Comment by alexpotato

> I suspect that a lot about what we call being very intelligent is ultimately out-remembering people around us

There is a great episode of Inside the Actor's Studio where there is a Q&A with Mike Myers.

He was asked if going to college/getting more education was helpful to being a comedian.

He responded:

"Many times in writing comedy, you are on an 'island' and you are trying to figure out how to get to the next 'island'. Having more education and knowing more about the world can definitely help you do that"

I like the above quote because to me intelligence is a combination of remembering useful information but also being able to "connect the dots" between those facts and apply to them to the current situation.

As another example, I was watching a documentary about LIGO. One of the engineers had memorized the entire system in his head. The other engineers would come to him and ask "Will this change to component A affect anything else?". He would pause and think and then say "Yes, component F touches that so it will be affected." The other engineers mentioned how useful it was to haves someone who had the entire system in "one brain".

I've seen this in finance technology too where someone, usually a woman, has large parts of the system memorized and performs a similar function.