… is when we are at our most intelligent.

How can we be intelligent if we already know? How can we learn if we already know? Intelligence is the ability to derive the “right” answer.

In other words, you must have something you want. You must have some criteria. You must have some values and desires that create right and wrong. When you determine these, then: what way is best, or what way is right? What you are doing is determining that solution which best accords to your principles. Principles lead to solutions. Not knowledge. Knowledge can only distract you.

Do not seek to become learned, seek to become principled. Seek to find the proper principles which you like; they are rooted in your desires and preferences. What do you want? Then these things become principles by which you can find solutions and answers. Knowledge is worthless here. You could know every fact in the world but without principles that satisfy you, or make you happy, all that knowledge will not be applied properly.

When you know nothing, you are at your most intelligent. Because you have nothing but your principles. You have nothing but your mind. When you know nothing, you must find something using your mind. You cannot rely on knowing to help you out.

If you know something, you are not using your mind, you are simply applying mathematical formulas. You are a robot. You are a slave to you knowledge. What you know determines what you must do. When you know not, you are freed to be creative, to exercise the full faculties of your intelligence.

Remember, knowing is not intelligence. Do not substitute knowledge for thought or creativity. Knowledge is static, but thought and creativity are active.
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Descartes probably should have stuck with the geometry...

But I'll go easy on him. 

Obviously you have to exist in order to think.

a posteriori, and all that.

Or perhaps Descartes was understanding that our thought processes create this illusion that we call "the self".

The world may never know.

What do you think?