The Importance of Focusing on Fluid and Crystallized Intelligence in Your Career

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Fluid and crystallized intelligence are two different types of intelligence, and the difference between them is that fluid intelligence gets better through your twenties and thirties, while crystallized intelligence stays high in your seventies and eighties.
The best way to use your fluid intelligence is to do things that reload on it, like being a poet or historian, while using your crystallized intelligence to learn new things and teach them.

Sam Harris speaks with Arthur C. Brooks about what it takes to build a good life. They discuss the power of social comparison, the intelligence taboo, political dignity and ethical hierarchy, the Dalai Lama, the nature of love, fluid and crystallized intelligences, the strange case of Linus Pauling, the limits of identity, atheism and religious faith, fear of death, psychedelics, existentialism, St. Thomas Aquinas, and other topics.

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Learning how to train your mind is the single greatest investment you can make in life. That’s why Sam Harris created the Waking Up app. From rational mindfulness practice to lessons on some of life’s most important topics, join Sam as he demystifies the practice of meditation and explores the theory behind it.