As I’ve discussed, my views on intelligence have been strongly influenced by a science teacher I had when I was young who felt that while intelligence has many different parts (memory, pattern recognition etc), the single umbrella that covers all of intelligence is the mental ability to adapt; to take whatever situation you’re in, and turn it around to your advantage.
However this definition is vague, and open to many different interpretations. Of course most abstract concepts have vague ambiguous definitions; what makes them scientific is measurement. Once you can measure something, you can simply define it in terms of how it’s measured. This is known as operational definition; the typical example being defining weight as the number that appears when you stand on a scale. Indeed, a psychologist infamously defined intelligence as whatever intelligence tests test.
While I do believe IQ tests measure many of the most important parts of intelligence, and do measure the ability to adapt to many kinds of challenges, they are still too simplistic and narrow to capture an entity as vast and multifaceted as intelligence. I don’t think it’s even scientifically possible to measure intelligence as my science teacher defined it.
But if it were possible; here’s what I imagine the test would look like: Life. The perfect test of intelligence is just the way you live life. But here’s the catch. Not your life only. Intelligence is how well you could live everyone’s life. And everything’s life. Everywhere in the world. In every world that life can exist.
So here’s how the test would work. A scientist would bring me into a lab and say “Pumpkin Person; you’ve had a moderately successful life as an IQ obsessed man living in modern Canada; now we want to see how successful your life would be as a beautiful sociopathic extroverted cheerful girl born to billionaire parents. Don’t worry, you get to keep all your cognitive abilities, but you’ll have a totally different body, social background, and location, and totally different drives, personality, motives, and emotions. This will tell us how well your intelligence functions under totally different circumstances”
After 80 years living as a sociopathic rich girl, I die, but return to get my test results.
“You did quite well,” the scientist tell me. “You lived 78 years of pure pleasure (physically and emotionally) and only 2 years of pain and suffering; a net score of 76. You really turned that situation to your advantage.”
“Well it wasn’t hard to turn it to my advantage,” I reply. “I had every advantage already. I was rich and beautiful, and since I was a sociopath, I didn’t even feel guilty about it. And on top of that, I had the type of personality that feels happy, even when terrible things happen, which they didn’t. Life was pure pleasure, no pain.”
“Yes,” the scientist replies. “Most people find that life pretty easy to adapt to. Let’s see how well you can adapt to another life. Computer, randomly generate a new life out of the data base of all lives ever lived anywhere in the universe.”
In my next life I am a snake slithering around. I have no hands so my spatial IQ is useless for making tools. I can’t speak and there’s no one to speak to, so my verbal IQ is largely useless too. I have a strong sense of smell and use this to guide me to food, but my human intelligence did not evolve to make sense of smells so this sense is almost useless to me. I starve to death almost immediately. I was not able to adapt to that life, but the scientist informs me that most humans suck even worse at that subtest, so my score was still relatively high.
After several dozen lives as creatures in other galaxies, I get to be a modern First World human on Eath again. But this time, I’m born a genetically morbidly obese man suffering from genetic depression who is addicted to constantly eating junk food, and who dreams of being a sprinter in the Olympics and is obsessed with having sex with supermodels. I drop dead of a heart attack at age 30.
“You weren’t able to adapt that life to your advantage,” the scientist informs me. “You only lived 30 years, and only a total of one year of that time was pleasure (the combined time you spent eating pizza). The rest were pain and suffering. A net score of NEGATIVE 29.”
“That life was hard to adapt to,” I explain, “because my constant desire for food made me way too fat to achieve my desire for super models an athletic success. The only time I felt pleasure was when I was eating. Perhaps had I eaten even more pizza, my score would have been a lot higher. I would have died sooner, but at least I would have enjoyed my short time on Earth. In the end, what else is there?”
The scientist takes the total of my scores on each life and converts it into an IQ equivalent.
Pumpkin Person 
in·tel·li·gence
inˈteləjəns/
noun
1.
the ability to acquire and apply knowledge and skills.
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Why are you trying to redefine intelligence when it is already clearly defined?
Intelligence has nothing to do with happiness or success or adaptability.
If an organism was born without any limbs but was just basically a giant brain incapable of moving around and needed to be kept alive with various machines and humans to take care of him.
But was capable of solving all 7 of the millennium math problems in less than a day 99% of the human population would agree that said organism was intelligent.
the ability to acquire and apply knowledge and skills.
The key word is “apply”. The dictionary defines “apply” as:
a :to put to use especially for some practical purpose (i.e. applies pressure to get what he wants)
So intelligence is the ability to use knowledge to get what you want. In other words, the mental ability to adapt; turn situations to your advantage
Why are you trying to redefine intelligence when it is already clearly defined?
I’m not redefining it. I’m interpreting the definition from different perspectives & trying to integrate those perspectives
Intelligence has nothing to do with happiness or success or adaptability.
Brain size tripled in the last 4 million years of our natural selection so it has everything to do with adaptability & success.
A common expression is “if you’re so smart, why aren’t you rich?”
In other words, if you’re so good at applying knowledge, why can’t you apply it to get what you want?
Now having said all that, some of the greatest geniuses were poor, maladaptive & miserable.
That’s a paradox that needs to be resolved & i try to resolve it by saying that even though geniuses are better problem solvers, they have many more problems to solve
If an organism was born without any limbs but was just basically a giant brain incapable of moving around and needed to be kept alive with various machines and humans to take care of him.
But was capable of solving all 7 of the millennium math problems in less than a day 99% of the human population would agree that said organism was intelligent.
I would agree too. Intelligence is cognitive adaptability, but mental adaptations are useless if you don’t have a body that can translate thoughts into behaviour.
But if you are good at math, you are good at logic, & logic helps you adapt to any situation because all situations are logical on some level
If you are good at math you are good at abstract reasoning. If you can reason abstractly you can reason at the most general level which is adaptive in virtually all situations (by definition)
Mathematics has solved some of humanity’s biggest problems, giving us many advantages
It is for these reasons that math talent reflects adaptability & is considered so intelligent
If you are good at math you are good at abstract reasoning. If you can reason abstractly you can reason at the most general level which is adaptive in virtually all situations (by definition)
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Then that is intelligence. you defined it. A person who scores well on IQ or ‘g’ can master both verbal and quantitative intelligence because both require this ‘g’ factor, which is why it’s quite uncommon, for example, to see lopsided SAT scores.
it isn’t “quite uncommon” in my experience.
but contra Prof Shoe i knew only one instance of high V mediocre M, whereas the high M mediocre V was very common in my hs.
Then that is intelligence. you defined it. A person who scores well on IQ or ‘g’ can master both verbal and quantitative intelligence because both require this ‘g’ factor, which is why it’s quite uncommon, for example, to see lopsided SAT scores.
As santoculto likes to say, multiple perspectives. Intelligence can be defined at different levels of analysis. At the behavioral level, it’s adaptation; turning situations to your advantage (aka problem solving).
At the mental level, it’s largely the g factor, or abstract reasoning.
And at the biological level it’s brain size, nerve conduction velocity, brain glucose metabolic efficiency, brain waves, and degree of myelination around nerve cell axons.
You’re also suffering from the same problem. There are too many confounds between understanding and action for action to be included in the definition of intelligence.
‘Brain size tripled in the last 4 million years of our natural selection so it has everything to do with adaptability & success.’
Brain size/intelligence correl is weak and domain-specific.
‘But if you are good at math, you are good at logic, & logic helps you adapt to any situation because all situations are logical on some level
If you are good at math you are good at abstract reasoning. If you can reason abstractly you can reason at the most general level which is adaptive in virtually all situations (by definition)’
These are ‘just so,’ suppositions. Many people who are ‘good at math’ are good at logic within the context of math. Witness countless of engineers make retarded political and economical arguments.
You’re also suffering from the same problem. There are too many confounds between understanding and action for action to be included in the definition of intelligence.
Swank, if something is bothering you, you are motivated to take action. If you are intelligent enough to understand/learn/know the solution, you will take action to solve the problem, because by definition, a problem is something you’re motivated to solve. Thus there should be an extremely high correlation between intelligence and intelligent behavior, or to quote Forest Gump “stupid is, as stupid does.”
To give a simple example, if a fly is on your hand, and it’s bothering you (i.e. it’s a problem), and you are smart enough to understand that moving your hand will get it to fly off, you will take that action (or a functionally equivalent action). If you don’t take action, I can only conclude that you are 1) too stupid to understand how to solve the problem, 2) not bothered by the fly so there’s no problem to solve, or 3) physically paralyzed
Thus for virtually all biologically normal people, you can indeed define their intelligence from their actions, if you understand what motivates them..
Brain size/intelligence correl is weak and domain-specific.
It’s not weak or domain specific, but even if it were, the weaker the correlation, the more adaptive intelligence must have been. If even a weak proxy for intelligence like brain size tripled in just 4 million years, just imagine how much a strong measure of intelligence would have increased.
These are ‘just so,’ suppositions. Many people who are ‘good at math’ are good at logic within the context of math. Witness countless of engineers make retarded political and economical arguments.
There are always exceptions, but math is one of the most g loaded mental abilities, so by definition, it generally correlates well with all other mental abilities. The two most g loaded subtests on the WAIS-IV (figure weights, arithmetic) are mathematical.
‘If you are intelligent enough to understand/learn/know the solution, you will take action to solve the problem, because by definition, a problem is something you’re motivated to solve. ‘
This does not follow. An individual may know that he must lie to succeed and ‘fail to solve the problem.’ Seeing as how you like to trot out folksy sayings — that is why some people are called ‘booksmart’ and others are called ‘street smart.’ Who of those two has the higher IQ, though? Probably Mr. Booksmart.
Taking action is also a function of risk-taking as well as a suite of other personality traits = too many confounds.
You can measure actions, but it’s an imperfect measurement, and it’s not the actual trait.
‘It’s not weak or domain specific’
Highest I’ve ever seen is .3-.4, which isn’t that strong of a correlation. And it’s domain specific because larger brain size —> visio spatial.
‘There are always exceptions, but math is one of the most g loaded mental abilities’
Vocabulary has a higher g-loading. It’s not ‘exceptions.’ There are plenty of high M low V individuals. If we take the HBD view of Feynman, Richard Feynman was an example, only ‘super high’ versus ‘above average.’
‘even if it were, the weaker the correlation, the more adaptive intelligence must have been’
That’s assuming bigger brains were caused by more intelligence, which doesn’t seem to be the case. And if intelligence was selected on to that extent, the h^2 we observe in modern populations wouldn’t be as high. So whatever selection there was was likely weak (past mental retardation).
This does not follow. An individual may know that he must lie to succeed and ‘fail to solve the problem.’
If lying bothers her, then she doesn’t know how to solve the problem (lack of success) without creating another problem (guilt over telling lies). Substituting one problem for another is no solution. So she failed to solve the problem because she can’t think of a solution.
Seeing as how you like to trot out folksy sayings — that is why some people are called ‘booksmart’ and others are called ‘street smart.’ Who of those two has the higher IQ, though? Probably Mr. Booksmart.
Street smart people score lower than book smart people because:
1) IQ tests are not perfect measures of intelligence
2) A lot of what we call street smarts is not truly smarts, but just experience, personality, and opportunism.
3) The talents that make one street smart in one time and place may be useless in a different environment
4) Street smart people may be better at turning situations to their individual advantage, but book smart people are better at turning situations to society’s advantage, and the latter is a harder problem to solve and benefits far more people.
5) As you would say, street smart people are risk takers. If the risk pays off we call them geniuses. If it fails we call them idiots. So luck plays a big role in who gets to be considered street smart.
Taking action is also a function of risk-taking as well as a suite of other personality traits = too many confounds.
If you fail to act because you’re afraid of risks, then that means you weren’t smart enough to think of less risky alternative. So again, failure to act adaptively equals inability to know, understand or think of a solution to the problem. Now granted, the problem might be hard, but that just means you need to be extra smart to solve it, but either way, your actions directly reflect your intelligence
Highest I’ve ever seen is .3-.4, which isn’t that strong of a correlation. And it’s domain specific because larger brain size —> visio spatial.
0.3-0.4 is a moderate correlation; not weak. And this analysis says 0.5:
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0191886999002585
Vocabulary has a higher g-loading.
Traditionally vocabulary was the most g loaded subtest on the Wechsler, but as new subtests get added, that might be changing. On the WAIS-IV, vocab has a g loading of 0.74, Arithmetic 0.75 and Figure Weights 0.78:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3263563/
It’s not ‘exceptions.’ There are plenty of high M low V individuals. If we take the HBD view of Feynman, Richard Feynman was an example, only ‘super high’ versus ‘above average.’
And C.S. Lewis and H.P. Lovecraft are examples of super high V and average M.
That’s assuming bigger brains were caused by more intelligence, which doesn’t seem to be the case.
Really Swank? Selection for intelligence was not the primary cause of our brain size tripling in the last 4 million years of evolution? What was the primary cause?
And if intelligence was selected on to that extent, the h^2 we observe in modern populations wouldn’t be as high
Why not, Swank?
Oh, I missed the 4 million year add. Yes, that’s fine and reasonable as far as speculation goes. The problem comes with trying to extrapolate it to post-agricultural society.
So let’s clarify: brain size differences among current peoples do not account for much of the variation in intelligence.
But my point about h^2 remains the same. The level of ‘intelligence’ that has been strongly selected for is > retarded.
‘If lying bothers her, then she doesn’t know how to solve the problem (lack of success) without creating another problem (guilt over telling lies). Substituting one problem for another is no solution. So she failed to solve the problem because she can’t think of a solution. ‘
So then the solution is to become a sociopath…as I have already said.
‘And C.S. Lewis and H.P. Lovecraft are examples of super high V and average M.’
………..and?
This just proves my point. Good at X in this case does not mean good at Y.
1-5 about street smarts vs booksmarts is a lot of just-so/ad hoc. Again, understanding is the sine qua non. Take an activity that isn’t stereotypically associated with intelligence….like boxing. One person is a pro boxer and has superior athletic gifts. The next person understands boxing. You ask the first person how he wins, and he says ‘I just do what I do.’ You ask the second person how the first person wins, and he gives you a detailed rundown of exactly why. Who knows more about boxing? Who understands boxing better? Who is “smart” regarding boxing?
Oh, I missed the 4 million year add. Yes, that’s fine and reasonable as far as speculation goes. The problem comes with trying to extrapolate it to post-agricultural society.
So let’s clarify: brain size differences among current peoples do not account for much of the variation in intelligence.
But even today, populations with bigger brains have typically adapted; turned the situation to their advantage and have all the money and power. Populations with smaller brains are poor and powerless and suffer every day. They can’t adapt and have been historically exploited to the advantage of bigger brained peoples as slaves.
Now I’m sure you just think that’s a coincidence.
But my point about h^2 remains the same. The level of ‘intelligence’ that has been strongly selected for is > retarded.
I have no idea what your point about h^2 is.
So then the solution is to become a sociopath…as I have already said.
If she feels too guilty to lie to advance her career, then she’ll also feel too guilty to “become a sociopath” assuming that’s even possible. So no, that doesn’t solve the problem, it just creates a bigger one.
‘This just proves my point. Good at X in this case does not mean good at Y.
They’re just anecdotes Swank. The existence of outliers doesn’t change the fact that math talent is one of the most g loaded mental abilities.
Again, understanding is the sine qua non. Take an activity that isn’t stereotypically associated with intelligence….like boxing. One person is a pro boxer and has superior athletic gifts. The next person understands boxing. You ask the first person how he wins, and he says ‘I just do what I do.’ You ask the second person how the first person wins, and he gives you a detailed rundown of exactly why. Who knows more about boxing? Who understands boxing better? Who is “smart” regarding boxing?
The person who understands boxing is smarter, but he’s still not smart enough to win a fight given his inferior athletic talent, But when a weak uncoordinated nerd beats up a big strong athelete, the athlete looks stupid and the nerd looks smart. Everyone knows the athlete had the physical advantage, but the weaker person turned it around to his advantage. The ability to adapt.
‘Populations with smaller brains are poor and powerless and suffer every day. They can’t adapt and have been historically exploited to the advantage of bigger brained peoples as slaves.’
I don’t think this is even a coincidence because it isn’t even uniformly true.
‘I have no idea what your point about h^2 is.’
Genetically controlled traits that have been under strong selection pressure show low genetic variance. For example, the number of eyes you have.
‘If she feels too guilty to lie to advance her career, then she’ll also feel too guilty to “become a sociopath” assuming that’s even possible. So no, that doesn’t solve the problem, it just creates a bigger one.’
Becoming a sociopath would solve her problem, she’s just incapable of doing so. You are taking her incapability of discarding all moral pretense as the ‘failure to solve a problem.’ Probably because behavior, when viewed through the lens of ‘most adaptable,’ tends toward the most sociopathic behavior.
‘0.3-0.4 is a moderate correlation; not weak.’
I said the highest I have seen are .3-.4, which means that many were lower, i.e. weak on balance.
‘They’re just anecdotes Swank. The existence of outliers doesn’t change the fact that math talent is one of the most g loaded mental abilities.’
Chintzy IQ tests measure a very shallow degree of skill — as I have said numerous times. So, a high ‘arithmetic’ score does not make one ‘good at math.’ Having a high IQ score in any particular subtest — or even a lot of subtests — does not translate to being particularly talented in multiple, real-world skills. In fact, we see that the correl between the two is not particularly strong — .5.
‘The person who understands boxing is smarter, but he’s still not smart enough to win a fight given his inferior athletic talent’
….so?
He’s still smart. When you tie intelligence to adaptability, you just create room for confounds. If you’d assess his intelligence by his skill in the ring, you’d probably conclude he was an idiot.
There are abilities to obtain information (not quite intelligence), abilities to process information (intelligence), abilities to act based on certain levels of information (not intelligence), abilities to mimic in reality what one thinks in one’s mind (not intelligence), abilities to self-regulate emotional responses to one’s actions (not intelligence), and raw physical/athletic ability (not intelligence).
You are saying that intelligence is the result of all these processes working together (the organism ‘adapting’). It is not. It is one of many other traits that will determine how an organism responds. If you take a long around, you will realize that most people aren’t that adaptable, but they are ‘not that adaptable’ in millions of different ways. A nerd has high intelligence, but low athletic ability, low ability to act, low ability to mimic his imagined actions, etc. etc. A dumb jock has vice versa.
The people who we view as ‘most fit,’ tend to have ‘average’ or ‘above average’ (not extreme) in many of these traits. Think CEOs…..
That is why you must isolate the trait pre-action.
I don’t think this is even a coincidence because it isn’t even uniformly true.
But generally bigger brained races have exploited and taken advantage of smaller brained races. Big brained humans exploit and take advantage of small brained animals.
I said the highest I have seen are .3-.4, which means that many were lower, i.e. weak on balance.
The average of all the studies of MRI brain size-IQ studies is generally said to be 0.4. Some people have argued that the true correlation is much lower or much higher, depending on various methodological objections.
’Genetically controlled traits that have been under strong selection pressure show low genetic variance. For example, the number of eyes you have.
Variance is relative. The amount of variance in biologically normal humans is tiny compared to the full spectrum of animal brain power, or even primate brain power.
As for the rest of your post, we’re just looking at the issue from different perspectives.
When you see someone who is not sociopathic or athletic enough to win a fight, you say his behavior is maladaptive. I say, he just has a hard situation to adapt to.
In other words, much of what you categorize as “adaptive behavior”, I categorize as “the situation one must adapt to”
As santoculto says “everything is interpretation”
‘But generally bigger brained races have exploited and taken advantage of smaller brained races. Big brained humans exploit and take advantage of small brained animals.’
Oh, did the East Asians enslave Europeans? I wasn’t aware of this ever happening. Probably because it didn’t. The Europeans must have regretted coming to North America because they were immediately enslaved and exploited by the big brained Native Americans. Oh wait, that didn’t happen either. Remember that one time people in North Asia conquered whole peoples and were so smart that they held on to their empire? Oh wait, no they were too dumb to manage their fluke of an empire.
I know, I know anomalies.
‘The amount of variance in biologically normal humans is tiny compared to the full spectrum of animal brain power, or even primate brain power.’
It’s so ‘relative’ that in all of the traits we would expect strong selection to occur, there is low h^2. Number of eyes, number of ears, number of skulls, intelligence > retarded, coordination > disability, etc. etc. Almost all the variation we observe is either 1) rare genetic disorder or 2) environmental.
‘When you see someone who is not sociopathic or athletic enough to win a fight, you say his behavior is maladaptive. I say, he just has a hard situation to adapt to.’
And to say such is ridiculous. The reason why it’s hard for him to adapt to the situation is because ON BALANCE, he simply is maladaptive in many other ways. If you take two people who are equivalent on every single facet besides intelligence, then the one with higher intelligence will be more adaptive. However, the reason they will be more adaptive is because they have greater understanding, not because intelligence in and of itself is the ability to adapt. The overall ability to adapt is the sum of many different traits.
Oh, did the East Asians enslave Europeans?
No but they could have. For centuries China was the richest and most powerful nation on Earth, and as Rushton noted, “with their gunpowder weapons, navigational and organizational skills, the latest charts and magnetic compasses, the Chinese could have gone around the Cape of Good Hope and ‘discovered’ Europe!”
The Europeans must have regretted coming to North America because they were immediately enslaved and exploited by the big brained Native Americans. Oh wait, that didn’t happen either.
And the reason it didn’t happen is partly because Native Americans have slightly smaller brains, and were dominated by the bigger brained Europeans. 1369 cc vs 1366 cc.
Europeans also dominate the smaller brained non-white caucasoids who have historically dominated and enslaved the even smaller brained sub-Saharan agriculturalists who enslave and dominate the even smaller brained sub-Saharan hunter gatherers who dominate the even smaller brained animals who dominate the non-brained plants.
Big brained Europeans also dominated the small brained Australian aboriginals.
It’s so ‘relative’ that in all of the traits we would expect strong selection to occur, there is low h^2. Number of eyes, number of ears, number of skulls, intelligence > retarded, coordination > disability, etc. etc. Almost all the variation we observe is either 1) rare genetic disorder or 2) environmental.
This is nonsense. Brain size tripled so there was obviously enormous selection, and yet there is enormous variation in brain size.
And to say such is ridiculous. The reason why it’s hard for him to adapt to the situation is because ON BALANCE, he simply is maladaptive in many other ways. If you take two people who are equivalent on every single facet besides intelligence, then the one with higher intelligence will be more adaptive. However, the reason they will be more adaptive is because they have greater understanding, not because intelligence in and of itself is the ability to adapt. The overall ability to adapt is the sum of many different traits.
I’m not talking about the overall ability to adapt, I’m talking about the overall cognitive ability to adapt. How good is the brain at using behavior to get whatever it may want, in whatever body and environment it’s in. But if the brain wants maladaptive things, and if the body doesn’t function, the organism will be maladapted regardless of its cognitive ability to adapt, because intelligence is only one adaptive subsystem within a larger adaptive system
Oh they could have? Based on nothing per usual. If they were so smart the small brained Europeans would have had nothing to teach them and they would have still been ahead of the game in the 1800’s. That didn’t happen.
And now you’re here hanging the theory in America on a supposed 30 cc’s of brain size. Apparently the larger difference between Europeans and Asians never was exploited for no reason but in America 30cc’s made the difference.
You have one people who dominated several smaller headed and bigger headed people. The theory is silly.
The h^2 discussion is in line with actual biology. The level of intelligence selected for over 4 million years is > retardation/ brain damage, as I said.
And yes I know you’re hanging on to the mental ability to adapt. However the only way to measure adaptation is through action, the chain between mental learning and actual action is filled with so many confounds that your definition is useless.
Understanding is simpler, can be measured, and can be readily measured. It’s superior.
Oh they could have? Based on nothing per usual.
Based on the fact that for centuries China was the richest and most powerful nation on Earth.
Apparently the larger difference between Europeans and Asians never was exploited for no reason but in America 30cc’s made the difference.
Yawn. You’ve been reduced to splitting hair mode. Brain size is only one of the variables that determines intelligence and intelligence is only one of the variables that causes success.
You have one people who dominated several smaller headed and bigger headed people. The theory is silly.
I mentioned several bigger brained races dominating smaller brained races. You mentioned one very weak exception.
The h^2 discussion is in line with actual biology. The level of intelligence selected for over 4 million years is > retardation/ brain damage, as I said.
Retardation is relative. It’s precisely because there’s been so much selection for intelligence that levels previously considered genius are now considered retarded.
And yes I know you’re hanging on to the mental ability to adapt. However the only way to measure adaptation is through action, the chain between mental learning and actual action is filled with so many confounds that your definition is useless.
Understanding is simpler, can be measured, and can be readily measured. It’s superior.
The only way to measure intelligence at all is through action. You can’t score high on an IQ test without moving your hand to write or to put together puzzles, or moving your mouth to answer questions. We agree on the definition of intelligence, we’re just looking at it from different levels of analysis (mental level vs behavioral level). However we define adaptive behavior differently.
There’s subjectively adaptive behavior and objectively adaptive behavior. Subjective adaptive behavior is behavior that advances your goals. Objective adaptive behavior is behavior that advances normal goals. If you’re using the latter definition of adaptive behavior, then there is indeed a huge difference between the ability to think/know/understand how to adapt and actual adaptive action, but if you’re using the former, the difference is trivial, because by definition, subjective goals are goals you are motivated to take action on, and the physical action is the direct result of a mental decision to act.
In everyday language, intelligence is linked to actions. We have expressions like “stupid is as stupid does” and “that was a stupid decision” and when you do something self-destructive, people say “that was a stupid thing to do”. But if people know your goal itself was self-destruction (that you want to destroy yourself) then they say “that was a crazy thing to do”
So to oversimplify, adaptive behavior that advances an adaptive goal is smart and sane. Adaptive behavior that advances a maladaptive goal is smart and crazy.
I was somewhat surprised by this post as well. Reminds me of the multiple intelligences concept that is popular among the PC crowd; create enough intelligences and everyone can be a genius.
Ironic you should say that, because one reason I like using mental adaptability as a definition of intelligence is it undermines “multiple intelligence”. The whole point of multiple intelligence theory is to argue that abilities in music and art are just as worthy of being called intelligence as abilities measured on IQ tests, and they shouldn’t just be dismissed as “talents”.
However by defining intelligence as the mental ability to adapt, it becomes clear that the most useful mental functions should be given far more weight. It’s likely that the abilities needed for science and technology have created far more value for humanity than artistic abilities have, and they’re also probably even more useful for making money (hence the expressions “silicon valley billionaire” and “starving artist”)
Wow.. talk about unworkable definition. You are not you if you live in another body. There is no mind that you can imagine transferred to another head. And there is no mental capability that you can install in another brain, even in theory. The mind, brain, and body are one.
Through virtual reality video games, you can put someone in a different body
Through drugs & surgery you can give someone different motives, emotions & goals
But as i said in the post, it’s not currently possible to measure this definition
But you wouldn’t be finding out anything about that person, you’d find out about something that doesn’t exist except in a silly simulation. It’s like that Bonnie Tyler song – If you were a woman and I was a man – haha, what the hell does that mean? At least “If I were a boy” with Beyoncé is slightly better since it only involves changing one person, or … maybe just as silly.
But you wouldn’t be finding out anything about that person, you’d find out about something that doesn’t exist except in a silly simulation.
If a successful person can still be successful with a different body, a different personality, and different life circumstances, you can conclude their success was because of their intelligence, and not because of non-cognitive factors.
The point of science is to isolate the specific variable that you are trying to measure
“If a successful person can still be successful with a different body, a different personality” ..
Brain functions are not software programs, that you can put on different hardware. I understand your thought experiment, but it’s so absurd, and part of understanding intelligence is to reject that thought experiment.
Here is Webster:
“1) : the ability to learn or understand or to deal with new or trying situations”
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/intelligence?show=0&t=1422299781
Learn, understand, and deal with are all listed as disjunctive: any one of them will do. To ‘deal with new or trying situations’ is too vague because an individual with fast reflexes (and let’s assume he’s not fast because he’s smart) isn’t intelligent per se.
The ability to understand is simple and captures what we mean by intelligence.
Intelligence as abstraction, inorganic ( limited time of existence like everything that lives) manifestation of diversified events caused by organic ones, need a panacea of meanings because life itself is complex. Intelligence is applied to life and not to superficial scenarios.
Generally, rich people are good to solve problems n short term, search and found a “solution’ to determined and mundane problem. Short term, in this context, implies “adaptability”, take advantage to yourself and earn money as consequence. Generally, geniuses turning ( most them) richs in a perfect human social environment, 100 % cognitively meritocratic, and not in our world now.
Words are prisons of complex thinking. Intelligence can and have many meanings. You only need put the correct meaning to their apropriated concept ( or perspective) . Intelligence as adapt:ability, relate with imediatist ( Short therm) to middle therm, by space and time. Soul is a extension of self existence, as well, our intelligence is a extension of our post-simiesque hands. Higher the self perception of yourself or “perception of its soul ( empathy and awareness)”, higher will be perceptive ability, “aura” or body energy. Summarizing, intelligence concept are many because intelligence is complex like life, like COMPLEX societies. Humans are cognitively specialized with limited variable adaptative plasticity.
words may be prisons, but an intelligent person should not have too much difficulty learning and choosing the correct ones to express himself
Then, you really do not know ”intelligent” people.
Slightly OT, but keep finding these instances of people in non-STEM backgrounds being super-intelligent, possibly even smarter than the STEM folks.
And , you are not smart enough as you imagine .
My Inglês is bad, but i write without any slang . I put myself in the skin of people here and note que is completely possible Understand my comments, less slang , more objective , little quantity of words . Without guilt my Inglês When You do not understand my premisses .
My mind is very different than others and it explain most of myself , my neuro- cult- ure , my thinking style , my forces and weakness .
First = only one concept to intelligence when ‘ ‘ she ” is more diversified because own adaptability , specially in complex societies . Intelligence is ability to adapt , intelligence is ability to learn and apply the acquired knowledge Correctly , intelligence is ability to abstract thinking , intelligence is ability to math accounts , yes , all this concepts are right . You need to use only one of this concepts if all Them explain part of intelligence , different perspectives of visualization of the same concept.
Second= in a different and unusual perspective, intelligence is a result or a inorganic manifestation of organic creatures combined with environment, like Eiffel tower, a inorganic result of intelligence, a manifestation, a phenomena (books, numbers, words, languages). Wind is not a cause, is a result of combination of elements, like intelligence, but with differences like the fact that ”wind is a temporary organic product”, different than Eiffel tower, like life itself. Eiffel tower is a temporary inorganic product, human intelligence is inorganic many times, allegory of reality.
Third= two concepts can be completely self excludents when are used as competitors to same concept, when concepts are abstractions of real world, things, and should be seen as ”abstract things”, and all things have more than one side, like geometric figures. DIfferent perspectives to different concepts, many times, completely opposite concepts can live together without exclusion. The primordial problem of scientific method, when one theory is ”debunked”, it will be replaced by other. No accumulation of knowledge. Of course, many theories will be near to be quasi-intractable, but anxiety to find correct answer can cause more problems than solutions.
Fourth= what humans call ”soul” is in my opinion, extension of yourself, extension of self awareness, like the hands of humans are extension of their intelligence and its security, because with complex body-tools, you can modify its ”go-body-zones” to protect you against exterior threats.
that’s fine. but what people mean by “smart” in America is pretty close to “high SAT score”.
that is, a person is smart if he’s good at math and reading and has a large vocabulary.
maybe this isn’t what should be meant, but it is what is meant.
and is suspect it’s even what pp would mean or Jensen would have meant by “that guy is smart.”
because whatever one’s street cred, whatever one’s intellectual accomplishments, if he opens his mouth and sounds stupid he will not be judged smart.
Hitch had a very high verbal IQ, but he once said his dad was good at math, chemistry, and physics and he wasn’t. i wonder if it was just a lack of interest. he barely passed his PPE course at Oxford.
In Brazil happens the same, in all prole nations, people mistakes real intelligence with ”education” technical skills. People easily mistakes stabilizers as real smart because they are the maintainers of system that most people belief, or people of the ribe. Pseudo-socialists airhead people believe that their ”socialists” intelectual leaders are geniuses as well capitalist people thinking that richer people are smarter. Both are right, but both are incomplete.
Mugabe, I let the computer play against itself. Looks like if white gets out of the immediate threats, which are many, through Qd1, then blac.. sorry the African American side of the board comes under pressure to maintain its positional advantage and avoid trading pieces. It turned into a drawn out positional game and suddenly white came out on top from a bloodbath of heavy pieces. Anyway, not bad for a human player to navigate white into a draw.
https://twitter.com/barbara_spectre
Barbára is grrrrreat, yeahh!!!
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2922243/Hunted-like-animals-sold-families-75-000-Tanzania-s-albinos-hacked-apart-witchdoctors-believe-body-parts-bring-luck-sick-trade-fuelled-country-s-elite.html
perfect measure of intelligence.
lack of empathy, check
lack of capacity to understand real things from abstract and fantasick things, check
lack of wisdom, prevention or learn with mistakes, check
…
the most general definition of intelligence is complexity, I think. I do not know how to measure that though.
I never had such good teachers…
i’ve heard from Murray and read something like, “the most complex subtests are the most g loaded.”
but isn’t that the case by definition? that is, the tests which combine many (more primitive) tests will by definition be more correlated with g?
that’s why the claim the the Raven’s is the best measure of g is either false or g is NOT what it is claimed to be. the Raven’s is homogeneous. it isn’t a battery. how can it possible be a better measure of g than the Wechsler, especially if “matrix reasoning” is one if the subtests?
perhaps the claim was just that it was a better measure of g than any other battery subtest.
but isn’t that the case by definition? that is, the tests which combine many (more primitive) tests will by definition be more correlated with g?
I agree
that’s why the claim the the Raven’s is the best measure of g is either false or g is NOT what it is claimed to be. the Raven’s is homogeneous. it isn’t a battery. how can it possible be a better measure of g than the Wechsler, especially if “matrix reasoning” is one if the subtests?
perhaps the claim was just that it was a better measure of g than any other battery subtest.
It’s not so much that the Raven is said to be the best measure of g but rather it’s said to be the purest measure of g. That is, Vocabulary measures g +verbal ability. Block Design measures g + spatial ability. But Jensen would sometimes claim that the Raven measured nothing but g and of course measurement error (which all tests measure). The Raven was considered special because it didn’t seem to load strongly on any group factors, though that claim was probably exaggerated.
I actually mean the complexity of the brain matter, not the complexity of the questions to be solved.
I think you can’t compare happiness and intelligence because intelligence is negatively correlated with iq which strongly correlated with intelligence. The more intelligent you are, the more you think about your action and the futur and the less you enjoy present time. But in your article you say that the scientific uses happiness to determine the capacity to turn a situation to your advantage. (Excuse my english).
I think happiness and IQ are only negatively correlated at the extremes. Geniuses are often depressed and retarded people are often full of joy, but among the vast majority of people, smart people are probably happier than dumb people.
The reason geniuses are unhappy sometimes is they feel emotions less aware people lack. But in my thought experiment, the scientists control for emotions by seeing how much pleasure and pain you experience given very different personalities, motives, and drives.
Thanks for your answer but what I say it’s that the principal cause of unhappiness is the awareness of our comportements and the externe world that it’s allowed by intelligence. The well known causes of unhappiness like poverty, familial problems, violence…etc.. are not really so significative . In low median iq poor countries like those of Africa for example, people are more happy than in Europe, and I think you know that suicide rates are more important in est Asians than in Europens and more important in Europeans than in Africans. That proves that not only genius are unhappy.
But generally speaking smart people are happier
http://drjamesthompson.blogspot.ca/2014/08/the-intelligent-pursuit-of-happiness.html
Pumpkin when you disentangle the positive correl of ‘smarts’ and ‘income,’ etc. smart people most certainly are not happier, or at least not as happy as their ‘positive outcomes’ would suggest.
The most simple definition of intelligence is that the intelligence it’s simply the brainpower, his capacity to treat information. If we were capable of simulated life of others beings, we were capable since a long time to evaluate the power of the brain of a person directly with scanners and estimated the matters quantity and the potential of every cells or other stuff like that and by all these mesures we will be able to determinated the intelligence of somebody like the power of a computer and this without take care of the circumstances.
The most simple definition of intelligence is that the intelligence it’s simply the brainpower
But brain power to do what? Intelligence is the brain power to use your behavior as a tool to get what you want, in whatever body you’re in, in whatever environment it’s in. The paradox is, the more aware you are of what’s out there, the more you want, so ironically, intelligence often causes unhappiness.
But by controlling for emotions (what we want), and controlling for the body and the environment, intelligent people should experience much more pleasure and much less pain.
Of course it’s not possible to control for all that; this was just a thought experiment
I think I was off topic when I talk about the fact that intelligent people are unhappy because id their great awareness of the externe world but I wasn’t considering the fact that they have more control on their life’s events and this point is of course central in mesuring the capacity to adapt
But I still think it’s more logical to mesure the capacity toi her source.I still think that happiness it is not a good way to mesure intelligence because intelligence is still related with anxiety of the anxiety of the futur.(it’s like dumb people have a greater standard deviation in happiness).
So you think that racial differences in suicide rate are related to testosterone ?
I
Why do Asian males outperform African American females in high end science and math by huge margins? Did you have an emotional reaction to this question? You should ask yourself why just asking this question makes you feel uncomfortable. Is it because you question whether it is true, or is it because you worry about why it is true and how this conflicts with your worldview?
Gender and IQ. I don’t get it. On multiple levels.
1. Why the emotional entanglement if males just happen to slightly outscore females here? Or group X over group Y?
2. Why do the values (errrr….politics) of some groups demand that this be disproved?
First off, my daughter just recently completed standardized testing and landed perfect scores in Math and the Math II subject test. I really don’t care if more males per capita scored perfectly. Why would I? I don’t get it.
My daughter is smart, my dog is dumb. The specific breed of my dog is not known for its doggy IQ. I feel absolutely no need to run out and do studies to counter act some perceived stereotyping that my dog’s breed is not equal to all other dog breeds, and insist that everyone states all dog breeds are 100.0000000% equivalent in intelligence and shun anyone who states otherwise. Why would I have an emotional need for this?
Creationists are vilified for rejecting Darwin’s theory of evolution. But here we have almost an equivalent process of denial that wants to state that all groups evolved 100% equally in intelligence over the last 50,000 years when the groups diverged out of Africa or that genders don’t evolve differently genetically. There sure appears to be quite some large differences between apes and man. This process just stopped?
Men are stronger than women, taller than women. Do men excel over women at basketball due to socioeconomic factors? Why is there no emotional entanglement here? Why must differences in IQ or some specific mathematical ability be dismissed as unenlightened?
I understand that many think there is simply a “search for the truth” here to see if IQ did in fact evolve differently. I suggest what we are seeing instead is a search to reach today’s politically palatable answer and this corrupts the science process. You don’t think there is emotional entanglement? Try bringing up The Bell Curve in a conversation.
If men and women were equal than it would be likely that an equal number of independent studies would show women slightly ahead, and the other set show men slightly ahead. What we get is men almost always coming out on top and if a study does find near parity, then this specific study is hailed as truth and having disproven every other study. We have all seen this in action in politically controversial topics such as GMO’s, etc. Then there is the game of controls.
The strawman of “DO FEMALES EXIST WHO POSSESS PROFOUND MATHEMATICAL TALENT? shows how warped this discussion is. Who is charging that this is not the case? Anyone? Sure there are cultural factors that also amplify this discrepancy. Very few people reject this. I am grateful my daughter is growing up in the world today instead of 50 years ago.
The male / female gap is pretty small by any measure, but it sure appears to legitimately exist. I really don’t have a problem with it.
People have emotionals reactions about topics who talks about innate differences in intelligence because humans are the smartest specie on earth and use to favorise this quality. Then say to someone that he is not smart is the supreme insult.
Pumpkin,
about its theory about brain size and height you are losing completely the point because the most important is not brain size only but also the proportion between body and brain size. Then, height correlate weak with “inteligence” because isn’t important to improve cognitive capacity. Neoteny show us this details.
The increase in body size that occurred in the last 4 million years of our evolution is way too small to explain the tripling of brain size.
Evolution wasn’t linear and is not linear today. Taller body, generally, need more energy to be distributed. It explain why gigant nba players and people with gigantism aren’t geniuses. Technical intelligence or iq correlate with moderate and normal taller people, probably because increase of body size implies more energy, including and specially, mental energy, to work. It is a expected result, higher the height, higher will be the energy to maintain it. But in super taller people, generally and i think, Energy distribution will be more directed to body than brain. “Brainly people” have more mental activity because they have disproportional brain-body size. You understand my anglisch??
People with above intelligence and not super dwveloped intelect, are happy because they are intelectually interested. Then, they can work in many ways their higher intelligence to own advantage. Smarter ones are intelectually obsessives. Obsession correlate weak to negative with mundane success and bureaucratic education.
Yes, East Asians seems to be less intellectually inclined than Whites and focus more on extrinsic rewards.
Some traits of creative people are fundamentally related with emotions. East asians tend to be strongly predisposed to have “harmonious” personality. Hyper sensible people are overwhelming composed by whites and other caucasoid variants. My hypothesis is that east asians are so “perfect” in “mental and physiological health” when creativity, most of times, will be with unbalanced costs and beneficits. Many creatives born in families with unperfect familiar health.
Jews are like “extreme endogamized europeans”.
Differential old ethnic or atavic component can help to explain japanese creativity. I think creative people tend to be more individual-genetically diverse or with more mutants, when Continental east asians drive with more intense way this mutations.
Nietzche describe bhuddism as product of the final stage of civilization. Modern east asian civilization is in fact, a degenerate and weak version of old and millenar times. They are oligarchic collectivist in slow motion, nihilism, materialism, cultural sterilization. Old oriental wisdom no more exist.
Old Brother of Akira Kurosawa, greater japanese filmmaker, commite suicide during childhood of Kurosawa.
1. marxists and critics of libertarians are envious of thieves?
+
2. you won’t say anything about your job.
=
3. just another proof that you have no conscience.
They are jealous of the rich and thus want to demonize them as thieves, even though a lot of Marxists are thieves themselves, particularly if they are under-worked and overpaid professors teaching useless subjects that don’t give struggling students and tax payers a return on their investment.
And I suspect I have a large conscience. I’m much more compassionate and emotionally sensitive than most men are. But at the same I’m extremely cynical and I’m fascinated by social Darwinism.
A thief, or rather, a charlatan, is one who refuses to accept that he is wrong. For example, look at this TImothy Bates paper: http://www.research.ed.ac.uk/portal/files/10602446/GxSES_Bates_Lewis_Weiss_2013_Psychological_Science.pdf
It concerns the environmental (shared / non-shared) and genetic input into the correlation of SES and IQ. You’d notice that genes are paramount, and moderate the minuscule effect of environment (SES) even into the higher SES ranges. Ultimately, as JayMan has pointed out time and time again, there is no GxE to be found anywhere, or any shared environment effects. Meaning that there isn’t any actual effect of SES, since that is shared environment.
Again, this paper ultimately reinforces the HBD belief that SES diffs in IQ are a result of meritocracy.
jayman wouldn’t know GxE if it hit him over the head. he’s a troll.
twin studies do show GxE; the calculated h^2 varies with E, sometimes by a lot.
Yeah? According to what?
just look at he h^2s from all the studies.
but here’re two:
http://pss.sagepub.com/content/14/6/623.short
http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10519-006-9113-4#page-1
the genetic explanation of social stratification is simple and therefore compelling for the the simple.
but it isn’t reality.
Libertarians are silly and believe non-sequitur statements like ‘taxation is theft.’ If libertarians knew what they were talking about, they would say ‘taxation makes theft exist.’ Theft only exists where there are property rights, and property rights only exist — in reality — where there is a state. Because property rights are defined by the state, the tax cannot be theft per se.
Vultures are circling around the ‘one rank, one set of genes, one set of environmental effects’ paradigm
http://medicalxpress.com/news/2015-01-largest-ever-autism-genome-siblings-autism-risk.html
Different genes leading to the same results. Norms of reaction….
In the new study, Dr. Scherer’s team sequenced 340 whole genomes from 85 families, each with two children affected by autism. The majority of siblings (69 percent) had little to no overlap in the gene variations known to contribute to autism. They found that the sibling pairs shared the same autism-associated gene changes less than one third of the time (31 percent).
but…what fraction of those diagnoses of two siblings were legit and not just shitty parents and conmen psychiatrists?
that is,
the “immateriality” of psychological traits which are for the most part immaterial, in another sense, is only evidence that psychiatry, or child psychiatry, is bullshit…
not that IQ is bullshit.
Behavior is fluidly material or impermanent but characteristic material, just like behavior is to water as ”matter” is to solid ice, 😉
characteristically.
Better to you say: “genetic phenotypes OR expressions”. I don’t understand the genetic difference that this text is talking. “Autistic people” as human beings, have same integral “genes” than everything else. But they have different genetic expression of this integral genes. Starting by the premisse where siblings ( and relatives in general) of any homozygotic mental reorder people share less aberrant forms of this mutant genes, which are many, can be possible to say that heterozygotic ones have higher diversity of this multiple “aberrant’ genetic expressions.
About intelligence to be as height. Look to pygmies. The heredity of color eyes is more direct than complex phenotypes as intelligence and height but, intense selection can change the genetic nature of any phenotype, recessive to dominant.
Based on the fact that for centuries China was the richest and most powerful nation on Earth.
Pure liberal BS, which East Asians buy time after time, with no strong validity to back this claim.
The Medieval Islamic Empire could have challenged the Chinese and isolate them even more. A few Muslim envoys came to China and spat at the emperor’s face during the Tang Dynasty, when he told Mohammad’s worshippers to kneel and respect him as a god who controls people’s destiny. They obstinately refuse and said they only kneel and pray to Allah (which has no human form).
Pumpkin Person, take a look on twitter at @ChuckCJohnson ‘s latest tweets about Race and IQ, mainstream conservatives are warming up to the idea of innate racial differences!
The common notion among HBD blogs is that high V IQ means the ability convince or persuade people.
High V IQ means the ability to reason abstractly.
The idea that non-fiction writers have stratospheric V IQ is false too.
Wow pp. This has to be the worst article I’ve ever read.
Your very last example disproves your hypothesis. You can’t ‘adapt’ to genetic predispositions. Can one with Prader Willi’s Syndrome adapt to their surroundings? Or do genetic and chromosomal defects cause them to not he able to ‘adapt’ in their contexts?
Your snake example sucked because you would have found food and ate since you would have been driven to look for food.
And you’re right there is no way to measure this. It’s unfalsifiable so it’s not a theory. Please stop saying this!!
Actually, there is a pretty strong correlation between IQ & suicide rate, which seems to contradict your theory.
What are your thoughts on that PP ? (the interesting info is at the bottom of the table)
About smart people committing suicide?
I think intelligence is the cognitive ability to adapt situations to your advantage but part of what you’re adapting to are your emotions and smart people are often born with low self esteem & depression because they’re K selected
Smart people are better problem svers but have a harder problem to solve when it comes to happiness
Also, in order to cognitively adapt & problem solve, you need to understand how terrible the world is and that creates depression
So intelligence is the ability to problem solve but having it creates new problems
This is true art
Thank you. I forgot about that article.