Ever notice how the loudest person in the room often gets credited as the smartest? We've been conditioned to equate intelligence with quick comebacks, perfect grades, and the ability to dominate every conversation. But here's what psychology tells us: true intelligence often operates in the background. It shows up in the way you question things, how you process emotions, and even in those moments when you feel like you don't know enough.
But the relationship between intelligence and happiness is complicated, Arthur C. Brooks wrote in 2023. "The gifts you possess can lift you up or pull you down; it all depends on how you use them," he explained. Today's newsletter explores how to utilize your skills and smarts to add joy to your life, rather than letting them chip away at what actually makes the days meaningful.
Most of us have strong opinions about what those words mean, but scratch the surface and it becomes clear that "smart" and "dumb" are slippery, subjective constructs. What seems smart to one person may strike another as naive, arrogant, or shortsighted. Worse still, our own perception of what's smart can shift over time. Yesterday's clever decision can look like today's regrettable blunder.
Openness/Intellect is the Big Five trait most tightly bound to intelligence, and the strongest links to intelligence are facets like "intellectual engagement" and "unconventionality"; big brains like big questions, unusual ideas, abstract debate, and exploring how systems work (Anglim et al., 2022). We find it fascinating to learn new things and enjoy chasing knowledge so that we can level up our understanding of the world around us (Smillie et al., 2021).
It was at the Agency where I first truly understood the power of diverse teams," she says. "Success in the field depended on building inclusive, cross-functional units where every voice had value regardless of background, discipline, or rank. Just as critical was cultivating psychological safety: creating a space where people could speak truthfully, challenge assumptions, and innovate under pressure. That foundation of trust was essential to overcoming some of the hardest missions we faced, and it remains core to how I lead today.
Sariel had a plan to transfer large amounts of Unit 8200's data, including top-secret information, into Microsoft's cloud platform, Azure. This would enable mass surveillance on Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza.
In 2016, a meeting in Kabul revealed China's persistent concern regarding the presence of Uyghur militants associated with the East Turkestan Islamic Movement, reflecting strategic intelligence priorities.
Eleanor emphasizes that carefully concealing intelligence for the sake of politeness can actually be patronizing, while revealing it authentically does not assert hierarchy.
The most important passage of the classified annex of the Durham Report indicates a timeline involving an email dated July 25 and another dated July 26, representing critical intelligence components.
On Friday afternoon, ODNI published a press release asserting that its director, Tulsi Gabbard, "revealed overwhelming evidence" that President Obama and his national security officials "manufactured and politicized intelligence" to launch a "years-long coup against President Trump."
Evolution and experience offer a variety of paths to follow, branch-points in the flowcharts that handle such input. Sometimes these signals come from conspecifics who have useful information to share, whose lives you'll defend according to the rules of kin selection.
If Netanyahu's claim, echoed by Donald Trump, is accurate then Israel and the USIC must have obtained game-changing intelligence that eluded every major intelligence agency to date.
Musk's susceptibility to promiscuous women and drug use, in particular ketamine, and his gravitation towards club life... would have been seen by Russian intelligence service as an entry point for an operative.
The perplexing baby-snatchings, reported in the journal Current Biology, suggest that humans aren't the only intelligent species with youngsters that pursue apparently pointless activities that can be destructive to other creatures.
