Chloe Rendon

Mr. Horton

English 11

9 October 2018

“What is Intelligence, Anyway?” Essay

Intelligence is ability of using knowledge that develops a person’s type of skill and

talents. It’s something that we learn through our education that we have been taught for all of our

school years. The author, Isaac Asimov, uses his own point of view on how he thinks what

intelligence is really about. He states that intelligence is being really smart to pass tests or be

successful in life. But later, his point of view changed on how he viewed intelligence that made

him to rethink about using intelligence.

Early in the story, Asimov thinks that society has changed on how they view intelligence

that they no longer use it anymore. Asimov states that he can’t “use (his) academic training and

(his) verbal talents” so he needs “to do something intricate or hard, working with (his) hands”

(Asimov 4). This shows that being intelligent doesn’t always help a person to get a job. Getting a

job means you need to know what you’re doing and catch up so you won’t mess up or make a

mistake instead of being a know-it-all. Asimov feels like “intelligence...is not absolute” and

“that society has managed to foist itself on the rest as an arbiter of such matters” (Asimov 4).

This shows how the author thinks that society hasn’t been helping to show people what

intelligence is all about. Society isn’t the reason why people haven’t been using intelligence,

using intelligence is by how much knowledge that a person knows to do their jobs or any other

activity in life. Even though Asimov thinks intelligence is being smarter than others, his point of
view will change from a certain auto-repair man.

Later in the story, Asimov has been talking about how he must be so intelligent just

because he scored higher on the intelligence test than the auto-repair man working on his car. He

thinks that he must be more intelligent just because the auto-repair man “could not possibly have

scored more than 80” (Asimov 3). This shows that how Asimov was kinda arrogant when he

thinks he’s smarter than others who scored lower. Getting a higher score doesn’t mean you’re

smarter than others, it just means that you were prepared for the test to get this score. Asimov

observed how the auto-repair man fix his car by exploring “(the car’s) vitals, and listened to his

pronouncements” when “he always fixed (his) car” (Asimov 3). This shows how the auto-repair

man can be able to fix Asimov’s car that the author didn’t know how to fix his own car. There

are people who can be more intelligent than others based on how they use their skills and talents.

After observing what the auto-repair man does to fix the author’s car, he’ll finally change his

point of intelligence after a question the auto-repair man asked.

Furthermore, an auto-repair man told Asimov a joke about a deaf-and-mute guy asking

for hammer and nails while the blind man asking for scissors. After the auto-repair man told his

question and Asimov got it wrong, he knew that Asimov “is so...educated, (he) knew (Asimov)

couldn’t be very smart” to answer his question (Asimov 6). This shows how the auto-repair man

knows that Asimov must be really intelligent than him but not smart enough to answer a

question. He’s trying to let the author know that sometimes the most intelligent people can’t

always solve or answer a question correctly. After the auto-repair man made his comment about

not being smart to Asimov, the author had “an uneasy feeling” that the auto-repair man “had

something there” (Asimov 7). This shows how the auto-repair man’s comment made Asimov to
rethink his point of view on intelligence. Being intelligent isn’t holding all the answers to every

problem, it’s about observing and learn the problems to find the answer. After the question and

answer that the auto-repair man said to Asimov, this finally made him to rethink about being

intelligent.

In conclusion, Asimov always thought that being intelligent is being smarter than others

but that all change when he finally got a question wrong from a man that the author he thinks he

smarter than him. Being intelligent isn’t about being better than others, it’s about learning your

mistakes to be more smarter and less arrogant. Intelligence is the reason why we have to be more

understanding and to use our own skills and talents to be successful in life.