Intelligence is hard to define. We think of it as one thing, but it has so many different parts: verbal ability, spatial ability, memory, pattern recognition, logic, social judgement, artistic ability, lateral thinking, intuition, musical ability…the list goes on and on. Some scholars, like Howard Gardner, famously argue that there’s not one intelligence, but many.
But as a teacher once told me, if you want a single umbrella to cover ALL of intelligence, then it’s the ability to adapt; to take whatever situation you’re in and turn it around to your advantage. That’s really what intelligence is, he asserted. I like this definition because it integrates all the different parts of intelligence into a coherent system. It also has common sense appeal. If you turn a situation to your advantage (negotiate a good business deal) people will praise you for being clever. If you turn a situation to your disadvantage (drive your new car into a tree) people will immediately call you an idiot.
We even have sayings like “if you’re so smart, why aren’t you rich?” and “a fool and his money are soon parted.” These sayings make the point that smart people turn life to their advantage; dump people do the opposite. Further, if a scientist invents a cure for a disease or some new technology, he has provided a great advantage to all of humanity and it praised as a major genius.
Finally, brain size roughly tripled in the last 4 million years of human evolution, so intelligence was clearly an adaptive advantage in even the evolutionary sense of the term.
The ability to adapt situations to our advantage is why humans are considered the most intelligent animal. Despite having so many disadvantages (we lack fur, strength, speed, claws, sharp teeth, wings) we were able to adapt the world to our advantage. We didn’t have fur, so we created fur coats. We didn’t have claws, so we created knives. We couldn’t run fast, so we created cars. We didn’t have wings, so we invented airplanes etc. We were able to use plants to our advantage (agriculture) and animals to our advantage (domestication) and subdue and capture animals like gorillas who are many times our size and strength.
So despite being such a weak disadvantaged animal, our freakishly large brains allowed us to become the most powerful and prosperous animal on the planet.
However there are problems with the above definition of intelligence. For one, if you define intelligence as “turning situations to your advantage” it sounds like you’re saying sociopathic opportunists are intelligent and martyrs are stupid. As comic Bill Maher recently said “to cowards, courage always looks like stupidity.”
My rebuttal to this criticism is that if you’re a good person, then being selfish is not to your advantage, because, to quote the Bible “For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?” The problem is unless you know what motivates another person, it’s sometimes hard to judge whether their behavior is adaptive or maladaptive. The cost/benefit analysis would vary from person to person making this definition abstract and subjective.
Another problem with this definition (as commenter “Swanknasti” stated) is that in biology, the term adaptive specifically means advancing your genes, while in the context of defining intelligence, adaptive behavior is probably behavior that advances your goals. The two definitions are related though, because we evolved feelings (fear, hunger, love, tribalism, jealousy, etc) that motivate us to pursue goals that advance our survival and the survival of our family and race, but many smart people lack these primitive motivations causing their behavior to appear maladaptive to a biologist.
A third problem with this definition, as commenter “godslayer” pointed out is that a lot of unintelligent animals (i.e. cockroaches) are highly adaptive so it seems wrong to equate intelligence with adaptability. While cockroaches are well adapted physically, they lack a mental ability to adapt their behavior.
But godslayer exposes the need to be more precise in how intelligence is defined. Perhaps the most precise definition of intelligence was offered by scientist Arthur Jensen who wrote (emphasis mine):
“The term ‘intelligence,’ then, would apply only to the whole class of processes or operating principles of the nervous system that make possible the behavioral functions that mediate the organism’s adaptation to its environment, such as stimulus apprehension, perception, attention, discrimination, stimulus generalization, learning, learning-set acquisition, remembering, thinking (e.g., seeing relationships), and problem solving
Even though Jensen seemed to agree that intelligence was about adaptation, he wanted psychologists to stop using the word “intelligence”, writing:
I find it pointless to talk about intraspecies individual differences in “intelligence” as I have defined it. …the word ‘intelligence’ in this broad generic sense causes confusion in discussing individual differences in humans, as I hypothesize that all biologically normal humans possess the same intelligence in the sense in which I have defined it, but they show quantitative differences in these functions, which are best described behaviorally in terms of independent latent variables, or factors.
Other scientists that emphasized adaptability when defining intelligence include Stephen Hawking who said “intelligence is the ability to adapt to change” and scholar Robert Sternberg defined intelligence as “the ability to adapt to the environment, or modify the environment, or seek out and create new environments.”
Along similar lines, scholar David Wechsler said “intelligence is the capacity to understand the world and the resourcefulness to cope with its challenges.”
Abstract reasoning
Not all scientists emphasize adaptability when defining intelligence. Some emphasize abstract reasoning. But these are related. Abstract is the opposite of specific, which means if you can reason on a very abstract level, you can adapt to a wide range of environments instead of only one specific type. A major difference between humans and other animals is that animals have instinct which is useful in specific environments while intelligence is general enough to adapt to almost any situation.
”For one, if you define intelligence as “turning situations to your advantage” it sounds like you’re saying sociopathic opportunists are intelligent and martyrs are stupid. As comic Bill Maher recently said “to cowards, courage always looks like stupidity.” ”
You need understand that we live in social environments. This implies cooperation. Is not even moral, is logical and adaptative. Generally, objective morality IS based in logic or harmony, when we completing the pieces of puzzles. You can take situations to your advantage without try to do real bad things against other innocent people.
bill maher is a dement, like many of your peoplehood. Villainy can be understood as ”courage” but, earn money and ”eminence”, helped by parents, in a mediocre profession (lower creative castes), to say stupid things, is not courageous.
Real empathy is not to feel ”spiritually” the pain of others. Real empathy is a motivation to search the justice, correct treatment (death, ”sometimes” can be a good treatment), when you put literally in the place of other, you no need feel pseudo-pain (histerical emotion like many liberals to do), you only need think rationally, specifically when the person is innocent.
Bill Maher is another degenerate American White person. Regardless of class, most Americans are vulgar.
Extreme anti-liberals are quasi-always composed by half jews or jews. Public nominal ‘self’-suicide “white” people are in fact, MOST them, jews or extreme self-sacrifice stupid people. But, maher, is not a real White people because identity and love by its identity is a true identity. I say blacks are non-roots people. White people are the same, because lamstream merdia is not a White occult “majority” media but money- satan media. Whites need re-build its own culture to survive demographically and spiritually.
maher is not a perfect person to say about courage.
Some people can solve difficult problems if they put their minds to it, and often do it best when there is no reward expected. They lack the drive to seek out and overcome challenges and prefer to expend as little energy as possible. What do you call them.
Most people are lazy. Whites seem to have a knack to be curious and do things with a passion, without any extrinsic reward.
exactly!
If your only goal is to become rich, you will never achieve it.
I would call them intelligent. They achieve few rewards, but they also spend very little energy or effort. Their behavior is adaptive if it achieves a low cost/benefit ratio, which by definition is to their advantage. Most people define success only in terms of the benefits (i.e. money, power, prestige), but you also have to look at the costs (physical and emotional).
Even though I believe getting as rich as possible is a very smart thing to do (assuming you don’t have to violate your ethics to get there); I also agree with Marilyn Vos Savont who said your time is worth infinitely more than your money.
adapt to what?
generic “ability to adapt” is just a sting of words not a thing.
Adapt your behavior to your advantage
but pp would claim that humans have changed their behavior to adapt to their environment.
fine. but that was millennia ago. now humans must adapt to the man made environment.
AND
while intelligence pp would like to be a trait of individuals, adaptation to the natural environment millennia ago was collective not individual.
pp is so full of crap.
if you’re not a sociopath getting rich is merely a consequence of achieving you legitimate goals.
those who have getting rich per se as a goal are necessarily sociopaths. those who have getting rich as a goal so that they may use their riches for good things are sociopaths.
the motivation for great industrialists like Henry Ford isn’t the money. and this is why economic freedom is so important. there were no Fords in the Soviet Union. but there also weren’t any Thomas Lees.
that is,
a moral person wants to achieve something real. if business is the best way to do it, he goes into business. if it isn’t, he doesn’t.
he gets rich as a consequence of achieving his goals not as a consequence of having getting rich as a goal.
if getting rich for its own sake or as a means to some other end is one of your goals, you will necessarily violate any morality you have, if you have any.
getting rich is NOT a moral goal. so it will inevitable conflict with moral goals.
he may have been bullshitting, but David Rockefeller was asked by Charlie Rose what his grandfather thought his greatest accomplishment was. Charlie Rose is a prole so he asked, “Was it the charity?”
David Rockefeller said it was the consolidation of a fragmented oil industry and the resulting economies of scale and reduction of price. And that’s a moral achievement.
So if someone wants to get rich so they can give money to charity, that’s not moral?
You work hard, save up money, and then donate it all to the election campaign of George W Bush. Is that moral? Is charity moral if you tell people that you are the donor?
the ends don’t always justify the means. sometimes they do. sometimes they don’t. but there’s no need to compromise.
if you want to get rich you won’t unless you cheat.
if you want to make the world a better place through business, you’re much more likely to get rich.
but there are many other ways to make the world a better place which pay less. medical scientists usually make much less than clinicians. Alexander Fleming was never rich.
I know of nothing more despicable and pathetic than a man who devotes all the hours of the waking day to the making of money for money’s sake.
I believe the power to make money is a gift of God … to be developed and used to the best of our ability for the good of mankind.
Propaganda was always lucrative, and our capitalists have figured that out by now, especially taking money from women.
Organic food is the biggest scam so far in the West that has gotten any flak none whatsoever. Simple, the logic that people are willing to pay for bottled water that is no different from your faucet leak is what I’m talking about.
scholar David Wechsler said “intelligence is the capacity to understand the world and the resourcefulness to cope with its challenges.”
I’ve always defined intelligence similarly, if more crudely, as the ability to figure things out and get stuff done. Though one should realize there is no “right” and “wrong” in the universe. So pure intelligence is completely neutral and objective. Morality and ethics are the product of a psychology that is both heritable and environmental. So intelligent people are perfectly capable of acting in maladaptive and self-destructive ways depending on their psychological drives.
“it sounds like you’re saying sociopathic opportunists are intelligent and martyrs are stupid. “
Some are. Some aren’t.
FYI: Ravens are slightly smarter than crows.
So intelligent people are perfectly capable of acting in maladaptive and self-destructive ways depending on their psychological drives.
I define adaptive behavior as any behavior that advances your goal. So if your goal is self-destruction, then self-destructive behavior is not maladaptive in my humble opinion, but the goal itself is.
That’s how I resolve the paradox of smart people doing dumb things.
So if your goal is self-destruction, then self-destructive behavior is not maladaptive in my humble opinion, but the goal itself is.
I consider both a result of mental illness.
destructure has always expressed the view many times that all liberals are mentally ill, and the champagne socialists are especially nuts.
so it doesn’t really mean anything.
“FYI: Ravens are slightly smarter than crows.”
Ravens excel at matrices tests, as would be expected, but I’m not sure about arithmetics. Crows are known to be able to do simple addition and subtraction.
i’ve got an iq test for you if you play chess.
i’ve obtained winning positions vs Rybka a few times, but i couldn’t figure out how to get the 1-0 vs 1/2-1/2.
i’ll post the games if you’d like.
Do you know which Rybka? There are two you know. Maybe that’s why you’re drawing against them.
there’s more than two. how strong is the free version?
Ohh, I get it, I thought you were talking about the Rybka twins. I don’t know how strong the chess programs are. I like chess problems, so please share. Then you can assess my chess-iq.
here’s one: 1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 e6 3.Nc3 Bb4 4.Nf3 d5 5.e3 O-O 6.Bd2 c5 7.a3 Bxc3 8.Bxc3 cxd4 9.exd4 b6 10.b4 Ne4 11.Bb2 Bb7 12.c5 Qf6 13.Qc2 a5 14.b5 Rc8 15.c6 Bxc6 16.bxc6 Nxc6
I used to think chess was the ultimate measure of intelligence, because it’s all about adapting and turning the situation to your advantage. But the fact that chess performance can be so improved by study and that computers can play chess so brilliantly, forced me to rethink that idea.
the nature of reality is 180 degrees from satanist destructure’s pov.
right and wrong. good and evil. these are ultimate reality.
truth is more than correspondence. it is also usefulness. the truth or falsity of useless propositions is vacuous.
I have no idea whether you’re right or wrong about that, but moral absolutism is considered prole.
are you an Idealist? or a vulgar materialist?
Idealism has a long and distinguished history. even Chomsky has made remarks which can only be interpreted as idealist. he made them in a talk he gave in Norway. it’s on youtube somewhere.
Berkeley
Plato
Hegel
Whitehead
Marx (believe it or not)
Heidegger (perhaps)
Leibnitz
etc.
materialism is ultimately incoherent and meaningless. at the level of the atom what does one find? Platonic forms. the more science explains the more the phenomenal world is shown to be an Idea. really.
…and God saw that it was good
sometimes religion is criticized as wishful thinking.
but this is only a criticism for the confused. the facts of this world have been confused with ultimate reality. natural science is a tool for getting along in this world. and thus an idol is made of this world.
that is, the best argument for cosmic justice is that it is right that there should be such and wrong that there should not be and that right and wrong are real.
here it is if you’re interested.
considered by whom? you?
right and wrong. good and evil. these are…
figments of your imagination. you believe what you believe to be good and true not because it’s rational but simply because you believe it. your beliefs are self destructive and maladaptive. nature will do to you what it does with every defect.
nature will kill destructure too. is destructure a defect?
in fact nature has killed 15 people for every 1 living person and > 99% of all species which have ever existed.
you should thank me for deigning to respond to you.
adaptive or maladaptive?
he tried to kill Hitler, so he was executed. but…
so this is the end?
no!
a paraphrase of kant:
because we cannot ensure that virtue always leads to happiness, there must be a higher power who has the power to create an afterlife where virtue can be rewarded by happiness.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_morality#Practical_Reason
kant was a biological failure. he was short and never married nor left his home town, but he has been an intellectual father to thousands.
Ha! Great comment about Can’t.
Western Civilization’s modern day social construct has failed for one reason:
It ignored the medieval philosophical tradition of proving God exists with his immateriality, for the sake of “feel good for the moment” secularism.
indeed the schoolmen are given short shrift by contemporary “philosophers”.
the medieval philosophers-theologians were serious people, much more serious than later “theologians”. they weren’t literalists at all. try Johannes Scotus Eriugena, for example.
American proles have given Christianity a bad name.
“destructure has always expressed the view many times that all liberals are mentally ill,”</i?
Mental illness can be defined by self destructive and maladaptive ideas and behaviors.
nature will kill destructure too. is destructure a defect?
Not in my lifetime. HA! Rumours of my future death are greatly exaggerated. I see no reason to presume that Nature will kill me any more than it snuffed out that first divine spark which began over 4 billion years ago. It continues to this day. However, it doesn’t continue through every path. Nature has many ways of eliminating defectives. Your affliction is but one of them.
natural science is a tool for getting along in this world. and thus an idol is made of this world.
So your religious views are at odds with a system of knowledge that relies on empirical observation and reason. Good luck with that.
i have no specifically religious views.
i am as irreligious as it gets.
but at the same time, to use a cliche,
There are more things in heaven and earth, destructure,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
metal illness on display.
metal illness on display.
you should get a t-shirt that says that and wear it all the time
with an arrow pointing to “destructure”.
56% of philosophers agree with ME that you are a moron.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_realism
you’ll also like this:
Cognitive psychologist Steven Pinker has argued that the game theoretic advantages of ethical behavior support the idea that morality is “out there” in a certain sense (as part of the evolutionary fitness landscape).[16] Journalist Robert Wright has similarly argued that natural selection moves sentient species closer to moral truth as time goes on.
everyone who destructure disagrees with is mentally ill
there’s no surer sign that destructure is mentally ill.
“56% of philosophers agree with ME that you are a moron.”
No. They don’t. I said that right and wrong, good and evil were figments of your imagination. I don’t doubt you imagine them any more than I doubt you dream, feel emotions or experience schizophrenic hallucinations. Your dreams, emotions and hallucinations are similarly figments of your imagination. They’re both a product of how your brain is wired and functions or, in your case, miswired and malfunctions. Your psychology even affects how you behave. Morality is only “real” in the sense that thoughts, feelings and hallucinations are real.
Are there consequences to behaving in one way or another? Of course. I don’t disagree with those quotes by Pinker or Wright. In fact, I very much agree with them. I’m not denying that ideas (or hallucinations) can have consequences nor am I denying that you ascribe value judgements to them such as right and wrong, good and evil. What I’m denying is that your value judgements exist outside of your imagination. The universe doesn’t care what you think only what you do. Or to quote Einstein. “Morality is of the highest importance – but for us, not for God.”
Consider a computer program. The lines of code exist within the program. They may even produce some output given some input. But they don’t exist outside that program. Indeed, there may even be loops running within that program that produce no outputs. If you rewrote those lines of code and the computer stopped “believing” them then they wouldn’t exist at all. As Phillip K Dick observed, “Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away.”
PS: You should actually thank me for “deigning to respond” to your trolls. I do it for my own edification and that of others. Not because I see you as anything other than a sad and lonely jester. That’s the truth.
denial of reality is another sign of mental illness.
One study found that 56% of philosophers accept or lean towards moral realism (28%: anti-realism; 16%: other).[3] Some notable examples of robust moral realists include David Brink,[4] John McDowell, Peter Railton,[5] Geoffrey Sayre-McCord,[6] Michael Smith, Terence Cuneo,[7] Russ Shafer-Landau,[8] G.E. Moore,[9] John Finnis, Richard Boyd, Nicholas Sturgeon,[10] Thomas Nagel, Derek Parfit.
Moral realism (also ethical realism) is the position that ethical sentences express propositions that refer to objective features of the world (that is, features independent of subjective opinion)…
i’m sad, lonely, a jester, retarded, gay, mentally ill, a blithering idiot, a Stalinist, …what else?
projection isn’t just a river in Egypt.
esse est percipi.
what is in principle unobservable or imperceptible does not exist.
Dick’s reality is a figment of your imagination.
As Waugh said:
“I have left behind illusion,” I said to myself. “Henceforth I live in a world of three dimensions – with the aid of my five senses.” I have since learned that there is no such world; but then, as the car turned out of sight of the house, I thought it took no finding, but lay all about me at the end of the avenue.
a description of whatever as “reality” is a moral judgement.
valuing adaptability or valuing having lots of kids is a moral value.
that is, talk of “reality” or “illusion” is logically preceded by moral judgements.
Once Zhuang Zhou dreamed he was a butterfly, a fluttering butterfly. What fun he had, doing as he pleased! He did not know he was Zhou. Suddenly he woke up and found himself to be Zhou. He did not know whether Zhou had dreamed he was a butterfly or a butterfly had dreamed he was Zhou.
a conservative blogger on….Chomsky on the “mind-body problem”.
http://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2010/06/chomsky-on-mind-body-problem.html
“One study found that 56% of philosophers accept or lean towards moral realism (28%: anti-realism; 16%: other).”
Many of those 56% even disagree with one another. However, few of them would disagree with my opinion as described on this thread. Not that it would matter. Reality is not determined by a show of hands even if those hands belong to philosophers.
Still, you mentioned Pinker and Wright as examples of those disagreeing with me. What you quoted did not disagree with me at all. I very much agree with their quotes. The ideas they described are completely compatible with my own.
Dick’s reality is a figment of your imagination.
Dick’s perception of reality may exist. And something may exist as a figment of my imagination. But reality is not subjective.
a description of whatever as “reality” is a moral judgement.
A description need not be a moral judgement. To say something is “hot” is an implied comparison. To say something is “green” describes the wavelength of light which an object reflects. In either case, it is a statement of fact and not a moral judgement. Regardless, reality exists whether described or not.
valuing adaptability or valuing having lots of kids is a moral value.
I’ve never said otherwise. The instinct for self preservation is likewise a moral judgement. Those who lack it are statistically less likely to survive. Therefore, Nature will select for those with an instinct for self preservation. That is what Pinker means when he “argued that the game theoretic advantages of ethical behavior support the idea that morality is ‘out there’ in a certain sense (as part of the evolutionary fitness landscape)”. Similarly, that is what Wright means when he “argued that natural selection moves sentient species closer to moral truth as time goes on.” My previous comment is completely compatible with Pinker and Wright.
What I’ve said is that Nature doesn’t care what you think is right and wrong. good and evil. These are figments of your imagination ie, psychology, brain structures, experiences, etc. Those figments may induce you to act one way or another. But Nature or “God” doesn’t care. There’s no evidence of heaven or hell waiting at the end of the rainbow. That’s not to say heaven or hell don’t exist. Of course they exist — as figments of your imagination. Just like your ideas of right and wrong, good and evil.
Nature is a bitch. that is, this world is a bitch.
duh!
but why should this world be the only one? the multiverse interpretation of QM has gained a lot of serious adherents.
but this world isn’t all evil. i sympathize with Blake:
Tyger Tyger, burning bright,
In the forests of the night;
What immortal hand or eye,
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?…
I looked at your chess-game R.G.Mugabe, white is in a bad shape. Rc1?! How much time did you have in the game?
i don’t see it. that’s how much i suck. bishop vs two pawns is all i see,
“destructure has always expressed the view many times that all liberals are mentally ill,”
Mental illness can be defined by self destructive and maladaptive ideas and behaviors.
nature will kill destructure too. is destructure a defect?
Not in my lifetime. HA! Rumours of my future death are greatly exaggerated. I see no reason to presume that Nature will kill me any more than it snuffed out that first divine spark which began over 4 billion years ago. It continues to this day. However, it doesn’t continue through every path. Nature has many ways of eliminating defectives. Your affliction is but one of them.
natural science is a tool for getting along in this world. and thus an idol is made of this world.
So your religious views are at odds with a system of knowledge that relies on empirical observation, experimentation and reason. Good luck with that.
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One other for the HBD deniers to contend with, the fact that self-efficacy is genetic.
http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&aid=8920724&fileId=S183242741300025X
http://www.timothy-judge.com/Judge,%20Jackson,%20et%20al.pdf
Also the fact that individual differences in genetic self-efficacy accounts for sex and race differences in outcomes is further blow to anti-HBD crowd. I doubt you have any response of substance.
It’s almost like you don’t even notice the fact that each time you make one of these posts, it is shown to be near nonsense.
Oh look a twin study. Look at that, assuming that the correl between twins automatically = genotype rather than shared environment.
And if we look at the twins reared apart studies, it turns out that the ‘e’ variance was much smaller than imagined. And if apartness is less, than shared environment increases, i.e. both were in 50k+ homes, both were in decent schools, both….
So…yawn.