What is intelligence? A.K.A. The definition of intelligence
We might define height as the distance from the top to the bottom or vice versa. If we were talking about a statue for example we would measure the distance from the bottom of the statue to it's highest heights. When measuring height in humans this would mean that we measure the distance from the top of someone's head to the bottom of someone's feet or vice versa. What exactly should we measure in the case of intelligence? What is the best way of measuring someone's intelligence? In other words, how do we know if someone is a mental midget or a genius? Finally, how should we define the very thing that we are attempting to measure? I will make an effort to be as polite as possible to anyone who is courageous enough to discuss this subject with me and I hope that reciprocity is a part of that process. Please keep in mind that I might not be as bright as you and it may be difficult for me to follow your arguments. Any patience on your part will be appreciated.
Comments (165)
There's plenty on how this is currently understood if you consult google.
My initial response would be shifting the question from 'how do we know if someone' to 'what is a genius' and 'what is a mental midget'. I'm assuming you seek to differentiate between those people who are unlearned from those with intellectual disabilities?
One thing I have noticed is any one who tells you they have a prodigious IQ of 135 (or whatever) is generally pretty thick.
Here too I'm afraid. :wink:
I have a lot of sympathy for people with cognitive disabilities and I have no intention of slandering them. shifting the question is unnecessary because the question "What is a genius?" is almost identical to the question "what is intelligence?". I suspect that a genius would be one with a great deal intelligence but in order to recognize a genius I think that we would first need to know what intelligence is.
lol
Quoting Average
No it's not. Shifting the question was suggested because you already (possibly unwittingly) used a common 'slander' for intellectual disability with the term 'mental midget'. "Thick" the word I used earlier is another. The point I was making is that the question 'who' may not be as informative as 'what'. That's the shift I recommended.
A genius may have a high intelligence, but the two things different. For my money a genius is generally someone who possesses exceptional skill or intelligence that they are able to put into practice in some endeavor. There are plenty of people with very high IQ's who are working in banal jobs.
Can you provide some more clarification and elaboration because I don't want this discussion to devolve into something primitive.
You asked: Quoting Average Who
I suggested: Quoting Tom StormWhat
All I was saying is that the concept needs to be understood or elucidated before we do the measuring. It's a small point and, possibly, the moment is passed...
I was not trying to slander anyone with disabilities. I am actually inspired by people with disabilities when they persevere in spite of the adversity fortune saw fit to impose upon them.
I couldn't agree more.
Sometimes people insult each other directly and indirectly instead of examining perspectives.
I work in the area of mental health, suicidality and substance misuse so I am mindful of terminology.
That makes sense. I'm sorry if I'm not using the most appropriate language possible.
I know from working with people who have intellectual disabilities that they are often frustrated and angered by their inability to understand or accomplish tasks and activities the rest of the community takes for granted.
If I'm not mistaken IQ is like inches or meters, A kind of unit that we use to measure something. We wouldn't say that inches are height but instead we would say that we use inches to measure height. it might be true that IQ is used to measure intelligence but intelligence would still be something else entirely. I'm trying to figure out what that "something else entirely" actually is.
Yes, that's a key question many people come to ask.
The ability to complete some task without being taught to do so,or solve a problem, or assess a situation and respond in an appropriate way (phronesis).
Would you mind providing examples?
The ability to troubleshoot and fix a machine.The ability to assess a social or interpersonal situation and act accordingly. Acting prudentially to achieve a good outcome.
I admit that your answer is intriguing but it's a bit vague and ambiguous. What exactly does "act accordingly" mean? Is "act accordingly" any different from "respond in an appropriate way"? How would you define a "good outcome"?
There are a multitude of measures of intelligence; which is why IQ tests are not dispositive.
One of my favourite measures would be to the effect of "the ability to work things out".
But what is intelligence?
Is this your definition of intelligence?
Acting accordingly is to act in such a way that is likely lead to a good outcome. A good outcome is one that is intended. In any given the ability to assess what a good outcome is is also a measure of intelligence. One must anticipate the consequences of different choices and actions as well as what is good.
What if someone intended to produce a bad outcome?
Quoting Average
Words have many definitions. This is why statutes have a definition section (at least here in Blighty).
Quoting Average
Effectively. This is more or less what IQ tests do; test our "ability to work things out".
If someone intended to produce a bad outcome for herself that would not be intelligent. A bad outcome for an enemy might be a different story, although that bad outcome might be a good outcome for the one who intends it.
Would you mind explaining to me what you mean by "work things out"?
According to your definition of a "good outcome" there could never be a case of someone intending to produce a bad outcome for themselves because any outcome that is intended is by definition a "good outcome".
Quoting Average
Determine the correct answer.
Unless I'm mistaken it would then be impossible for any intelligent person to be unable to "determine the correct answer" because this is by definition the very essence of intelligence. Please correct me if I've misunderstood your position or the relevant information.
Quoting Fooloso4
Quoting Fooloso4
Quoting Down The Rabbit Hole
So, intelligence is the ability to analyze a complex problem, create at a solution, and then perform the solution. Intelligence is analytical, creative, and performative at a high level.
Intelligence is invisible if inactive. A sleeping genius and a sleeping moron are indistinguishable. It is in "doing" that the quality of intelligence is revealed.
A very intelligent person can observe something and make more connections to other things they have observed. The person's reading will be enriched by associating and comparing plot, characters, word choices, writing style, etc. with other texts.
Training is still required. Very intelligent people are not likely to mentally reinvent the wheel and everything that followed. Even if they could, it would take entirely too much time. A 19th century genius cannot open a 21st century computer and instantly make sense of it.
Perhaps under ordinary circumstances. But brain scans might reveal differences. Perhaps there are differences in their dreams as well.
Someone might desire a good outcome, but what they consider a good outcome might not be.
I agree in theory but I'm not sure what you mean given the previous definition you gave of a "good outcome". Maybe you have a revised definition by now and I don't want to assume that you're using the old one automatically.
Quoting Average
It's the ability to work things out or determine the correct answer. This ability can be possessed from a low to high degree.
It takes intelligence to figure out how to act in a way that will lead to a good outcome in so far as it is the outcome that is sought. Beyond that is the question of whether that outcome is actually good. We often seek what is pleasurable and when we are able to attain it we regard it as good. But what we find pleasurable may not be good. Eating cake is pleasurable but not good when it leads to obesity or diabetes.
The correct answer to what? What do you mean by "correct"? What do you mean by "answer"? without some kind of context, even if only hypothetical, I can't really understand you. Can you provide an example? Please forgive me if my questions comes across as pedantic.
But what is intelligence? Is it the ability to "figure out how to act in a way that will lead to a good outcome in so far as it is the outcome that is sought"? Or does it merely take intelligence to "figure out how to act in a way that will lead to a good outcome in so far as it is the outcome that is sought" in which case intelligence would be something else entirely.
What do you think intelligence is so far? You can't have no idea.
lol Idk. I mean I'd like to give you something but I suspect that it would be a waste of time. I think intelligence is probably connected to outcomes but I'm not sure because it might make sense to act in a way that leads to bad outcomes in certain situations.
If you are intending a bad outcome then that is a good outcome. :cool:
Gore Vidal once defined an intellectual as anyone who can understand an abstract.
Do you have some sort of reasoning you could use to support this conclusion or is it simply something we are supposed to accept without evidence? Maybe you're just making a joke and if so I apologize for my poor sense of humor.
Quoting Average
It would have to be an objectively correct answer. For example - a girl is 17 years old. Her brother is twice her age. When the girl is 23 years old, what will be the age of the boy?
I'm not sure why anyone would use this as some kind of sign of intelligence.
I would have thought this was obvious. If you are aiming for a bad result and you achieve this then you were successful. There's nothing in the notion of intelligence that implies moral virtue. Hence the cliché of the evil genius.
What if the result you were aiming for is bad for you?
Quoting Bitter Crank
Knowledge and intelligence are often conflated. People would disbelieve that anyone from the middle-ages could be as intelligent as we are today.
Same answer as above.
If the result is bad and you didn't see it coming, who knows? We need an example of what specifically you are thinking of. All I am trying to convey is that outcomes are complex.
I agree.
Quoting Down The Rabbit Hole
Quoting Average
Quoting Average
The math is a trick sending you in the wrong direction. All you need to know is that if she's 23 and he's twice her age, he'll be 46.
It's this ability to piece things together that is the essence of intelligence.
I figured. It was a trick question so I deliberately decided not to answer.
Yeah, I agree. Your comment just led me to wonder. The difference in brain scan seems likely. Differences in dreams seems interesting.
Yes. It all depends on what you value as 'good' from a risk assessment perspective. Getting high versus risk of overdoes. Pure heroin, by the way, is less harmful that alcohol on the body. Consider also those people who use heroin to deal with post traumatic stress disorder from, say, childhood abuse (a fairly common thing). Many of those people will say that heroin saved their lives. It made life bearable and prevented their suicide. But, given the risks, there comes a time when a lifestyle change is recommended.
If this really is the case then just substitute heroin for alcohol.
This is precisely the point I’m trying to make.
I’m not sure what you’re trying to communicate with this sentence but it strikes me as strange to say the least. Let’s substitute drug abuse with something else that you mentioned before, namely self harm, specifically it’s most extreme form which is suicide. Would you still say the same thing in that situation?
"Good for you" is determined by the individual, if someone wants to burn out on drugs and die an early death, that may have been the best decision for said person at the given time and mindset he was in. I am no judge.
Quoting Average
Not at all, and maybe I just fail to see your point but I don't see how this is related to moral right and wrong as opposed to fact or fiction.
Do you have a reason why you believe this? If you don't I have no reason to believe your claim.
Why should the belief of those around you determine what is good and bad for you? An individual is just that, an individual, who theoretically has the ability to ascertain what is beneficial to them. And what constitutes beneficial for said individual? Well it depends on what they value most in life, no? If a person values material pleasure over immaterial ones then the best thing for them would be to material wealth in any form they choose. I don't believe this to be true at all, I could deliver anecdotes and instances where this is not the case, but it still doesn't make their values any less valid. In a nutshell, good and bad are subjective to everyone, some gain their morals from the those around them and others form them from their own individual experiences.
I'm not interested in morality. I'm interested in intelligence.
This is something I disagree with but it doesn't really seem like it's connected to the development of a definition of intelligence so I won't argue with you because it seems irrelevant. If you can explain to me why or how this is connected to defining intelligence then and only then will I provide you with my perspective on this subject. Please forgive me if I'm coming across as dismissive or pretentious because that is not my intention. I also realize that you disagree with this statement because you indicated as much.
No it doesn't. I believe that what is good and bad for individuals can be determined objectively. Individuals can be mistaken. If someone believes that something is valuable that doesn't automatically mean that their belief is correct.
No worries, i understand where you are coming from, perhaps we can discuss this another time.
Quoting Average
You make an interesting point.
It seems like the surface level observation is that intelligence is the ability to apply knowledge and learn knowledge at a high level (google), but at what rate depends on those around said intelligent person. If everyone is considered intelligent, then theoretically no one is considered intelligent, because to what could they compare their intelligence to? Only those who perform at a higher level could potentially be considered intelligent.
Is this what you believe?
Yes, for now, I definitely don't have all the answers, this is the most rational thing I could come up with. An intelligent person is considered intelligent because they outperform their peers. Even someone who could be considered "Stupid" now, could be considered intelligent 100 years ago.
High level is considered above the average skill and learning rate of the general public. If someone considered themselves intelligent, but was not as skillful or efficient compared to the public, is he still intelligent?
Hard to say, theoretically yes, but without intelligence on display, he couldn't be considered intelligent in my eyes, because considering someone as intelligent is a social title, as it is dependent on those around said intelligent person.
Quoting Average
Technically he is and isn't the most intelligent person in his surroundings, because in isolation, to whom does he compare his intelligence to? He is the intelligence standard.
According to your definition of intelligence he couldn't possibly be intelligent because intelligence is by definition "the ability to apply knowledge and learn knowledge at a high level" something he is unable to do.
Do you mean that intelligence is similar to calling someone short or tall? In other words you're tall if you're taller than most people and you're short if you're shorter than most people?
Good point. To clarify, I use Google's definition.
Quoting Jake Hen
Well even if he is stunted mentally somehow, since he is isolated with no one to compare it to, he is the most intelligent person, however if another person joined him in his cell, who happens to know how to read and write (Lets consider that the previous person doesn't), cell mate 2 could be considered intelligent, since his companion is less able to apply and learn knowledge. Cell mate 2's ability is considered high level, since he performs at a higher level compared to cell mate 1.
Isn't He also the dumbest person?
Good point also, however i believe someone is considered tall if they are higher than the average height of their sex, for men I believe it is 5'9", and women 5'6"(I'm less knowledgeable about this height for obvious reasons). So since there is an average to compare it to, some one who is considered (male) 5'10" is considered tall, while someone who is of the same sex and is 5'6" could be considered short. However if someone who is 5'9"(average) is in the room surrounded by people who are 6' and taller, then they could be considered short.
While intelligence is a bit harder to measure, since most are intelligent in their own ways, it could potentially be compared to height in a way, however the most difficult question is how to accurately determine if someone is intelligent. It may not be definitively possible, IQ is one of the best bets we have and even it does not accurately describe someone's intelligence.
Yes, he is the most intelligent person but also the dumbest, and the standard to which to compare intelligence to. Its contradictory, but its all true, because to whom can he look to and say, "I can out perform them"? No one but himself the day before.
Why do you believe intelligence is connected to the ability to outperform others?
Perhaps outperform isn't the best word to use in this situation, but by going off of google's definition(which is not the best way to go about it, I use it simply to argue from a standpoint), is the ability to acquire and apply knowledge and skills at a high level. So if someone has performed at a high level of intelligence, compared to someone who is less intelligence, he has "outperformed" them. (I don't mean outperform literally, but simply as a means of describing someone who is performing at a higher level).
That strikes me as unnecessary.
Maybe it is, but I haven't come up with a better definition for intelligence myself, mainly because its elusive nature is entangled with an individual's performance and success. So google's definition appears to be a decent standard to start from in my eyes.
Great question, I myself don't have a definitive answer, but I believe that some words and concepts can't be explained in their entirety. It is wholly dependent on the topic at hand, such as abstract topics, where the definition is used to help understand the meaning of the word in a practical, everyday use. However, I believe some words have more meaning than the surface level definition. Such as intelligence, we have a practical definition provided by google, however its difficult to measure how intelligent someone is exactly, we just know that they could be considered intelligent.
lol
Then you've missed my point about the functionality of drug use.
It's not in the least strange, it's just that you aren't following. People use heroin (or whatever problematic behaviour you wish to include in your example) for the benefits it brings - which may be assessed by the person as being more useful to them than the potential harms.
I apologize. Your argument is a subtle one but I would appreciate it if you could explain to me how your argument is connected to a definition of intelligence or even how it is useful when attempting to understand the nature or essence of intelligence. If you cannot provide me with this kind of clarification then your argument will seem somewhat irrelevant even if it is sound.
I'm not interested in debating the functionality of drug use so I'll yield to you on this subject
Quoting Average
It's not a debating point. This functionality goes to the heart of your argument about harm. You just replaced heroin with alcohol precisely because you failed to see the broader point.
Anyway I think I'm done here. Maybe we can chat about theory things later. Take care.
I wish you would have made that broader point explicit. That way it would be difficult to miss and It would be easier for me to understand. I hope you take care too because I really do appreciate you and your contribution to this discussion.
Do you think you're any closer to an answer to your question?
Good. :up:
Upon being told mulgere hircum (milk a male goat), the intelligent one exclaims "male goats don't produce milk!" and begins to laugh hysterically. A genius, on the other hand, quitely fetches a pail and proceeds to milk the male goat. :grin:
I see Intelligence as a man made category and not actually a real "thing" in the world , I see it as a chunk of something and that something is the actual real "thing" in question,
But I will still answer your question.
I see intelligence as a potential, kind of like head room on an amplifier, an amplifier has more head room at 8ohms then at 1 because at 1ohm the internals are at their max out put and so if a spike occurs it will generally be translated as distortion because there's no more hit room whereas at 8 ohms you might be running it at Max but when a spike occurs that potential is still there so it can for a split second handle it
Likewise intelligence is the capability to handle increase in performance not necessarily the increases itself but the potential to increase.
Implies a lack of knowledge in a specific area which is not the same as my definition of intelligence which is a potential more than anything.
In terms of standard IQ tests they are not particular good at measuring at the extreme because that isn’t what they were made for.
It is probably best to regard the g-factor as something like a physical limb. Meaning in an analogous sense ‘intelligence’ is but one of many limbs of human beings and having one strong limb does not necessarily mean you have a more capable human being in any regard … but as ‘g’ effectively measures a cognitive ability to achieve across all cognitive dimensions (in terms of dealing with novel situations and complex problems) it is certainly useful to say the least!
In physiological terms there is a relationship between reaction time and intelligence, as well as general good physical health. Creativity is also something that is difficult to factor into the whole ‘g’ area but they do - on the surface - seem to have more than a tenuous association.
There are various other real world factors involved in cognitive ability too. For instance, some people perform better in relaxed situations whereas a degree of stress helps others do better. Such subtle effects make a hard cast means of measurement/analysis difficult.
If Intelligence and ignorance don’t actually exist wouldn’t that mean that there are no intelligent or ignorant people?
Is all these words are fundamentally is just a explanation of how a person interacts with the world (to be broadly put)
But these are just words we have made up inorder to explain something that not only already exists but can be explained with different words all together or not even explained at all
They are just social constructs
Kind of like how the philosophers that everyone seems to hold up as the men of great wisdom so highly and seem to quote non stop were at one point in time looked at as crazy and often times killed because of their opinion and yet a few hundred years later they are treated as the keepers of wisdom
And so you might call someone intelligent today but in 200yrs most likely they will be a moronic fool.
Are you trying to imply that it’s completely subjective?
For example "the new kid at work learns fast and is pretty sharp "
now you can easily go in and add that you think that he's really intelligent but that word is just a fad word it can easily be thrown away or replaced and it not effect the physical world one but because it isn't the "thing" itself. But because we treat it as such this then deforms are thinking process therefore creating a misunderstanding of certain situations or things that otherwise would not have been difficult to comprehend and or handle and or wouldn't be a situation at all but because of the distortion that is infact what happens.
Why do you believe this?
People with a 135 IQ are thick. My IQ is 159.9. Is the logical conclusion that I'm thin?
Quoting Down The Rabbit Hole
No. They test our ability to work out particular things. Sometimes time pressure is involved. The things to be worked out are abstract and analytical. Abstract problem solving by abstract analysis. It's the question though if problem solving, be it abstract like in math, or practical, is a sign of intelligence in the first place. The assigning of a value to intelligence is already a sign to see the kind of intelligence that is addressed in the IQ test.
No, I said 'thick' not thin. If weight loss is needed, try cutting back on sugar. You probably know that, with a high IQ and all. :razz:
I meant thin. If all thick people have 135, and I have 159.9, can we logically conclude I'm not thick? Is liking sugar a sign of not being intelligent?
Could you clarify what you mean by “nature”? And also would you mind presenting your understanding of what the nature of this topic actually is? Otherwise your sentence will continue to seem somewhat ambiguous.
Kinda jumping into this after reading through posts and replies and speculations so I'm tagging the people I specifically am addressing so you all know I'm thinking of things you personally said while replying to the group.
First let me address the linguistic problem. Whether it's slang or jargon the simple fact is that language does a severely abysmal job providing the contextual clues children use in development to build cognitive links around the concept of intelligence.
Be warned, this will be a long post because it's a complex topic that aims to deal with a subject that is notoriously difficult for children to learn in the same way they learn everything else.
The concept is as diverse as the human brain and that particular object happens to be the single most complex physical object in the known universe (known by man at least if that isn't obvious).
I don't want to bore people so if you already know how amazing it is you can skip this next part. It's intended to just gush about how cool the brain is anyhow.
DATA DUMP
For any of you who might think I'm being hyperbolic, consider this: a microprocessor (current generation) is a single dye (piece of silicon) containing a gating bridge, at least two "cores", control logic and connections to L1 and L2 cache (L3 is only on dye in Xenon procs) and each core is hard-encoded instruction sets for about 12 different specially stacked instruction sets (dictionaries of operations) from the x86 architecture to MME and SSE architectures. Essentially all of them are 64x64 operator/operand intersections.
Even with all of that, it's still only binary operations where 64 bits define the operator (instruction set) to work on the other 64 bits (the working set) and the output (bit) can be 0 (neutral) or 1 (charged).
In comparison, the human brain has a sodium ion channel, a potassium ion channel, neurotransmitters (like amplifiers) and neural inhibitors (like resistors) and hormones (can activate or deactivate additional neural clusters as well as affect the release and uptake of tranmitters and inhibitors).
Those varied operations each act like 1 channel in a cpu by carrying one informational factor, so that's roughly 4 factors (equivalent to 8 possible values of 'bit').
Next, the human brain has evolved over time with stacked layers. These have names like occipital, temporal, prarietal, hypothalamus, limbic region, Broca's region, Wernicke reg... ok maybe I'm going too far.
The point is, each one of those is a large enough mass of neurons to be easily seen and held by the human eye and hand.
Packed into each is anywere from a few hundred million to a billon neurons.
Each neuron has a primary output (ganglial tail) and a cloud of synapses (like hairs on the other end) that bond them 1:1 or 1:n to other neurons (or even multiple times to a single neuron). Each one of those synapses and the ganglia transmit all 4 variables of state to their neighbors or possibly to a nerve cluster or to the lymbic region for connection to a whole other region of the brain.
So, instead of a 64bit processor you have a 4!*100 processor (2,400 channels). There are definitely signs that each neuron can even make some decisions on operations internally, not merely as part of the overall cluster, but I'm trying to simplify so I'll let that lye there. So right now we have about 24 billion possible configuration channels on the low end to about 24 trillion for larger structures like the prefrontal cortex (and you have two of them).
That is the instruction set of the brain if you will. The operation set is the neuronal network itself (the series of connected and reinforced pathways between neurons.
Each operation instruction (all those trillions of configurations) take place over a series of fractional seconds while the 400Hz oscillating pulse (theta, beta, alpha waves) continues. That basically says that unlike a CPU the operator scales over time (then falls off) instead of initiating a state change instantly. The very analog nature of the operations, however, can be used to double the state of operations as a whole new operand too.
The inference from this "summation" of the complexity is that even though the brain operates at a MUCH lower "clock speed" than a processor it still achieves many orders of magnitude faster processing because it covers its entire compiled data set 400 times per second while a modern CPU takes the better part of 45 seconds to process it's entire executable memory space and that is only about 2GB on average or about 18GB on a desktop running many applications.
Have you ever noticed your PC running very slowly while indexing files or when you have too many tabs open on the browser? Also your computer has all that information in descrete and unassociated chunks while the human brain has to hang everything it knows on an associated framework.
NOTE: The whole reason people can't remember memories before about 2 or 3 years of age is because your entire adult memory space is hung on a compatible framework that developed about that time. The things that came before just don't make sense any longer.
BREAK DATA DUMP
As I've mentioned in other posts, the study of the human mind as an empirical discipline (said with a huge amount of tongue-in-cheek) has only been around since about the 1930s so it's a very very very new "science" and a whole lot of it isn't science at all due to some problems during the cold war leading up to a total ban on many (most) forms of experimentation in the West since the 70s as unethical/inhumane. Of course that ban hasn't done a whole lot of our knowledge of how the brain works and develops, but there is still progress if slow.
One fantastic (and very new) bit of research done is about how information absorption affects perceived intelligence. Your brain needs you to read - Pocket Article. (study is referenced in the article, I can link it if anyone wants).
I'm going to take a break here because this is already long and I have other things I need to do.
I literally can’t comprehend this information.
This is all Greek to me.
But regardless of that I'm not sure exactly what you were attempting to accomplish but you did make a very nice salad
Likewise the nature of this thread that was started implies that the concept of intelligence was taken the wrong way by said topic starter
I disagree. Taken the wrong way by who?
and what I'm saying is it's just semantics because of the things would have been accomplished or created or done by anyone persons and easily have been accredited to a different concept and a different word because it's just mankind's innate habit to chop sections apart off of a greater thing and categorize it into smaller things
but those smaller things don't actually exist in the real world without the social construct that it was created in and so intelligence wasn't the reason Mr x completed y and z and yet people wrongly the credit intelligence for it
I never gave a definition of intelligence or suggested that it was the reason for anything. I’m trying to figure out what it is. You say that it is a social construct that doesn’t really exist but I haven’t heard any argument to support this conclusion. You make claims but you don’t support them.
Quoting MAYAEL
This is not my view of intelligence. I’m trying formulate my view. I don’t have any position on the subject yet.
A definition I would give is "how well one is able to process information"
What exactly do you have in mind when you say process? Do you mean something like the development of an interpretation?
And so I proceeded to point out how it's not even worth that because it's just what I've already said it is.
Now nevermind I don't care about the topic anymore you've killed it through your dense skull thickness and your inability to view life metaphorically or in any other complex manner other than your apparent block of wood style that you use right now. Best of luck.
If you don’t even think that intelligence exists I’m not sure why you decided to discuss this subject in the first place.
The opposite, rather aiming for pure objectivity with as little subjectiveness as possible. Then being able to recognize patterns, predict, and so on
Is it important to have a view on intelligence? I tend to think of some people as being adept or gifted in certain contexts. There's not much more I need to know. This notion of intelligence as a form of essentialism is a subject covering multiple domains and is contested by many. The efficacy of applied intelligence has featured in so many books and movies and journalism (from Hannibal Lecter to Elon Musk), that the notion is romanticized out of all proportion and is almost useless as a criterion of value.
I don't think there's much more for you to ask me. If you google intelligence and essentialism you will see a lot of material. Much of it more useful than anything I would say.
The question of intelligence seems to be important to men - over 40 years I have rarely heard a woman care much about it. The IQ score is like cock size for nerds.
Digression: I have known several genius level people with gifts so prodigious you want to weep for the rest of us. But do these gifts make the person happier or better adjusted? Not that I've seen.
Fair enough.
I actually view it as a life and death type of topic. IQ really doesn’t interest me that much.
Ironic thing to say for someone that doesn't have an opinion
I have a view of a view but not a view of intelligence.
We would have to subjectively determine
Subjectivity and objectivity refer to the subject and the object. The subject is us, and object is what is observed. Subjectivity is when the primary input in thought is the self, its feelings and biases. Objectivity is when the primary input is the object, with detachment of the self
That's what I was trying to express with "aiming"
Even with that qualification it seem strange to aim for a goal you can never reach.