Thread: About "Intelligence"

Hello everyone, lately I have put a lot of thought into the word "intelligence" and its meaning. Even after extensive research, I have never been able to find any concrete answers to the questions I have been pondering, so I would like to see what you have to say.

Firstly, what is intelligence? Some consider intelligence to be the ability to apply previous experiences to new situations while others say that intelligence is simply the speed of out thought processes. What do you think, is intelligence simply the number that an online test gives us or is there much more to it than that?

Where do we obtain our intelligence? Is intelligence genetic? Is it something that grows from experiences during a young person's childhood, or a combination of both? Can intelligence be developed during adulthood, or is our IQ subject to remain constant for the rest of our lives?

Can one become more intelligent, and if so, how? For ages, people considered a person's IQ to remain constant throughout life. Now, however, we are beginning to see a slew of books, web sites, and even video games that claim to sharpen the mind and enhance a person's overall intellect. Is this a money-making hoax or can a person's mind truly be developed during adulthood?

Discuss.

I believe intelligence capacity comes from genes, intelligence itself comes from learning a great deal yourself.

Intelligence is the potential ability of one's brain for processing/learning etc. it has nothing to do with actual knowledge/stuff learned. It is a concept of potential.

As for genetics there is the nature nurture debate, a certain amount of education/diet/lifestyle can influence one's IQ and therefore one genetically is though to be born with a IQ range, and lifestyle will determine how high that will be in ones life. It is thought generally to remain approximately the same throughout one's life, however it can be increased if it is particularly low due to environment by improving diet, etc...
It can also apparently increase by developping your skill at taking IQ test!!!

IQ is only an average figure, it is a distribution of the intelligences relative to a population where 100 is the mean. Therefore it has no solid actual "level" it is relative.

Originally Posted by Robbie

Intelligence is the potential ability of one's brain for processing/learning etc. it has nothing to do with actual knowledge/stuff learned. It is a concept of potential.

As for genetics there is the nature nurture debate, a certain amount of education/diet/lifestyle can influence one's IQ and therefore one genetically is though to be born with a IQ range, and lifestyle will determine how high that will be in ones life. It is thought generally to remain approximately the same throughout one's life, however it can be increased if it is particularly low due to environment by improving diet, etc...
It can also apparently increase by developping your skill at taking IQ test!!!

IQ is only an average figure, it is a distribution of the intelligences relative to a population where 100 is the mean. Therefore it has no solid actual "level" it is relative.

So if I knew everything and did not need to learn anymore, I wouldn't have the potential to learn anymore so I'd not be intelligent? That sounds daft, and the Wikipedia definition says otherwise.

Intelligence is a property of the mind that encompasses many related abilities, such as the capacities to reason, to plan, to solve problems, to think abstractly, to comprehend ideas, to use language, and to learn. There are several ways to define intelligence. In some cases, intelligence may include traits such as creativity, personality, character, knowledge, or wisdom. However, some psychologists prefer not to include these traits in the definition of intelligence.

Psychological explantions are different because they like to broadeb definitions.

No because then your IQ would increased with age, knowledge says not a lot about intelligence as if two people learn say the periodic table, you cannot differenciate between the person who learned it in 5 minutes and the person who learned it in 5 days!

Intelligence is useful for psychological analysis & medical purposes (as in IQ) when measuring potential for learning etc, not what has been learned.
It would also be very difficult to measure knowledge as well (isnt that what quiz shows are about!)

Knowing everything is a ridiculous argument! Firstly you would still have potential as potential has nothing to do with how much you know or how much there is to know! Also because th actual number for IQ means nothing. Also yoyu acknowledge its ridiculous!

There are actually certain theories about people with ADD/ADHD having momentum peaks of IQ.

But i think IQ itself is mostly static, with some exceptions. In other words, the genes.

We live in a world where stupid gets the 20 million dollar bones a year. So IQ really doesn't say much. High IQ always seems to have it's draw backs. Harvard has to throw out all it's economic books. I guess it's getting to say you went to Harvard and not what you learned there, that's going to make the differance.

For the last ten years banks have been throwing money out their windows, you would have had to of been really stupid not to try and grab some of it, but there were some very smart people grabbing this money and none of them could see the bust.

What, housing was going to a trillion dollars and 20 life times to pay it off?

The human race really needs to stop and think a moment. I once fail an IQ test, true story. But even I can see how stupid "really smart" people have become.

Years ago you had to earn your position in life. A High School Grad could become an engineer at his company with a little hard work and smarts.

Now that same person, if he doesn't have a degree from some university will be working a McDonald's.

Could it be, God forbid I'm saying this, that the university thing and the degree bull are just one big dog and pony show.

What good is a high IQ if it's in our nature to be stupid?

Hey, human race, get on the ball. It's not good when a guy like me finds himself in the 90 percentile.

I would like to thank the people in this forum, Your posts are great, you give a man like me hope that there is still a distance I must travel.

It's our intellect that separates us from the animal kingdom. Not the thumb, if we had been born without a thumb we would have invented one.

You can't be implying that our thumb hasn't had a hand in acquiring our current intelligence.

I prefer the multiple intelligence theories. They make more sense than lumping it under 1 attribute, and it is the most powerful weapon against the sophisticated intellectual elite.

Originally Posted by marcusclayman

I prefer the multiple intelligence theories. They make more sense than lumping it under 1 attribute, and it is the most powerful weapon against the sophisticated intellectual elite.

But those of us in the sophisitcated intellectual elite are smart in all the aspects of intelligence. 8)
(Damn! Did I say that out loud.)

Intelligence is a measure of our ability to accurately perceive, to efficiently reason, and to usefully predict.
It is a product of both genetics and development (both physical and environmental).
Intelligence can be improved through application of proper environmental stimuli (and eating lots of oily fish).

"But those of us in the sophisitcated intellectual elite are smart in all the aspects of intelligence."

Except spelling. LOL, I'm just kidding, I know that's just a typo, but I've seen you correcting people, so here we are. "Sophisticated"

Anyway, I hope your joking. If not, then you should know that "smart" is relative to that which is smartest and that which is least smart, of which there is probably no such thing.

"Intelligence is a measure of our ability to accurately perceive, to efficiently reason, and to usefully predict." This reminds me of how Pythagoras divided intelligence into 3 parts: Imagination, Judgment and Memory. Your words are, to a degree, synonymous. He went so far as to say they effect eachother, and that there are diseases of each faculty, and that they find their value most when they are in balance with eachother.

"Intelligence can be improved through application of proper environmental stimuli (and eating lots of oily fish)."

B vitamins and electrolytes help

With out the thumb we may have spent more time contemplating the heavens.

The drives that made people like Newton spend a life time figuring out the laws of the physical universe had nothing to do with their thumbs. These guys were also doing this figuring in a time when, one, there was no obvious need to do so , and second, they could have gotten them selves served up as hamburgers.

Genetics have a lot to do with it. But it may be that the genetics involved were created by the environments of long ago.

If you didn't think ahead in Northern Europe in years past you died.

When the Spanish came to South America did they kill off enough of the smartest and quickest to have made an effect that has lasted until today.

The Berlin Wall was erected to keep the brain power in. The Wall between Mexico and the US is to allow the US to steal the brain power from Mexico.

Well I'm now way off subject.

I would just like to say that humans are made up of a lot of types, there are those that think up absurd questions and then there are those that are going to try and answer those questions, then there are going to be those that couldn't be bothered.

Then there are those that are going to scam all these people and end up making money off the bunch.

Originally Posted by marcusclayman

Except spelling. LOL, I'm just kidding, I know that's just a typo, but I've seen you correcting people, so here we are. "Sophisticated"

Marcus, you disappoint me in your estimation of myself. That was a deliberate error. I originally thought to type sofisticated, but decided that was too obvious. I thought the mix up of letters made it sound as if I was drunk - not a very sophisticated condition. hic.

"With out the thumb we may have spent more time contemplating the heavens. "

Without the thumb where would we get all the food? How would we shoot a bow, throw a spear, make a telescope, USE a telescope?

There are no concrete answers in science. You should be looking for questions, not concrete answers.

Opposable thumbs led to fine motor control skills. These were transfered to fine motor control of the tongue, lips and palate, which led to language, which led to the further development of intelligence.
Hypothesis? Yes, but quite a popular one.

Intelligence is a very difficult word to 'explain' there's neither a short answer nor a way to put it completely into "intelligence is this"



Intelligence from my perspective is the Ability to 'Think'
to explain I'll refer to a Documentary a saw


A research clinic did a basic test with supposedly 'intelligent' Chimps and children ranging 3-6 yrs old,
both we given two L shaped blocks and shown how to stand them on their heads (upside down L) and were rewarded for successfully standing both blocks up.
Then they switched the blocks for wieghted blocks so that attempting to balance the blocks as before would simply cause the blocks to topple over
Now the Chimps just picked up the fallen blocks and rebalanced them, never learning and just repeating the same motions that had won them a reward before
The Children however, these 3 year olds who were still barely capable of speech, attempted to balance the blocks, and as soon as they fell over began to investigate, they realise the blocks have changed weight and no longer balance right, and in some cases the children experimented and found by balancing the blocks against each other they stood up and the child was rewarded

This experiment I feel is proof of what Intelligence is, Chimps are not intelligent, they can memorize things but have no capacity to modify what they know or apply it to new situations, Humans are born with the Innate 'Intelligence' of the world around us, even as toddlers we can see and solve a problem



So my opinion of Intelligence is it's the Ability to Think and to Understand what we see, instead of just remembering solutions