Using a car analogy, I would say that intelligence is how strong your engine is. Whereas rationality is driving in a way where you get to your destination efficiently and alive. Someone can have a car with a really powerful engine, but they might drive recklessly or only have the huge engine for signalling purposes while not actually using their car to get to a particular destination.
I don’t know if this analogy has been used before but how about: “Intelligence is firepower, rationality is aim.” (And the information you have to draw from is ammunition maybe?)
You can draw parallels in terms of precision and consistency, systematically over/undershooting, and it works well with the expression “blowing your foot off”
I like the mechanical analogy, here’s a slightly different version.
IQ is like the horsepower/torque of an engine. You might have a really fast engine but it has to be hooked up to something or it will just sit there spinning really fast making lots of noise. Rationality is learning about all the things an engine can be used to do. There are all sorts of useful modules that you didn’t know existed. An engine can run anything from a car, to a textile factory, you just have to have the right modules hooked up.
Now bring it back from the analogy. Literally every single thing in human civilization is run off the same engine, the human brain. They just have different modules hooked up to them. Some modules are complex and take years to learn. Some are so complex no one is really sure how they work. Rationality training is acknowledging that exploring the space of possible modules and figuring out how to hook them up in general is probably powerful, if there is sufficient overlap between domains.
Using a car analogy, I would say that intelligence is how strong your engine is. Whereas rationality is driving in a way where you get to your destination efficiently and alive. Someone can have a car with a really powerful engine, but they might drive recklessly or only have the huge engine for signalling purposes while not actually using their car to get to a particular destination.
I don’t know if this analogy has been used before but how about: “Intelligence is firepower, rationality is aim.” (And the information you have to draw from is ammunition maybe?)
You can draw parallels in terms of precision and consistency, systematically over/undershooting, and it works well with the expression “blowing your foot off”
I like the mechanical analogy, here’s a slightly different version. IQ is like the horsepower/torque of an engine. You might have a really fast engine but it has to be hooked up to something or it will just sit there spinning really fast making lots of noise. Rationality is learning about all the things an engine can be used to do. There are all sorts of useful modules that you didn’t know existed. An engine can run anything from a car, to a textile factory, you just have to have the right modules hooked up.
Now bring it back from the analogy. Literally every single thing in human civilization is run off the same engine, the human brain. They just have different modules hooked up to them. Some modules are complex and take years to learn. Some are so complex no one is really sure how they work. Rationality training is acknowledging that exploring the space of possible modules and figuring out how to hook them up in general is probably powerful, if there is sufficient overlap between domains.
In other words, it’s not how big it is, it’s how you use it that matters?
X-D
I think I agree with this and would frame it as: intelligence is for solving problems, and rationality is for making decisions.