"I am wiser than this man, for neither of us appears to know anything great and good; but he fancies he knows something, although he knows nothing; whereas I, as I do not know anything, so I do not fancy I do. In this trifling particular, then, I appear to be wiser than he, because I do not fancy I know what I do not know." - Socrates.

I’ve known some fairly young people who seemed to have wisdom in certain areas. Maybe we are all wise in our special strong areas and unwise in our weak areas.

For me, wisdom is to have a deep awareness and connection with life and your environment and to understand phenomena in depth so that you make good decisions and live with self confidence. Maybe people get that way through direct experience, mental analysis and meditation. Maybe part of it is innate.

Presumably wisdom is knowledge gained through experience to help us make better decisions next time. This only works if you take notice of it, unlike me who seems to have been repeat stupidity offender most of my life

An interesting question, and you set it up in a way that’s particularly accommodating to the comment I’d like to add. You refer to our differences, and how they obstruct a main avenue through which wisdom could be shared. That brings to mind a stratification of accessibility, another tier possibly not so blocked.

Who needs wisdom? Worms? Sparrows? Zebras? Why is this precious commodity only needed by Homo sapiens? Only Homo sapiens has sufficient mental/emotional complexity to be plagued by chronic psychological suffering.

We don’t need wisdom for survival at the level of a wild canid. We need a salve for our hunter-gatherer bodies and minds that have been jammed into Toyotas and iPhones.

We are evolved to be hyper-aware of danger, of differences that could precipitate conflict. It’s quite natural for that orientation to dominate our attention. It takes practice to build the habit of focusing on what we have in common. It is on that tier that shared wisdom is applicable, and abundant, if not always easily discerned.

Everyone reading this, without a single exception, is a Homo sapiens. We aren’t born with deep self/other knowledge of our own species. It takes years of study to see how extensive and how unobstructed our commonality is.

I think that most people are lacking in that department. Including me sometimes.

Wisdom is what everyone thinks they have an above average amount of.

Depends on who you are talking to.

My understanding from debating young (20's) theists is they define "obtained wisdom" as a blessing of wisdom given to them by their loving god by believing things based on (obtained Truth) that is earned by using faith (belief without evidence) as a test of their wisdom. Such faith based wisdom supersedes logic or fact (based on reality) wisdom as this wisdom is a gift by their all-knowing all-powerful supernatural sky daddy. Face - Palm. Religion.

I gained wisdom by fucking up loads of times. No, I mean by really really lots of times and what has my wisdom taught me? Basically, the answer to almost everything is, don't do that.

You'll only know wisdom once you know what "to find wisdom" means.

Do we even know what wisdom is? I think wisdom is the ability see "around" things and how many factors have come together to create whatever situation is at hand. It's recognizing that there's far more to any story than we will ever know, and being willing to listen to the story as it tells itself to us.

Intelligence is the ability to collect and retain information; for example, to accurately identify a problem definition. Wisdom is the ability to effectively respond to information; for example, to actually solve the problem, preferably in the most economical and permanent way.

Part of wisdom is to understand what works for a particular person / situation may not be what will automatically work for other persons / situations. Wisdom also has to do with epistemological humility -- the understanding that you don't know what you don't know, and have a tendency to wrongly assume someone else's situation is more similar to yours than it actually is.

I believe that wisdom comes from experience and experience comes from bad judgement!