We have alot of smart people here on blurtit. No im not their calber. Im sure they know who is smart and who isnt
Who would you rate as THE smartest person you've ever known or, failing that, ever been aware of?
There are so many different types of intelligence. There's mathematical,emotional,mechanical, computer savy, street smarts, artistic and etc.
I appreciate almost everyone I meet for their own special level of intelligence. If you listen more than you speak and then ask a few questions in the process you can learn something from everyone you meet. Hey, even that guy behind you in the line in the supermarket.
All this to say is that I can't pin point any one person in my life as having the greatest intelligence.
I have met some really intelligent people on both Ask and Burt. Those who take the time to reflect on an answer before just giving one.
I find those who have had a lot of life experience impart a level of wisdom that is both refreshing and valuable.
I have also found those that "Do the work" in studying their subjects of career or interest. Their knowledge of a subject aids in my learning and understanding. It sometimes forces me to "Proof" some of the answer they give which I find enjoyable. Even if it pertains to a particular belief system, the knowledge they share I greatly benefit from.
I worked with an alcoholic who "did" a line of coke most days (and several times some days). He was a chain smoker too.
He was more clever when stoned and drunk than most people I know when sober and clean.
He started two companies, and turned one into a successful multinational, sold his share for multi-millions later.
A man who is impossible to dislike, despite his weaknesses.
He's currently working as a software engineer for a major US company.
Probably a genius.
Vinton Cerf and Robert Kahn, inventors of the internet, not only have they created ways for people across continents to communicate and do business, but also most people freely give up every piece of person information about themselves to the NSA (project Vault 7) and advertisers and crooks.
Bankers and stockholders and the shadow cabinet, getting groups of people to work 24/7 for the majority of their lives for pieces of paper not backed by gold or silver, be it daylight robbery of our ancestors, but certainly smart. Rich people don't work for their money, they make others work for their money. I think it was Alfred Russell Wallace who first suggested using paper notes as legal tender all of their own.
Then of course you have Tesla for much of our technogy is due to him although he died penniless.
I would say my own maternal grandfather. He always managed to make a safe and happy home for all of us (in spite of my deadbeat father), gave us wonderful vacations and experiences, could create just about anything in his workshop, loved unconditionally, and kept us all laughing.
On the intellectual front, I work closely with a lady who won last year's MacArthur Genius Award. She is also a wonderfully humble and caring person and a dear friend.
My dad is one of, if not, the most intelligent people I know, however he is ADHD. He was diagnosed in his mid- to late-50s when my younger brother was being evaluated. They both went on Ritalin at the same time. Since then you can have a conversation without him jumping from subject to subject. He was high school dropout, who in his 30s got hiss GED. After being a Ritalin he not only got an AA, but started teaching students with similar issues at the community college in a horticulture vocational course. He has quite a bit of knowledge on a lot of subjects and rarely thinks one dimensionally.
"been aware of" ...
Steven Hawking
Albert Einstein
Nikola Tesla
etc, etc
LOL
I think the comment you made to one of the responses to this question provides one of the more useful descriptions what what we generally refer to as "smart," to wit: ..."intelligence...based on two primary qualities: The ability to effectively process thought, and the accumulation of knowledge through experiences."
The smartest man I have every know personally was a friend (now deceased) of mine who was a forensic psychiatrist.
As an amusing anecdote, our youngest son (35) considers me the smartest man he has ever met.
And those two examples probably suggest that the positive feelings that we have toward the one we consider the smartest are somehow intertwined with our naming him or her as the smartest.
So in a different class for other "smartest" people would be for me, as others have suggested, Einstein, Hawking, Leonardo, etc.