Is intelligence like pornography?

You remember the old adage that it is impossible to define pornography but you know it when you see it!  Well, I am wondering whether intelligence is the same.  This whole concept of 'intelligence', as in the IQ assessments I touched upon in the preceding post, has been going round and round in my brain.  What is it, exactly?  How do you define it?  How do you measure it?  Does it only exist in one part of your persona or does it permeate your whole being?  Needless to say, my own fairly moderate intelligence only took me so far in seeking answers!

Most people, if asked, would equate intelligence to 'book-learning' or success in academic fields.  Alas, it only requires a nano second of thought to start listing the really stupid 'stoopids' who are weighed down with 'book-learning'.  One instantly thinks of Gordon Brown, one of the few men in the country who actually understands "endogenous growth theory" but who demonstrated without doubt his total inability to run a whelk-stall!  Even so, as I understand it, he has now gone on, in a very 'intelligent' way, to build a new career in which he will earn considerable amounts of money and enjoy a very exciting, international life-style.  So not totally unintelligent then!

Perhaps we should infer that intelligence is partial, that it can appear in one part of your life and be missing in other areas.  Well, that's pretty obvious from everyday life where one observes otherwise educated and 'intelligent' friends with good careers who then enter into disasterous marriages which are blindingly obvious to all the witnesses but not to the participants.  So, if that is the case, what is the point of measuring 'intelligence' unless you can pinpoint where it is working inside a person?

And how do you meaure it?  I have never taken an 'intelligence' test so I am not qualified to judge their efficacy.  I assume they are a series of increasingly difficult 'problems' which people are asked to solve.  The problem here is contamination.  The tests are 'designed' by people who may or may not be very intelligent themselves, and they are marked by those very same people!  Whilst some of the tests might be of a mathematical nature with a right or wrong answer, I suspect many of them are really matters of judgment and, I would remind you, the judgment of the testers is on the line as much as that of the testee, so to speak.  Is my lifetime's refusal to take any sort of intelligence test a sign of my intelligence?  Or lack of it?

Perhaps - no, almost definitely - I have the wrong end of the stick.  Perhaps it is not the ability find a right answer which these IQ testers are after but the evidence that the 'testee' is actually attempting to think of a way through to a conclusion whether it is 'right' or 'wrong'.  I suppose there are many (most?) people in this world who fail to think on a medium or long term basis and merely act on short term considerations.  We saw a few thousand of them doing so during the recent riots.  Were they unintelligent?  Not necessarilly, I would suggest.  If you are greedy for fashionable electronic goods which you cannot afford and you see a shop being ransacked, it is not unintelligent to help yourself.  Fleetingly you might do the intelligent thing and think of the consequences but were you to do so you would assume that the powers of the authorities to find each and everyone of the perps is limited and even if caught you know from experience that it will be an easy doss in jail - and you will still have the goods you nicked stashed away for when you come out.  So quite bright, really!

Now let us examine the long-term thinkers.  Are they more intelligent?  Take a young man who has set his sights on a career as an officer in the Royal Navy.  He knows that certain exam results will be required and that he will have to dedicate his life to this chosen path which has little equivalence in 'civvy street'.  Part-way through his career the government cuts the Royal Navy to shreds and he is out on his ear, middle-aged and with none of the right qualifications to gain employment at the sort of remuneration level he has been used to.  How intelligent was that?  Perhaps that example teaches us (the obvious) that being intelligent does not guarantee success.  In which case, why set such store by it?

In considering this subject of intelligence I am reminded of Mr. Cruddas, the unfortunate 'Get Rich Quick Merchant' who was the subject of a Sunday Times investigation into Tory donors.  He is a man with absolutely nil academic qualifications who, by circumstance, found himself in the right place at the right time.  He quickly turned his ability to understand and use the latest communications wheeze - at the time it was teletype or some such - and had the imagination to realise its wider applications.  He set up what was, in effect, a 'bookie's shop' in which foreign currency dealers could quickly and easily bet on price fluctuations.  He made a million, or to be precise, several hundreds of millions!  Was he intelligent or was he - and I deliberately used the word earlier - simply imaginative?

At this point I turn without shame to my Thesaurus because, the English language being such a tremendous tool for the expression of thought that I wanted to lay before you some other words for 'intelligence': wisdom, thinking power, intellectualism, wit, common sense, understanding, cleverness, gumption, sagacity, discernment, acuteness, shrewdness, foresight, craftiness . . .  and so on and on.  Again I ask, in this ocean of words and subtle differences of meaning, where-in lies 'intelligence'?  What is it?  How do we test for it?

And that, of course, brings us full circle!

 

Comments

[Hank]

David

Intelligence as in what is measured by IQ is the "ability to solve problems". Like Rubic's cube and other pure logic problems.

Of course in life there are a few other things that matter. Like recognizing there is a problem, posessing the right data to solve it, being able to work with other people.

Since every thing has some requirement to solve problems there is loose connection between IQ and doing well in any field, stronger in some things that others but by know means the only thing, and in most areas not the most important thing.

Your example of a Royal Navy officer. He decided the problem was to how to get commissioned in the Royal Navy. he solved it. If he had realized there was another problem of what to do if he gets bounced in a budget cut he would have developed a good solution for it, but not realizing there was problem until to late. . .

Or your some Trotlot friends. They follow a theory that is about as connected to the real world as a Rubic's cube, make brilliant deductions based on it which are of no value in the real world, and look down on those who have solved real problems in the School of Hard Knocks.

[Whyaxye]

I would say that intelligence is, in essence, the ability to discern patterns in one's experience. This covers the "I.Q. test" questions about "Which number is next in the series?", etc., but also covers qualities such as far-sightedness and sagacity. Some people are good at spotting patterns right under their nose but have no general awareness; whereas others are hopeless at formal tests but spot the general drift of things, and so keep themselves afloat on the sea of life. It is all about where you focus, and what rewards happen to be associated with that type of focus.

I think it is probably more useful to think about what fools we all are. Even the super-bright ones, who make masses of money and have all the trappings of success. They are all laughing-stocks if you dig deep enough, aren't they?

Give me character and goodness over intelligence, every time.

[Whyaxye]

By the way, DD, did you mean George, or Gordon Brown? The former's inability to run a whelk stall was due to his fondness for liquid refreshment. The latter (bless him) was not the towering economic genius that Blair painted him as. His doctorate was in Labour Party history, and his knowledge of economics seems to have been piss-poor in all respects.

[David Duff]

Duh! I meant Gordon not George! I don't know why I keep mixing them up. The latter was an even bigger 'fruit 'n' nut' case than the former!

I will return to your substantive points later.

[David Duff]

Hank, yes, life can sometimes throw up problems which need to be solved but where does 'intelligence' come into it? You might just use tradition as a solution - or your dad's advice! Given (and I'm deeply grateful to Mr. Romney for his golden phrase) the very many 'known unknowns' (or whatever), who is to say what is the 'intelligent' solution to any problem and on what grounds? Only the ultimate result will tell us but that, of course, might be due more to unknown circumstances at the time of which we knew nothing - so we weren't that intelligent after all!

'W', yes, you make a cogent point concerning the ability to spot patterns although I wouldn't overstate it. After all, one thinks of the mythical(?) coach-maker who invested his life savings into new barns and carpenters to make even more coaches just as the horseless carriage was invented!

[Whyaxye]

That coach-maker was intelligent with regard to his contemporary conditions of investment, and unintelligent with regard to socio-economic change. Knowing what inventions are likely to impact on the market is understanding patterns. The dreamer who discerns the mass arrival of the motor-car but lacks the practical intelligence to raise capital and convince others is equally limited.

My dad had a friend who, in the 1950s, invested everything he had in ladders, tools, and the kit needed to fit TV aerials. He saw the developing pattern. And did very well for himself. Other than that, you would say he was as thick as shit....

[Able]

Hmm, not asking much are you?

The problem with IQ tests, as I understand it and having taken a few (Forces, jobs and even for fun), is that it sets problems in mathematics, language, logic, 'spatial ability' and memory. What's the problem? Well, does it test for intelligence or, as has been found, 'people like those who set the test'?

The ability to do mathematical problems is a sign of intelligence but is the inability a sign of its lack (not to mention the education to be able to understand how to do so, shall we ask Gorgon?)? Language is again linked to both culture, nationality, education and experience (is recognition of correct sentence structure and word meaning an indicator? - if so there aren't many intelligent Americans then ;-p ). Logic? Whilst logic per se isn't a problem, the problems are in fact more of a test to see if you can figure out the logic as seen by the test setter (I feel quite put out when I construct an entirely logical argument for a certain answer only to be told it's wrong, ie. not the same as the setters). And just how the ability to visualise a shape in different orientations equates to more than imagination is yet to be demonstrated.

The 'great intellects' of the past would have, I'm sure, struggled with modern IQ test. However. and this equates with my own experience of dismal failure at the first test taken and subsequent brilliant showing (if I do say so myself) at the following, they would have learned to produce a better result.

My take on intelligence is that it is the ability to learn (from personal and others experience) in the specific and apply it, intellectually, in the general nothing more nor less. Notice I don't include the ability to apply that learning in the real world as that is merely the demonstration of intelligence, not it's exclusion (I know, intellectually how to solve a Rubik's Cube but have never done so - it's a conspiracy, I say, they always sell me defective ones!).

Why learning ability? Think of the constant descriptions of indicators of animal intelligence (rats and mazes, birds and feed-hoppers filled when buttons pressed, apes and block-building to get a banana) all are instances where they have demonstrated the ability to learn in the abstract to obtain some 'rewarding' outcome. Are humans any different except in that our 'rewards' may be more insubstantial than a banana?

Why not applied? Because the numbers of intelligent failures (including, I like to think, myself) is legion. Whilst success may be an indicator of intelligence I think it is, reliably, more an indicator of luck (whilst intelligence may increase a persons ability to recognise when a set of circumstances are in their best interests, it isn't exclusive either way).

YMMV

[JK]

Have your spies out and about David? This post seems curiously timed.

[Hank]

David

A good point to remeber when discussing this subject is one Dr. Murray from the previous post makes amny times in many ways.

Average is the 50% point.

"Stupid" is about the 2 or 3% point. Which is to say 97 or 98& of the population are intelligent enough to live reasonably happy and prosperous lives without special help.

What annoys him to no end is the many people who think below average means they are to stupid to be useful.

http://eclecticmeanderings.blogspot.com/>Hank’s Eclectic Meanderings

[David Duff]

The other point worth consideration is that the very worst sort of error occurs when you make a really well thought-out, 'intelligent' mistake. History is littered with examples! The Schlieffen plan being the one that leaps instantly to my mind.

Also, and my last example prompts this further thought, it is absolutely essential to apply one's intelligence to deciding if there is a real problem in the first place, never mind solving it!