Smartness versus experience

Is there a link between experience and problem-solving? Or is it possible to solve even intricate life-or-death situations without any prior experience? It sure is.

Do you need a significant amount of experience to successfully tackle challenging problems?

I am not so sure. In my perspective, the key to achieving success (unless you stumble upon it through sheer luck) is that you need to be smart.

Allow me to share a story on this matter. Unlike the fabricated “How idiots become bosses” anecdote that I previously have shared on LinkedIn, this one is entirely true. It revolves around an experiment involving a Eurasian jay.

For those who may be unfamiliar, a Eurasian jay is a type of bird. It is among the smallest members of the crow family, and like other birds in that family, it is smart. Some may even argue that it possesses true intellect.

In this genuine experiment, the jay was subjected to a period of time without access to water. It was placed within a cage containing an abundance of gravel on the floor, as well as an open jar with water inside it.

The water in the jar was situated too far down for the jay to reach, but it could detect its presence through scent and knew it was there.

So, what did the bird do? Initially, it attempted to break the jar using its beak. However, this approach proved unsuccessful.

Next, it tried to turn the jar upside down. Yet again, this method failed to yield the desired outcome.

Following these unsuccessful attempts to save its own life, the jay resorted to picking up individual pieces of gravel, one at a time, and dropping them into the jar. With each piece of gravel added, the water level inside the jar gradually rose. After depositing hundreds of pieces of gravel into the jar, the water level became sufficiently high for the jay to insert its head and drink.

This example demonstrates the cleverness of even a small bird.

Another fascinating fact about the Eurasian jay is its behaviour of hiding approximately 5,000 nuts on the ground each autumn, prior to the arrival of snow. Despite the nuts being covered by a thick layer of snow during the winter, the Eurasian jay is capable of locating each and every one of them.

Sometimes, I struggle to remember where I parked my car.

The brain operates in mysterious ways, and it is not a given that humans are the most intelligent creatures on Earth. Birds are capable of remarkable feats when their lives are at stake. Perhaps our greatest advantage as humans lies not in our brains, but in our opposable thumbs.

Let us hope that nobody succeeds in transplanting the brain of a Eurasian jay onto the body of a gorilla. If such a scenario were to occur, we would undoubtedly find ourselves in a precarious situation.