The Difference Between Knowledge, Intelligence, and Wisdom

There was a time in my life when I became very anal retentive about language. This was when I was just starting to get into writing. I was certain my success as a writer would come by mastering language, and by extension, I believed language was an absolute thing. I was adamant about perfecting every single word in the stories I wrote. Usually this just made me sound like an ass.

I feel many writers go through this phase. It was only a matter of time before I realized I was being ridiculous (thanks Wittgenstein). Language is ultimately just a tool we use to communication, and thus how we use it determines its meaning.

As a result, I wanted to share with you some distinctions I have between knowledge intelligence, and wisdom. These are personal definitions, but I think they encompass three distinct ideas that separate them enough from any overlap.

Knowledge – What we use to make decisions. Knowledge takes the form of strings of information that can be passed from person to person, or otherwise self-generated by observing our environment.

Intelligence – Our ability to problem-solve. I'm using a loose definition of problem-solving here to encompass a wide range of tasks. Basically anything that requires us to think would be a problem for us to solve. Think of this as our RAM.

Wisdom – How well we make choices. If intelligence is our RAM, then wisdom is the software we use. We can have poorly programmed software, or we can have highly optimized software. We can also have highly specialized that is good at some thing and bad at others.

Example: A knowledgeable person will know how to start a fire. An intelligent person will be able to start a fire quickly, or learn to start a fire in poor conditions. A wise person will know not to start a fire in the middle of their living room.