What exactly IS intelligence?
According to Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary, it is defined as follows:
\In*tel"li*gence\, n.[F. intelligence, L. intelligentia, intellegentia. See Intelligent.]
1. The act or state of knowing; the exercise of the understanding.
2. The capacity to know or understand; readiness of comprehension; the intellect, as a gift or an endowment.
3. Information communicated; news; notice; advice.
4. Knowledge imparted or acquired, whether by study, research, or experience; general information.
6. An intelligent being or spirit; -- generally applied to pure spirits; as, a created intelligence. --Milton.
Syn: Understanding; intellect; instruction; advice; notice; notification; news; information; report.
Thank God we have dictionaries. Because otherwise, I might be confused as to just what exactly intelligence is supposed to be.
I grew up among peers for whom intelligence was the desired trait, the coin of the realm as it were, as opposed to strength or beauty. Amongst the Geeks, intelligence is the first measure of prowess, not how well you do at sports or how many beer cans you can crush against your head.
So why then do I find myself wondering if I, or the people I know, are actually smart at ALL?
Allow me to illustrate:
I knew a guy in junior high who was classified as Gifted. IQ of 170. Read LATIN so that he could read the classics in their original language. Yet he was an outcast. Had no dress sense, no ability to talk to people (unless you engaged him in a topic he already had some knowledge of, of which there were precious few of relevance to other teenagers) and was generally in that hyperkinetic class of people adolescents used to refer to as "a spaz."
Another guy, this time in high school. Also incredibly gifted. Painfully shy, to the point of having people wonder if he was mute. Hung out in Auto Mechanics and dressed all head-bangery in order to remain invisible. Incapable of functioning.
A girl. Scientist. Won awards for it; had a stutter and also a lispy speech impediment that she couldn't seem to correct. Also dressed in Geek Chic. No self-esteem. It was like there was a glass wall surrounding her; like she was in the room but unable to interact with anyone "outside."
Flash forward to more recent times. Geek has, in fact, become chic-- but that doesn't mean that real geeks have THEMSELVES become more socially or life-experientially adroit.
I know physicists. Geologists. Engineers. Designers. People who by any definition are brilliant at what they do. Who excel in the realms of imagination and application of their ideas-- within the parameters of their chosen fields.
THERE's the crux of this entry, Agents.
Is someone who is brilliant in one area of their lives, and all but developmentally retarded in others truly intelligent?
If a person who knows everything about computers but is incapable of presenting themselves as attractive to a potential mate smart at ALL? And if the answer's yes, what good is it doing them as a human being if they don't understand-- if they don't know-- how to make themselves happy?
And, conversely, what about those people who seem adaptable to any social situation, who are the life of the party, but don't have any formal education and are of a shallow intelligence that merely borders on average? Smart people might call them stupid, but they have a life, and pleasures, that the so-called intelligentsia of my experience are craving but can never seem to achieve.
So what is intelligence, if you want something but can't figure out how to get it?
Social intelligence seems to me to be the most survival-oriented adaptive form of smart; in our industrialized culture, one needs it to be able to progress in this human community. Because it's other humans that we have to live with; being computer-savvy won't help you get along with the other kids.
And yet, if one doesn't have the intelligence that allows one to excel in the job arena-- the skills that one uses in this modern-day nine-to-five hunter-gathering that we call life-- all the social skills in the world aren't going to put food in one's mouth.
So what is intelligent? If you have money and a great job and are still single at the age of thirtysomething, are you stupid? If you have a wife and three kids, your own home, but are hauling garbage or working in road repair at that same age, are you classified as intelligent?
How exactly do we measure this property?
I'm a social guy, an observer of people. I was also classified as "gifted." And yet I never graduated high school. I went to university but dropped out after one semester and never got a degree. I'm married, one child. I act, I write, I design websites, I do voice-over work.
Am I intelligent? I think so. Do other people?
My last IQ test scored me at 137. It's still qualified as "genius" although in Grade 10 I scored 180.
God, can you LOSE intelligence?
Here's how I view it: Be as smart as you like in your chosen realm of expertise; if you can't diversify, if you can't break out of the single stream of intelligence or experience that you're currently in, then as I see it you are not possessed of true intelligence. You're more what I would call a savant, extraordinarily gifted along a limited line but an idiot in other respects.
I ran into my junior high friend with the 170 IQ the other day. Studying XML, making notes to himself. Pretty heavy stuff. He was wearing the same style of clothes as he was in junior high; as we spoke his body language was still jerky, spasmodic; his attempts to emote in his speech were sporadic.
Intelligent? All his life he's been told he was. So how come no one ever told him how to fit in? God knows it would have made it easier on him. And, if he were truly intelligent, wouldn't he use that brainpower to figure out how to fit in? If he could, one would think he'd have done it by now.
So to all my smart friends: Before you go presenting "smart" on your resume, take a step back and ask yourself if you really are. Because nothing looks LESS intelligent than a smart person with nothing to say.
Posted by Agent M at January 12, 2004 10:19 AMI think intelligence is the ability to think along new patterns, to innovate. Being good at computers (or anything else) is a sign of aptitude, not intelligence.
Posted by: Mike on January 12, 2004 11:26 AMAh, a favorite topic of mine.
You are talking about the people I consider to have one breath taking jewel in a rhine stone and pewter crown. They are immeniently capable of innovation...in that one area. The mathematician who can't walk down the stairs without tripping.
You can not take away, diminish the value, from the amazing brain that brought us the ability to understand the nature of time simply because he could not dress himself or brush his hair.
Almost a functional autism.
We are too caught up in the single measure system of intelligence. I'd like to introduce you to the Multiple Intelligences theory.
http://www.thomasarmstrong.com/multiple_intelligences.htm
The oddball in the world of intelligence isn't the one's with the ability to do math but nothing else. They trip down the stairs every day due not to poor self-esteem (though I'm sure that it adds to it), but due to a complete lack of spatial ability. Just because that person can make statistics into living objects of information doesn't mean that a blue print doesn't give them the urge to cry in frustration.
It is the people that score nothing but above average and more in every category of intelligence. Notice that SOCIAL interaction is its very own category.
Or the person who can finesse every social situation, but isn't more than average or worse in everything else is indeed a type of genius. Usually called a very sucessful salesperson.
Can you develop other forms of intelligence? Yes. But you should be realistic. To teach that social misfit to "fit in" could be as difficult or more as you would find learning how to rotate, move, and map 2 dimensional colliding objects inside of a 4 dimensional grid IN YOUR HEAD from nothing but a string of equations.
You could learn it. Probably. One day.
Does it make you not a smart person that you might never actually be able to do so, regardless of trying?
Not that I do not share your frustration with the terminally socially stupid. Unfortuneately for them their breeding capacity is limited due to the nature of their problem. We may be programmed to be frustrated with them. Afterall, as a strategy for continued genetic lineage, social mal-adaption is probably the one area that will be consistently problematic in almost any culture. Fewer children for them. Even in cultures where marriages are arranged, the other partner will probably limit their time and intimacy with someone that annoys them.
In other words, over time the social intelligence factor of all the intelligences has no choice but to trend up over successive generations.
Also, since intelligences can be seperated and our genetic construct as an animal requires that "maverick" genetic constructs occur, one of the safest ways for our genetic code to test out a maverick intelligence factor combined with other all the other genetic factors is to combine it with a social mal-adaption.
If a maverick trait can get by a social mal-adaption, then it probably has enough going for it not to be lost to our genetic pool. If it gets by often enough it will have no choice but to end up into the non-social mal-adapted pool and be propagated over time.
Basically, it would serve an individual well to be rid of the social intelligence being a bad trait, but it wouldn't serve us as a race very well.
Posted by: BrandiMommyGal on January 12, 2004 12:18 PMIntelligence. Kind of an intangible topic to get a firm grip on.
I view it this way.
Intelligence is one thing.
WISDOM, on the other hand, is something else entirely.
One might be gifted with a wondrous intellect, but be lacking in the wisdom to take full advantage of their mental endowment.
WISDOM:
1. The quality of being wise; knowledge, and the capacity to make due use of it; knowledge of the best ends and the best means; discernment and judgment; discretion; sagacity; skill; dexterity.
2. The results of wise judgments; scientific or practical truth; acquired knowledge; erudition.
Just because one HAS an immense capacity for knowledge, doesn't mean that one knows how to make USE of that knowledge.
At least, that is my personal viewpoint on the matter.
Now, on a related matter, how does one explain a savant? The APTITUDE or skill is there, possibly in spades, but is the intellect?
Or perhaps, as Brandi pointed out, "intelligence" isn't simply one trait, but many? Perhaps this could be viewed almost as a form of chart, with peaks and valleys? In which case, a "savant" would have one immense "peak" on an otherwise "blank" chart? I think this is a rather fascinating way of looking at it.
By the way Mike, I disagree with your viewpoint of "aptitude". With the exception of the aforementioned savants, I would say that in order for one to develop a skill, yes, there must be an aptitude for such a skill. But *developing* that aptitude to it's fullest extent requires intelligence, don't you think? (I am, of course, referring to mental skills, such as math, science, computers, whatever. Physical skills are a different beast.)
Neat topic!!!!
ACK!