There’s not one way to define intelligence. I like to define intelligence as the mental ability to adapt; to take whatever situation you’re in, and turn it around to your advantage. Others like to define intelligence as the mental ability to problem solve. Still others like to define intelligence as the ability to reason abstractly. Ultimately all these definitions are the same. If you can reason at the most abstract (least specific) level, you can adapt to the widest range of problems, and thus solve them.
Another definition of intelligence is the ability to use tools. One could be really precise and say intelligence is the mental ability to use whatever physical abilities you have, as a tool to use whatever environment you’re in to your advantage. The two main physical tools humans are born with are our hands and our vocal cords. And we use these tools to manipulate the physical environment to our advantage.
So we use our hands to use objects as tools (grabbing a sharp rock for hunting) and we use our vocal cords to use other people as tools (communication).
This is why it makes sense that IQ tests like the Wechsler have traditionally been divided into two main sections: Verbal IQ (using your vocal cords as a tool to your advantage), and Performance IQ (using your hands as a tool to your advantage). So Verbal IQ measures abilities such as vocabulary, and Performance IQ measures largely spatial abilities such as making designs using multi-coloured blocks.
However if the human mind were placed in the body of a snake, our Verbal IQ would be virtually useless because we’d have no vocal cords with which to speak, and our Performance IQ would be virtually useless too because we’d have no hands to manipulate the physical environment. So no wonder snakes have such tiny brains. Evolution is not going to select for metabolically expensive and physically burdensome brain mass when the animal can’t use it.
But when we sum up a person’s Verbal and Performance IQ, have we really captured all of intelligence? Perhaps there is life on other planets, far more intelligent than us, but that doesn’t use either of these systems to adapt to its environment. Perhaps they can’t hear or see, so both verbal IQ and Performance IQ are useless to them, but they have other senses that we can’t even imagine. And if our minds were put in their bodies, we would experience these senses, and we would have a different body to make use of them, but our mindss (which evolved to speak and use our hands) would not be able to use them to our advantage. We wouldn’t be able to adapt.
The most intelligent organism in the universe is the one whose mind, when placed in the body of as many different organisms as possible, organisms with many different goals as possible, in as many different environments as possible, can adapt these situations to its advantage as effectively as possible.
If you can reason at the most abstract (least specific) level, you can adapt to the widest range of problems, and thus solve them.
FALSE. One may know what “adaptation” is required and still be unable to effect it.
Try affecting a “posh” accent if you’re a lower class Brit. Some will be more able than others, yet the difference between them isn’t “intelligence”.
Try affecting being over 6′. (and I’ve been exactly 6′ 1 1/4″ since I was 18.)
Canuckistan is confirmation that a class-less society has no class.
It’s definitely genetic and different between populations.
Let’s talk about NW Euro populations.
Gandhi, M.L.K., and Mandela were all humanitarians and humanists, but they also appealed to Northwest Euro populations. No other population would have listened to those humanist appeals!
This focus on intelligence is not particularly useful, there are many other heritable and genetic traits which lead to a person being “intelligent” while having nothing to do with IQ.
The above twitter conversation is about how GCSE scores are genetic and correlated with the g factor (which almost certainly exists!) and IQ, but is not completely explained by them. It is without a doubt genetic and heritable (I guess “Jorge Videla” would disagree, but thems the facts!) and something totally different.
Pumpkin,
how you define the concept of abstraction??
I define abstract as non-specific, general, non-concrete. So for example a specific concrete thinker might say:
(2 + 2 + 2)/3 = 2
while an abstract thinker might say:
[a(n)] / n = a
The latter is a more general way of saying the same thing, and thus can be applied to more situations, thus my theory is that abstract thought is more adaptable.
So my theory is that abstract reasoning is not a different definition of intelligence than adaptability, they’re actually complementary.
Well, i think ”(2 + 2 + 2)/3 = 2” is a abstraction too, the extrapolation of our reality that is immediately perceived. Just the number 1 really there.
”while an abstract thinker might say:
[a(n)] / n = a”
Not deterministically, it seems a cognitive prejudice on your part. Categorizations and quantities are abstractions, when we gather a set of things that are the same or similar. Symbols are abstractions too.
”The latter is a more general way of saying the same thing, and thus can be applied to more situations, thus my theory is that abstract thought is more adaptable.”
Adaptation is a term, extremely plastic and very subjective, difficult to unilaterally conceptualized, especially regarding the mind and realized that is produced by the human mind.
People who are very strong in abstract thinking, often capture a lot of information that is not immediately perceived, by the environment, which I have called the objective truth. This huge amount of information, useful and useless, amplification of self consciousness, can be potentially disadvantageous to adapt, according to the prevailing context of our societies, capitalist.
For obvious reasons, who sees a lot of patterns, it tends to become partial to predominantly absorbed by it. It resembles schizophrenia, which however is not based exactly on overcapture of abstract patterns, but immediate patterns and non-existent patterns, because as I think, the main core that characterizes schizophrenia is the ungoverned imagination.
The ability to recognized what “adaptations” are required to be a super douchey sociopath millionaire…
is still quite different from the ability to affect or effect such “adaptations”.
Fair enough, but a general abstact ability to figure out what is required to adapt is a major part of one’s mental adaptability, though admittedly, other more specific cognitive abilities are required, though the utility of these more specific talents will vary with time and space.
And seeing from your history of commenting on this blog, it occurs to me that you’ve a very flawed understanding of genetics and behavior genetics. Scott Alexander has written a short piece in which he explains the common misconceptions related to the heritability of IQ and twin studies which should explain all of it to you.
I will quote part of it below:
“First of all, not sure twin studies are that confounded or hard to control. They seem pretty simple to me. And other methods like adoption studies return the same result. And there’s a pretty neat new method that actually compares the individual SNPs of unrelated people and finds…the same result. This is pretty frickin’ firmly established.
There are 25,000 genes in the body. What we now know is that none of them explains more than about 1% of IQ alone, and very few can explain more than about 0.1%. That doesn’t necessarily contradict the idea that IQ is genetic. It just means that it’s super-polygenic. Maybe it’s 1000 genes, each contributing 0.1% of the variance. Height is sort of like this too, although not to the same extent. So are mental diseases – the number of genes involved in things like schizophrenia is immense. If you want to Google this, look up “missing heritability problem”
(I would add that it could be massively interactive – things where Gene A increases your IQ 1 point unless you have Gene B in which case it decreases it 3 points unless you also have Gene C in which case there’s no effect, except with 1000 of those instead of three. And the structure of biochemical pathways makes this pretty plausible. But IIRC recent studies ruled out too much of a contribution from interactivity.)”
Additivity does indeed explain most of the genes behind IQ and other polygenic complex traits.
And who knew that the post itself would be embedded. Pumpkinperson should remove my quote then.
Another opportunity to educate yourself:
you’re dunning-kruger as fuck…
as misdreavus said.
your understanding of “genetics and behavior genetics” is
NIL
so naturally you appraise the genuine understanding of others as such.
Scott Alexander is…
1. A MORON.
2. A MORAL MORON.
3. A POLYAMORIST AND PSYCHIATRIST.
4. HE HAS DIARRHEA OF THE PEN.
5. HE LIVES IN DETROIT.
tards are gonna tard.
however many times one points out their retardedness they still CAN’T get it.
What’s wrong with Detroit?
And you’re the only here that tries to deny the role of genetics in human behavior (besides swank sometimes). Maybe you’re the tard.
Alright, can you explain in exactly which way Scott is wrong?
There is plenty of reason to think that additive models for the heritability of IQ are pretty useful. That’s what twin studies say, that’s also what GCTAs tell us.
Food for thought: http://journals.plos.org/plosgenetics/article?id=10.1371/journal.pgen.1000008
Don’t forget to watch the Steve Hsu video either. There are some good West Hunt posts that explain behavior genetics and heritabilty as well.
Motivation is a important piece that separates us from them. Motivation is a expected result of interaction between personality and intelligences or cognitive profiles. But our personality is part of our intelligence.intelligence without personality is like a robot or a computer. people with the contextually better interaction between their personality and their cognition profile will tend to be better adapted to this society model,in other words, the high functioning psychopath, because capitalism emulate very well what happen in the natural world, open competition when the strong wins, those who don’t see to back like in the bible mythology.
But our personality is part of our intelligence.intelligence without personality is like a robot or a computer
I disagree. Personality is not part of intelligence. Intelligence is part of personality but it also contains other parts (emotions, motives, temperament ). Intelligence is like a computer. It’s the part of the brain that solves the problems. But your feelings are the problems that need to be solved.
So if I feel fear because there’s no door on my house and anyone can walk in, that fear gets sent to the computer (intelligence) and the computer calculates the most efficient solution to solve the problem (build a door out of some wood in the yard)
Intelligence is just the problem solver. Nothing more.
”I disagree. Personality is not part of intelligence. Intelligence is part of personality”
Cognition is a real phenotype, personality is just a very clever and natural extension of the same physiological profile, cognition, human intelligence is a combination between the technical cognition or specified instinct and personality, a bio-product of enlarged self, or self-awareness.
personality is like language, both are strongly connected.
”Intelligence is like a computer. It’s the part of the brain that solves the problems. But your feelings are the problems that need to be solved.”
Feelings are based on our remaining instinct. Feelings are like intuition and intuition is a rationalized feelings derived from extreme self-knowledge. When you feel, you are just reacting without any rationalization, reflexion.
I think feelings are not exactly problems that need to be solved but to be understood and adapted to produce harmony between the environment and your self.
”So if I feel fear because there’s no door on my house and anyone can walk in, that fear gets sent to the computer (intelligence) and the computer calculates the most efficient solution to solve the problem (build a door out of some wood in the yard)
Intelligence is just the problem solver. Nothing more.”
Even in non-human animals, intelligence is not just solve problem, Solve problem is one of the most important things what we can to do with our intelligence and not their concept.
Not ”just” specific motivation + higher technical intelligence that made a millionaire but also lack of empathy, because systemizing tend to be relatively disconnected from empathy. Systemizing ability correlates with cathegorization capacity, or ability and motivation to find and follow differences, categorize is quasi exactly like differentiate. Empathy is the otherwise pattern, capacity to find a follow similarities. And capitalism is a social model of systematic differentiation, like a big farm.
I think that intelligence begins with a map in your head. Abstraction is the building up of layers that reduce the resources needed to represent these maps. This is a form of Structuralism. What references have meaning are determined by where they point. So as an example Sigma is a sum. But then a sum refers to all the functions that also have symbols that refer to other functions. These are branches that can be feed back into a main equation as self referential (z=z2+c). But even though a person has self reference what makes them intelligent is the ability to use that reference to find their relationship to the world and all objects in relation to all objects. To do this those branches must arrange themselves to form a good map. Intelligence is the ability of entropic compression to increase the resolution of the map by which we learn the consequences of our actions as a self model (meta) and a model of causal relations. Adaption is the ability model some aspects of reality effectively (skills). General Intelligence is the ability to model all aspects in equal measure. Abstraction allows you to model the world in the most efficient way and this is because of branching. renaissance painters had high abstraction in the vision cortex.
The contents of this message has more abstract meaning than the segmentation of words used which would score lower on a vocabulary test. My comprehension was really high on school tests but I am a really bad speller.
https://watson-pi-demo.mybluemix.net/
http://www.kurzweilai.net/forums/topic/recursive-tree-hierarchy-for-deep-learning-with-video-images
What about executive fonction ? Think about what you are doing seems important to turn a situation to your advantage in all type of environment.
Btw, East Asians seems to have have more develop executive fonction than all the other races in the sens that they think more about the consequences of their actions and are more inhibited, they are less in the present moment than the other races and think more about the future. They also have a greater capacity of concentration than the other ane especially Jews who, like the people who have ADHD must have less thick prefontal conrtex.
So ?
I agree EF is an important part of intelligence. I don’t know if East Asians have the highest EF; I’ve seen no studies on the topic, and the traits you describe could be much more influenced by personality than cognition.
http://www.pyragraph.com/2013/11/creative-loosen-frontal-lobe/
Very interesting!!
Pumpkinperson, your earlier post on Bertrand Russell actually lends some general insights (no pun intended) on g and therefore on this post. Russell was something of a polymath, having made substantial contributions to math, philosophy, political science and history. While his greatest work was arguably in the rarefied field of logic, the world at large probably remembers him most for his political writings for which he won the Nobel (in Literature, I think-might have been in Peace which would not surprise me given the ideological stands he took). This supports the idea that there is a general factor underlying all intelligences, they being merely secondary manifestations of general reasoning or g. It just seems more plausible that Russell had unusually high reasoning ability “powering” his successful forays into history, writing, mathematics etc, than that he had separate and unrelated verbal, quantitative, spatial and other skills. To use your analogy, maybe a Russell brain transplanted into an alien in an alien world would give that alien a better chance than an average brain. A Pumpkinhead (Pumpkin person visitor) would fall somewhere in between, hopefully.
Also, it’s interesting to note that the highest -scorers on the LSAT, a verbally-loaded test with no math questions, are math and physics majors. That’s according to data from the American Institute of Physics. I suppose one caveat might be that there are far fewer math and physics majors than, say, English majors, whom the math geeks beat by a mile. So there could be some self-selection going on.
The spatial IQ vs verbal IQ question is very paradoxal:
We could argue that spatial intelligence is less specialized than verbal intelligence for the obvious reason that the mind of someone with a spatial cognitive profile would score higher on the life IQ test you have suggested than someone with a verbal cognitive profile.. Why would it score higher ? Because we have good reasons to think that the majority of the life forms which ever have existed in the universe are more primitive than humans. And spatial IQ can always be useful to all kind of animal to, for exemple, orient themselves in space. You can argue that spatial IQ is useless when you cant see which is not true, you can make a mental map of your environment with other senses than your sight. Verbal IQ would be useless to the majority of them.
On the other hand we could argue that your ideal way to mesure intelligence is false. In effect, we could say that verbal intelligence is a so much evolved trait that it could only be useful in enough evolved beings. We could then see the problem differently. Civilisation is the humans greatest achievement which have lead to a lot of valuable advances for the human species. And we can largely observe that verbally smart people tower at the top of the civilised societies. So by controling civilisation, you are controlling the world. I could develop more on the subject but I am limited by the fact that english is not my first language.
http://aisecurity.org/ref/generalizing-intelligence/
Intelli – gen – ce
Intel = Information
gen – erate
gen – eration
gen means within or source
ce is the tense
gence means to become from within
Simply Intelligence is Introversion.
Introversion is the map of reality in our head.
Extraversion is the interface between reality and the map.
Kolmogorov complexity is the true source of Intelligence.
Adaptation is the speed at which it increases map resolution.
General intelligence a map with greater symmetry of adaptation.
Metacognition is a map of the map.
This is why we can ask questions.
We can know what the map of reality is missing and fill it in.