Truth Quadrants: Modeling Spiritual Intelligence
More Significant Than IQ!
Introduction: Rethinking Intelligence
For decades, intelligence has been synonymous with IQ, a single numerical measure for capturing cognitive ability, but what if this metric revered in psychology and education is fundamentally flawed or outdated?
What if intelligence is being measured in the wrong way? Or what if the wrong kind of intelligence is being measured all along? Despite the cultural status of IQ, it has been a controversial tool.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb provocatively criticized IQ for being irrelevant in explaining abilities outside of test performance. He argues that “IQ is largely a pseudoscientific swindle”, effective only in measuring low intelligence, not real genius or life success.
Indeed, IQ is a non-fundamental, socially constructed metric that ignores important cognitive qualities like resilience to falsehood, intuition, creativity, and reduces intelligence to a single number, a linear score rather than distinct categories, which limits its ability to explain a large, diverse scope of how people process and respond to the real world.
IQ critiques challenge us to rethink intelligence. What if there are better methods for modeling human intelligence that are not based on the social contextual utility of individuals, but rather on the natural purposes of human cognition, such as attitudes towards new information and the relationship with the Truth?
Introducing Truth Quadrants:
Inspired by Leonardo da Vinci’s wisdom: “There are three classes of people: those who see. Those who see when they are shown. Those who do not see.”I propose a method to assess people not by test performance, but by how they relate to the truth. It attempts to describe spiritual intelligence, the ability to discern truths, resist falsehood, and navigate information dynamically.
The model is built upon two intersecting axes, which create the four cognitive quadrants: Guides, Guided, Misguided, Misguides, simple! Each quadrant reflects a distinct role in the natural flow of information, inspired by da Vinci’s insight, but expanded to be symmetrical and include those who actively promote falsehood.
The Axes:
- Vertical Axis: Truth vs Falsehood, reflecting an individual’s relationship and alignment with truth, objective reality vs falsehood, misinformation, or delusions.
- Horizontal Axis: Passive vs Active, represents energy orientation, whether someone is an active seeker or a passive follower, pro-activity in engaging information.
The Four Quadrants :
Q1. Those Who See “Guides”:
Occupying the top right quadrant (Active Truth), Guides are the seers and reformers of society throughout history, like prophets, philosophers, and authentic scientists etc.
As the smallest minority, they possess a rare combination of high openness to experience and non-conformity, driven by Introverted Thinking and Intuitions. They lead others towards truth and clarity and seek truth through intuitive, rigorous exploration, embodying spiritual intelligence.
Such people become dissidents in falsehood-based environments; they are spiritually gifted yet often misunderstood, challenging conventional norms and inspiring transformative change through new moral teachings, visions, discoveries, disobedience, and advocacy.
Q2. Those Who See When They Are Shown “Guided”:
This is the small majority at the top left quadrant (Passive Truth), the faithful and thoughtful, like thinkers, the righteously religious, average scientists, moral educators, etc. They respond well to the truth but do not seek it actively and independently, finding peace in emerging truths “shown” and conforming to them.
Unlike the next quadrant, they respond well when shown truths, they have moderate openness to experience, and value stability with integrity, making them dependable followers who stabilize beliefs and propagate truth within society.
They have strong Thinking/Sensing abilities; in short, those who walk from the darkness into the light.
Q3. Those Who Do not See “Misguided”:
Bottom left quadrant (Passive Falsehood), mad crowds-stan, the large majority like average most people, group thinkers, go with the flow types, and the dogmatic from each category, including ones supposedly aligned with truth like religion, science, and higher education.
They are passively accepting of falsehoods, resist difficult truths, and adopt conformist false beliefs, cognitively passive, conform by default, might be sincere, but ignorant and self-deceptive.
Having low openness to experience, they respond negatively or neutrally to new information that contradicts their beliefs, and their behavior is mainly influenced by Extroverted Feelings.
Q4. Those Who Don’t Want Others to See “Misguides”:
Finally, bottom right (Active Falsehood), the tyrants and manipulators, a large minority like most politicians, ideologists, censorers, propagandists, and malicious social engineers, etc.
Those who actively suppress truth might be intelligent in an IQ sense, yet morally disoriented and spiritually blinded, hostile to truth, and act as a reinforcement of conformity.
While I cannot directly link any MBTI cognitive function, or Big 5 high or low trait with this quadrant’s inhabitants, the dark triads: Psychopathy,Narcissism, and Machiavellianism are obviously linked with them.
Why Truth Quadrants Matter?
This model helpes us to understand Spiritual Intelligence, the relationship one has with the truth itself, inspired by da Vinci’s ancient insight into human perception, it is not about knowledge scores, social or academic success, it is about your moral epistemic role in reality, while IQ may vaguely tell you who can solve a predefined puzzle, Truth Quadrants will tell you who will question the validity of the puzzle or try to suppress it’s correct solution in a real life scinario.
This map explains why some innovate, others follow, many resist, and a few mislead. It describes the dynamics of human progress and stagnation. It cannot be assessed with a test, but it can be inferred from how individuals choose to live their lives, which is self-evident.
Implications and Applications:
Education: The entire educational system should be overhauled and restructured around maintaining a good relationship with the truth.
What is the point of someone becoming a PhD theoretical physicist, while they are a conformist thinker who regurgitates illogic, and resists scientific reform and progress?
What is the point of wasting the potential of highly intelligent people on studying pseudoscience and futile endeavors like finance, economics, and other man-made noise?
What is the point of creating religious figures who are more dogmatic and blinded than disbelievers?
Humanity must immediately replace the archaic educational system designed by idiots for idiots, with one that optimizes the cognitive spiritual ability of everyone, encouraging and teaching students to be intuitive guides, or guided thinkers, correct misguided tendencies, and teach how to resist misguide influence.
Society: modern society primarily rewards misguide behavior by allocating power to those who misrepresent reality at Q4, in order to soothe the subconscious need of the passive majority of the population at Q3.
Instead, society should intentionally seek those small minority at Q1, voluntarily submit to them like ants and bees to their queens, and forcefully assign power and social capital to them.
Guides and Guided behavior should be rewarded, celebrated, funded, and institutionalized, misguided postures should be pathologized, stigmatized, misguide behavior must be penalized or criminalized by law.
Politics: building upon social reforms, it is evident that democracy and all other political ideologies are useless because the Q4 elements are the ones who attain power eventually in all cases.
However, a monarch from Q1 (Active Truth) would prove more ethical and effective than a democratically elected Q4 (Active Falsehood) figure who is a product of collective self-deception. Elections are not useful in finding a Guide if most of the electors are misguided people.
Technology: Elon Musk says, his Grok’s purpose is to maximize truth. Yet, current AI, including all LLMs, remains primitive in achieving genuine intelligence and often mimics human biases rather than transcending them.
True advancement in AI lies not in generality (AGI’s “do everything humans can”) but in emulating Introverted Thinking by finding sparse, low-resolution truths within datasets and amplifying them with proofs and theories.
Conclusion
Reflecting on da Vinci’s wisdom in the era of misinformation and mass manipulation, reminds us that seeing the truth is rare and valuable, understanding who sees the truth, who tolerates it, who ignores it, and who fights it is not psycho-philosophical decoration, but rather it is a survival skill, and a powerful tool for social development and progress.
We do not need problem-solving intelligence only; we need moral clarity, epistemic courage, and a spiritual vision. High IQ will not save humanity, but perhaps something like Truth Quadrants can help us find the ones who can.
In a world full of darkness, where few walk toward the dim light, will you see the light, be shown the light, remain in the dark, or worse… fight the light?
What do you think of my Truth Quadrants idea? Should I continue to develop it? Which quadrant did you spend most of your life in? Do you recognize the potential quadrant of any notable public figures or historical characters? Share your opinions and feedback in the responses below.