zlacker

That is a very idealistic perspective. There are certainly fast learners due to the fact they are faster at cross domain synthesis.

>>gmadse+(OP)
In my experience when I am able to pick something up quickly it's because I can exploit cross domain knowledge. I have ready-made analogies to things I understand, or I understand the domain which informs the fundamentals of the new domain.

>>gmadse+(OP)
This does not match my observations. Also, what I've heard from experts is that 'intelligent' people are more suggestible. The way society measures intelligence is thinking speed; which tends to correlate with learning speed.

Some people learn surface-level information quickly without deep integration; what educational researchers sometimes call "shallow learning." And specialization can create blind spots.

>>jongjo+Na
I'm sure there is an association between personality traits {openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, neuroticism} with preferences to specialize or learn broadly. That is seperate from the phenomena of nearly all cognitive tasks being correlated with each other positively, e.g. verbal scores are positively correlated with math and musical scores. This is referred to as g-factor in literature.

My overall point being, yes people learn differently, but it is also true that there exists outliers in general intelligence

>>maxbon+N3
I was surprised in college that the math for electronics circuits, mass-spring-damper systems, stress of materials, etc., was all the same.

>>jongjo+Na
I've seen very often people with good memory will be regarded as intelligent. They integrate "knowledge" by just recording verbatim phrases. That takes them a very long way... But when the time comes to analyze something, they break down. I've fallen in that myself, people I regarded as intelligent, because they "knew" so much things, could not keep up with the most basic syllogism, they were just stupid.

>>maxbon+N3
Correct - heuristics - ie, experience, wisdom, etc.