What really constitutes intelligence?

[The Frood]

How do you guys define intelligence?

What is the greatest indicator of intelligence?

Are intelligent people born or made?

any other thoughts on intelligence?

 

[Artifice Orisit]

In terms of AI, intelligence would be a measurement of how effective & adaptable the device/program is, hence "strong AI" being a mind that could be adapted to perform almost any reasonable task adequately, thus is probably intelligent enough to find something to do in the complete absence of human input.

In human terms intelligence is likewise measure by adaptability (creativity) and proficiency (competence) which makes me wonder if people who only use their minds to get by in day-to-day life and don't question what they're doing or why they're doing it (philosophy) are somehow less intelligent than those that do.
It's like the difference between strong & regular AI; it's entirely possible to create regular AI with massive processing & memory resources, but that doesn’t make it "smarter" than the strong AI, i.e. intelligence is that spark that makes a mind more than a mere adaptive system, that capacity for growth and understanding.

Hence anyone with a high IQ who considers themselves inherently smarter than those lacking in that regard are the true idiots, made ever more tragic by their wasted potential.

It's why people who call me smart piss me off.
Not because I'm insulted, but because they're letting themselves think they're not intelligent, using me as an excuse to make idiots out of themselves, which honestly makes me sick.

Anyway a high IQ is a twisted sort of "gift".
It certainly doesn’t bring happiness.

 

[Vrecknidj]

Intelligence is an umbrella term used to describe 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 there is no agreement on which traits define the phenomenon of intelligence agreed upon by a majority across the various concerned disciplines.

It's a start.

Dave

 

[fullerene]

I've spent years wondering about these things. ...probably longer than the question is worth, to be honest. The only reason I could see why I would want to know what "intelligence" is is so that I can call someone "intelligent" or "not". It's kind of stupid, once i thought about it. If someone's good at making distinctions, then it doesn't matter if that's really the root of intelligence--I'll talk to them whenever I think there's a difference between two similar things that I'm not sure if I'm getting. And whenever I have a brand new problem, I would want to talk to the guy who comes up with creative solutions, whether he's "really" intelligent or not.

It could be so many things. Every 5-7 months or so (averaging over maybe 4 years), something new would come to mind, and I would think "ahh I forgot about that. I think a person has to be smarter to do X than to do [whatever was the past best criteria]... so maybe that's really a more fundamental kind of intelligence." It happened so many times that I don't even remember them all (to name a few, though: recognizing the differences in similar concepts. Seeing the similarities between disparate concepts. Being able to explain their ideas in such a way that many people truly understand them. Following a single thought/belief's implications through to see what would happen if the plan were implemented or the belief adopted. Recognizing contradictions within a system of ideas. Being able to get inside of a system of ideas and fairly judging whether they were consistent... the list goes on and on and on).

But it's not like a linear list. Someone can be good at spotting contradictions and bad and finding similarities (Ti vs Ni). Someone can be good at explaining complicated ideas, but have no idea where they lead (Si vs Ne). Some people have a big list of these that they can do well, but I've never met anyone who could do them all. I eventually just decided that I didn't care what made someone intelligent, and shortly after recognized that even if I did know, it would probably just make me look down on some segment of unintelligent people just because they fit into the category... which then of course closes you off the subsets of intelligence that they do have, and things just sort of go downhill from there.

Maybe that's just my body's way of leveling out the cognitive dissonance associated with failing to come up with anything... but I sorta think it was just a frustrating waste of time, thinking back on it now

 

[Da Blob]

The most basic type of intelligence is discrimination. It seems to always to have been an advantage to be able to notice subtle differences in the environment or how to determine how one thing is different/better than a similar thing.
Of course, there are different mental activities that can be called intelligent - but i think that avoiding repeating a mistake has to be on the list somewhere...

 

[ktp]

I don't think there will ever be a way to define intelligent concretely. It's just such an abstract concept with just too many ways to go about it. Right now in the society we live in, we've seemed to reach a consensus that intelligence can be measured through test scores. I think this is the least intelligent way of measuring intelligence.

I consider professional poker players to be the most intelligent people in the world, and also professional Chess and Starcraft players. Games seem to encompass a lot of what intelligence is...learning, critical thinking, problem solving, pattern recognition, etc. This is obviously not true for a game like Pong. But from my experience, Poker, Starcraft, and Chess that brought forth communities with some of the most intelligent people I have ever met.

 

[fullerene]

lol, starcraft, really? I thought that game was around long enough that most people had just memorized basically what they were going to do, maybe modulo an opponent's decision or two that have to be decided at gametime, but then came down to doing do it faster than the other guy. I'm very much a lousy amateur player, though.

Poker and Chess I could see though.

 

[Vrecknidj]

A woman living in the Pleistocene who managed to survive marauding males, attacks by higher-status females, famine, floods, predators, and drought, and who managed to keep her children alive long enough so that they too might find mates and breed.

I'm thinking that this is probably something like intelligence.

Dave

 

[eudemonia]

What about emotional intelligence? Despite the problems associated with it, I do think it has some use as a notion. I like the idea of intelligence as being the ability to understand, channel and harness emotions and to empathise with others in order to achieve a preferred outcome.

Funny, when I was younger, I used to think of myself as intelligent. However, the older I got the more I realised that I was of pretty average intelligence really. Memory is often said to be a function of intelligence and I don't have one. I will read a book one day, love it to bits, put it down and forget all about it the next day. sigh.....