Smartest non-Twilight character.

[Lil Pip 775]

Overall Intelligence:

Celestia is top tier, Twi and Starlight are average, Fluttershy is also top tier, Rarity is next in line, Pinkie might be in line or slightly ahead of Twi if it were not for the fact she has some social weaknesses and obliviousness, RD has issues, might be overall lower than AJ considering despite my rating AJ low, she has a stability others don't even if she is stubborn or narrow-minded at times. But her commitment is huge and her loyalties easily divide her which might lead her to choosing friendship over romance any day of the week if caught in a toxic relationship, but it'd deal a heavy blow to her. AJ might be higher than the previous ones suggest due to this. Starlight is like pure 50/50. Its rare to have book smarts with street smarts though, and she has good potential but right now is sorta in the air. Once she gets friendship down she will be top tier, similar to Celestia but without the humor. Derpy is average, with below average book smarts, which Dr Whooves is also average due to permanent partial tunnel vision and probably choosing science over relationships since he doesn't have a friendship fetish like Twi, but would be superior to season 1 Twi for sure. Presuming background characters don't have bipolar and soul crushing character development like the mane cast does to be entertaining lol. Luna is perfectly fun, but can get down on herself. Overall booksmarts is probably high since with Celestia when prepping Twi for Sombra she joined Celestia to aid Twi, which means she probably still has more years on her and I doubt her 1k years banishment raked in social isolation, or she would have been permanently psychotic and not even a proper villain. Likely it time-froze her. So she probably scores higher than I initially thought. 

Social intelligence(synergy, relationship health, outgoingness):

Celestia= somewhat unknown, but high due to probably public court, and good humor. Starlight is a mixed bag, outgoingness is huge, relationship health needs some maintenance but has good potential, synergy is almost non-existent lol. Probably would end up trying to do a hierarchy in a relationship being the authority, which makes sense considering her official ship is with someone who is not very assertive. I can imagine it'd not be a long lasting relationship tbh. So ehhh *shrugs*

Fluttershy(just because she is afraid doesn't mean she doesn't know how to socialize, I.E. TreeHugger is also evidence how solid of a relation she could have. Looking for intelligence remember, not results.)>AJ(because I feel her relationships would be more stable)>Luna(has more stable optimism in more diverse scenarios than Pinkie and is a fun pony at a more deep level than Pinkie could manage)>Pinkie=Rarity(both have their flaws and may yield unstable relations in different contexts)>Twilight=RD(both don't understand people very well, Twi because of tunnel vision/paranoid-esque(similar to me actually lol), RD because of assumption and lack of thought)

Social intelligence(consideration):

Celestia(cuz a friendship mastermind basically, despite her errors) > Fluttershy>Derpy(because her constant misfortunes befalling others she cannot help but cause and emotional sensitivity(presumably) leads her to more consideration despite more failure to actually follow through)=Twilight(because she is a leader, but tunnel visions)> AJ>Pinkie=Spike(despite not acting he does know better sometimes)>Rarity(I scaled hers down because she is generous to feel good and thinks everyone should feel good, which is low intelligence despite higher acting in favor of it, if we wanted results she would be ahead of derpy)=RD >Starlight

Book smarts:

Unknown=Celestia>Luna, presumably unrealistically high though, so Celestia would lead due to Luna's 1,000 year banishment I actually think Luna may be behind Starlight or Twi.

Celestia>Twi or luna> Starlight> Twi or Luna> Dr Whooves > Rarity=Fluttershy> Pinkie Pie > RD=Derpy > AJ(lower than derpy = lul, just a joke, farming requires some knowledge but overall I think its a rather narrow knowledge.)

Street Smarts:

I just want to say Rarity is slightly higher than expected, Starlight is top tier, Pinkie is not top tier just because she lets a scammer rip her off for the sake of her friends(which does not contradict the episode where she tried teaching fluttershy to be assertive when buying cherries) Twilight season 1 would be bottom rung on this, overall below average now still. Everyone else is basically as I expect would be predicted from face value data.

A lot of people are saying Starlight but like, Starlight is different she's a prodigy and as such is able to learn easily she IS in the upper tier of intelligence but she lacks wisdom and much weaker characters like Sunburst actually have more knowledge than she does. Starlight is hyper focused on Magic, she's also obviously deeply charismatic she's definitely not UNintelligent but she's not as smart as someone like Sunburst or Moondancer. (and Im saying this as one of her biggest fans on this board)

 

Anyway Im not sure... since I don't think Twilight is the smartest character really ether, she has a lot of knowledge but like Starlight her wisdom is lacking and she's pretty hyper focused into a few fields, I would bet someone like Sunburst probably KNOWS more than her too, they just can't apply it.

Fluid intelligence and crystal intelligence. Fluid intelligence is needed to learn fast, crystal intelligence is basically memorization. So I decided to weigh intelligence based on practicality, which is social, book smarts, street smarts. Its hard to say if specialization outweighs non-specialization, so I approached it from the perspective of how well their lives go which is indeed accuracy oriented. Like a book smarts person, might get caught in an abusive relationship at all angles, so ends up without a romantic partner or in an unfulfilling relationship, others gaining disinterest until they find someone like-minded, which means they need the social minimum of at least finding other like minded people. Also I suppose to get better book smarts socializing might be essential to converse to gather knowledge faster than otherwise. So overall a high book smarts crystal intelligence antisocial pony would probably be below average intelligence outside of their precise environment, and because of all the knowledge they have it causes them to tunnel-vision through each detail they know to compare it to. So their outgoingness would usually be extremely low and they'd easily get discouraged, even if they know about stuff if they have no experience its still meh. 

 

Give or take.

When it comes to eating brains, Blood Drops is pro. I'm doubtful Twilight can tell you the most tasty part of the brain.

I am sure it'd be the corpus calossum and the amygdala.

hehehe

Oh and of course also the hippocampus.

But yes I greatly understand the point to your satire, don't get me wrong.

Celestia and Luna have been around for quite a while, I guess they've seen and experienced (and learned) a lot...

Zecora and Granny Smith are both wise, too.

Yeah but Granny makes a ton of mistakes too lol.

Zecora is certainly up there. She is, intriguing.

Pinkie Pie. She's was the one who figured they should go to the spa in Games Ponies Play, she immediately knew something was wrong with the smiles in The Cutie Map, she's the only one who kept up with Twilight's explanation of how the portal worked in Rainbow Rocks, she immediately realized Sci-Twi wasn't Twilight, at least faster than the others, she was the only one who bothered to read Twilight's book about Yakyakistan, she know how to play a lot of instruments, she comes up with song lyrics pretty easily on the spot (the normal musical numbers don't count, I mean the ones that the characters acknowledge as songs), she can easily perform mental calculations to know how many days are left for someone's birthday, not to mention she has crazy memorization skills, it was also mentioned in a comic that Starswirl was more similar to her than he was to Twilight. 

If there is a flaw in my above reasoning I think this would pretty much address the vast majority of it.

[Cwanky 17,600]

I seriously doubt that Twilight is the smartest character, considering that Celestia and Luna have been around infinitely longer. And let's not forget Discord. 

 

That said, after Twilight, I'd probably say either Moondancer or Starlight are second to her. Zecora, however, is also heavily overlooked here and she's also likely wiser than all of the Mane 6.

Edited November 24, 2016 by Cwanky

[Ganondorf8 11,356]

It's going to be a tie between Sunset and Starlight for me.

[EmeraldStar04 250]

Celestia

 

Me

 

Applejack

 

Pinkie

[snowflame 189]

Starlight has been very bright in all her episodes.

[ManaMinori 4,145]

Pinkie is the smartest. She is the only pony that Twilight, herself, calls a genius. Twice!

[Feather Data 131]

Starlight has been very bright in all her episodes.

What do you mean by bright?

Edited November 26, 2016 by Feather Data

[-Deleted- 25]

I think Starlight Glimmer 

[Jane 123]

Frankly, I don't think Twilight is the smartest character, she can clearly be surpassed by Starlight, Sunburts, Zecora, Luna and Celestia. And is that intelligence is something very relative, there are different types of intelligence, and no, reading books does not make you smarter. But personally, I think Pinkie takes this place.

 

[Sepul-Coloratura 762]

Zecora, duh.

And why do you presume Twilight is the smartest?

[Thrond 3,263]

Celestia is probably ahead of Twilight, but she had a head start, plus there are a lot of very intelligent characters in this show who specialize in different areas, so it's not actually an easy question to answer. 

Of the mane six, I honestly believe Pinkie Pie might be the next-smartest after Twilight. She knows way more than she lets on. 

Edited December 20, 2019 by AlexanderThrond

[Derpy Pon-3 5,650]

Sunburst is probably smartest even though he’s not good at using magic

This isn’t counting star swirl the bearded

Edited December 23, 2019 by Derpy Pon-3