Mike Lehr's Blog

A question emailed to me asked for elaboration on this quote of mine:

The difference between wisdom and intelligence is that you cannot be wise unless you have sensitivity for the human condition.

The primary difference between intelligence and wisdom that my quote highlights is an emotional one. For instance, who would you consult on relationships, on love; an intelligent person or a wise one?

Stated more pragmatically, we often hear psychopaths described as intelligent but not wise. If they were, would they go around harming people? Thus, we can more easily picture an insensitive, intelligent person than an insensitive, wise one.

Examine our intelligence tests. They have little to do with relational issues among people. Do any of them ask about love, happiness, sadness, hatred? They deal more with concrete concepts such as shapes, numbers and words. Intelligence and sensitivity are segregated.

Yes, the concept emotional intelligence exists; however, its basis is a mental one not an emotional one; it’s intelligence about emotions. It refers to empathy as an “understanding” not a feeling; it’s a mental task. We can see the mental aspect in advanced computers because we’ve begun to program robots to be emotionally intelligent based upon certain observable clues. Emotional intelligence tries to teach people the same thing. Yet, we refer to these robots as “artificial intelligence” not “artificial wisdom.” Again, the segregation of intelligence and sensitivity.

I define empathy as feeling what others feel. Mothers often feel what their children feel. Analogously, the difference between understanding and feeling is the same as the one between seeing a picture of a place and actually being there. Thus, we see wisdom as emotionally very different from intelligence, and that difference has a huge sensitive, empathic component.

Wisdom and sensitivity are not segregated.

As reported in the November 2, 2009 edition of The New Yorker in the article, Robots That Care, Professor Maja Matarić of the University of Southern California is experimenting with robots caring for stroke and Alzheimer’s patients and autistic children. The major thrust of this work entails programming robots to respond to behavioral cues of patients. One path involved addressing the extroverted-introverted nature of a person. Since many of us have been exposed to a plethora of personality assessment tools and often struggle with how to apply the information, I thought it might help to know how this professor programmed robots to respond to extroverted-introverted people.

When Professor Matarić programmed robots to work with extroverts, she had them:

• Work closer than the standard distance for a task
• Speak with a slightly higher pitch
• Talk quicker
• Instruct using more forceful words

When she had robots work with introverts, she programmed them to:

• Work farther away than the standard distance for a task
• Use fewer gestures
• Speak with a slightly lower pitch
• Talk slower
• Offer more praise
• Instruct using more soothing words

Additionally, Professor Matarić was able to program robots to “learn” the behavioral style of the person so they could adjust the above parameters depending upon their assessment of the person as an extrovert or introvert. Perhaps, this information will help us to “program” ourselves to work more effectively with the extroverts and introverts in our lives.