with wrinkly skin.

Today we will explore two different types of intelligence, known as fluid intelligence and crystallized intelligence. As it turns out, both are incredibly important to planning your life well.

Fluid Intelligence

Fluid intelligence refers to the kind of intelligence you use when recalling information or thinking quickly about a novel problem. It’s been well-documented that this domain of intelligence peaks early in life, and it’s all downhill from there.

With that in mind, it’s no surprise that highly creative thought is often the domain of people in their 20s and 30s. In many historical cases, a poet’s best poetry will be written in those early decades. Same goes for a Nobel laureate’s best scientific work, or a mathematician’s most impressive accomplishment.

It’s not just “use it or lose it.” Sadly, you will lose it whether you use it or not.

Evolutionarily, this kind of makes sense. When you look at life expectancy over the broad scope of history, evolution didn’t really have a reason to make our brains super snappy past the age of 40 or so, since relatively few of our forebears survived until that age.

Does this mean that doing something creative after age 40 is a lost cause? Absolutely not. But it does suggest that you may have had an easier time trying it at 25.

Crystallized Intelligence

Crystallized intelligence is another story altogether. It refers to the kind of intelligence that results from experience and prior learning. Unlike fluid intelligence, crystallized intelligence can continue to grow well into old age.

Accordingly, domains in which success is heavily tied to past experience and drawing connections among a broad range of facts tend to exhibit more achievement in the later decades of one’s life. For example, historians often do their best work once they have long careers behind them. Coaches often have the same dynamic.

It’s not just that “those who can’t do, teach.” It’s that a vast well of prior experiences and learning puts you at a distinct advantage in understanding complex subjects relative to your colleagues with “only” a decade of experience.

Again, this doesn’t mean there are no brilliant 30-year-old historians. It just means that they may be even more spectacular with a couple more decades under their belts.

What This Means for You

Many of us have been lulled into believing that we can pursue more meaningful work later, once we’ve achieved other objectives that will pave the way. And that’s not entirely wrong.

But to be completely honest (and supremely annoying), the truth is: it depends.

If you long to be a historian of some obscure specialty, then it might be a perfectly logical course of action to study history in your free time while you stash cash at your Big Law day job.

However, if you want to be an innovator and create something that has never existed before, I’m sorry to say that the clock is ticking.

The years of our lives are not completely fungible. When it comes to fluid intelligence, it’s like you’re stuffing your smarts under your mattress, only to let inflation take its wicked toll. In 50 years, $100 might buy you a few loaves of bread, but wouldn’t you rather have dozens of loaves now? It’s not that the bread (or the mathematical proof) is unobtainable by your future self, it’s just that you may have a lot more leverage going for it sooner rather than later.

All Is Not Lost

The good news is that there is more than one way from A to B. If your mission is broad enough and flexible enough, there is no reason you can’t achieve it in more than one way. If your goal is to give the world clean energy and your method involves “solving” scalable cold fusion, you’d better get cracking early.

But you can make meaningful progress toward the same goal later in life as well. Once you’ve spent decades coming to a deep understanding of all of the various angles involved in actually bringing clean energy into the mainstream, you may be more effective at guiding research programs, rallying political support, or communicating with the public.

This is good news. Life is long, and there is room for more than one act. If you spend your younger years stashing cash, there are plenty of ways to use your later decades working toward the same overarching missions that you might serve by applying your fluid intelligence in your younger years. And you can always still use your (diminishing) fluid intelligence in later years.

It’s just better to make your plans with this knowledge in hand, and confronting the world and your life as it is, and not as you wish it to be. Failure to look this tradeoff in the eye doesn’t give you a free lunch. In that case, time will just decide for you.

Conclusions

While it seems like bad news that your fluid intelligence may be evaporating as you read this, there is some great news contained in this message.

Even when your fluid intelligence is no longer your main engine for production, you can still make the jump to leverage a strength in the domain of crystallized intelligence - in many cases, even within your same field of excellence.

But when I recently came across this idea in a podcast, it hit me right between the eyes. It told me that time is of the essence, and that while my innovating years may not be numbered in a strict sense, I owe it to myself to make good use of the powerful ones I have right now, so that future me doesn’t have to play catch-up with a weaker engine on that front.

Today I’ll leave you with three questions:

• What do you want to achieve with your life?

• Does it rely more on fluid intelligence or crystallized intelligence?

• Are you living in a way that respects that distinction?

Ben Miller

Founder of ChroniFI

August 2022

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The foregoing are the opinions of the author and are for educational purposes only. They do not represent professional financial or investment advice. For financial advice, please consult a licensed financial professional.