Seems to me that wisdom is often like pornography: I know it when I see it.
When I was young, I wanted to be wise when I grew up. But now that I’m up, I have no more idea of what being wise means than I did when I was a teen. I’ve experienced a lot more, and I have some idea about how to behave in a lot more situations than I did back then, but that doesn’t seem like wisdom to me. It’s just experience, and the knowledge that comes with experience.
I think one or two people here have called me wise to my face (don’t worry, I punished them severely). It was gratifying, but I still had no idea what it meant. Is there some standard for applying knowledge? Is there any way to meaningfully compare one person’s wisdom to the next’s?
I think wisdom is like the SAT. What it boils down to is how much culturally specific knowledge you have, and how good you are at taking tests.
Perhaps more importantly, I think it’s how many people actually listen to you, and take your advice to heart. I.e., the market, once again, is a good way to see if someone really is wise, or not.