> “Street smarts” refers to models that are too high-dimensional for linguistic transmission and were therefore acquired through calibrated experience. The street-smart person cannot explain why they know what they know, which makes them look inarticulate to the book-smart person, which leads the book-smart person to conclude that the street-smart person’s knowledge is inferior. This conclusion is precisely backwards in domains where judgement matters. The inability to articulate the model is not evidence of a crude model. It is evidence of a model too sophisticated for the transmission channel.

I disagree to a degree. Yes, what the author says is accurate about people dismissing street-smarts as a lower level of intelligence than it deserves. But a sufficiently skilled communicator can absolutely articulate many of the factors being evaluated when they judge a situation and how their descision-making process works.

> They evaluate intelligence through the lens of articulacy

There was an earlier instance of the author using a word such as unability (or similar) and it should have been inability and I let it go, but this misuse of language is making my head hurt. However, I confess that I thought the word should have been articularity and it turns out that’s not a real word either. But I at least pay attention to spellcheck. I don’t understand how someone could take the time to write a long and thoughtful essay about intelligence and not use spellcheck to proof it.