Smarter Than You?

Nice thoughts about smarter people:

I classify someone as smarter than me when she continually surprises me with insights. In other words, she often says things that, once I hear them, I know are true (or deeply beautiful), but which would never have occurred to me.

There’s one other requirement: these things can’t be just facts. It’s easy for someone to say something about the Ottoman Empire that is both surprising to me but true, because I haven’t studied the Ottoman Empire. The surprising thing can’t be something that wouldn’t surprise me if I just read a book I haven’t read. I know someone is smarter than me when she has the same information I do but is able to look at it in ways that are opaque to me.