"Valiant says that he tries not to use the word 'intelligent' to describe people (in fact, he is 'sometimes taken aback' when he hears others use it)..."

"... instead, he is drawn to 'valuable abilities that somehow involve learning and are not well captured by conventional notions of IQ.' An educable mind, he writes, can learn from books, lectures, conversations, experiences, and Zen koans—from anything, really—and notice when relevant aspects of almost forgotten knowledge reveal themselves.... To a degree, the connections, recombinations, and new applications of knowledge involved in being educable are useful precisely because they aren’t obvious.... A civil-engineering class I took in college, which focussed on the structural forces shouldered by bridges and skyscrapers, comes back to me with great regularity when I think about all sorts of things. Wind exerts its force along the length of a skyscraper, causing it to bend. Similarly, a new source of stress in your life can’t be compartmentalized; it increases the pressure everywhere. It’s interesting to see one’s mind through the lens of educability. It makes you wonder what other cross-pollinations have occurred.... Reading widely about things that don’t seem immediately or practically useful, in the hope that what you learn now may prove meaningful later—that’s pretty much the definition of a liberal-arts education. Who knew that one of its best defenders would turn out to be a computer scientist?"

Writes Joshua Rothman, in "What Does It Really Mean to Learn?/A leading computer scientist says it’s 'educability,' not intelligence, that matters most" (The New Yorker).

Valiant =  Leslie Valiant, the computer scientist. His book is “The Importance of Being Educable.”