Intelligence

YaYo

YaYo

whendaydescends.com
May 6, 2001
4,458
23
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um, i dont know where to begin, i have a thousand things to bring up and no idea where to start....

Prior Knowledge: I'll probably use the word Intelligence in this thread to mean all those related words (knowledge/smartness/etc) that all have their own subtle meaning, i use intelligence as the all-in-one word so remember that (if your definition is different).

oh and as usual sorry if something doesnt make sense :rolleyes:
and im in a writey mood, so it might be too long for some of you as well!!! We'll see how it goes...



Ive thought for a long time about intelligence. So many people find it the most important thing in friends/partners... and rightly so imo. Do you think its important?

But then what is intelligence?

There are so many different qualities that are called 'intelligence', and some of them i find less useful or impressive. For example there are people who work hard and used to get good grades at school or whatever, but they were dumb if you actually talked to them, they only got good marks through hard work. While this is an admirable quality in itself, i would in no way call it intelligence as i think anyone can do the same (if they wanted to). Then there's people who just simply have a good memory, the type you see on 'millionare' quiz shows or whatever, and they study hard and remember many facts and can recite entire books to you. But again ive never respected this type of intelligence, whereas so many people will say 'wow he must be smart' just because someone is knowledgable (which ive always taken to mean simply "knows a lot"). I dont think facts and past knowledge are that useful in this world. Then theres all the respective skills for different subjects like Maths or Science, where the intelligence rating is just saying how much you remember a process, and how accurately you can perform the process. I value this, knowing how to do things is very important, processes can be applied to new things that arrive and help make progress and make life easier. The intelligence i value most is the ability to figure stuff out... problem solving. The ability to be given a task and determine how to solve it. Very applicable to life. So what different types of intelligence do you value?

Having said this i find intelligence in most people. Everyone is intelligent in some way, everyone has their strengths. Agree or Disagree? Is anyone truely dumb? How many people do you consider intelligent? I know people who are called dumb who i can talk about the most abstract concepts with with no problems, while other people who are called intelligent i cant even begin to get a thougthful response from. I find that school grades are a very inaccurate way to determine intelligence and i think theres a great problem there (because people feel 'dumb', when in fact their strengths just arent suited to schoolwork). I was lucky enough to have skills that helped me get top marks at school without even trying, i pissed many people off in the process too! But i also have many weaknesses in intelligence terms, i cant write poetry or books or essays (i got bad marks for essays even if i understood the subject perfectly), i have little 'general knowledge', i dont know history or geography unless ive just learnt it (in which case i can remember up until after exams) etc etc.. so i never make a big deal about my grades when others think i should. I just dont consider myself any better, i consider myself lucky. Is this how others feel about people who get good grades? and incidentally.. isnt it hilarious how being smart is 'uncool' in todays world? isnt that just the weirdest thing?? Arent most 'cool' qualities supposed to come from an elite attitude? Which brings me to another question.. do you find intelligence is seen as a good thing or bad thing? (im seeing similarites to beauty. If someone flaunts it then they arent respected for it, yet if someone doesnt have it they tend to be 'excluded').

Heres what im good at: Problem solving, analysing, maths, science, learning, taking stuff in (if only temporarily)... etc So what kinda of things are you good at? and what do you struggle at? And you may notice these things i mention about myself are pretty similar to what i said i valued. Is this more than coincidence? Do you think people respect people of the same intelligence? (i dont mean 'how smart they are', i mean 'what areas they are smart in'). Or would you think its more a case of concentrating harder on things you value? (develop value because of intelligence, or develop intelligence because of value?) Or am i just in love with myself? :)


And last of all, whats your IQ???
go do some free online tests and find out and tell us all!!! Go on! Dont be scared.. we won't laugh. Its our right to know anyway!

what? you want to know MY iq??? DONT BE SO RUDE AND INTRUSIVE!! THATS MY OWN GODDAMN BUSINESS!!!!!
 
Hmm..should I post, or shouldn't I? I wouldn't want to be intrusive if this is meant for CERTAIN people :lol: :lol: and wo! if I take up too much space :eek: :lol: :lol:

Edit: I'm going to respond anyway, I couldn't resist. Intelligence to me is the ability to use common sense, and the acquiring of outside knowledge with the ability to apply it in your every day life. The latter TRULY becomes intelligence when you can take this outside knowledge and use inner logic to figure out problems, puzzles, etc. Problem solving is a definite characteristic. Memory is also important: without memory there is no learning, and without learning there is no intelligence. There are so many different IQ tests available, all with different scales, and I do better or worse in any one. I guess I would consider myself of average intelligence - nothing impressive, but nothing to sleep on either. My strengths are details: I can spot physical flaws or discrepancies in text. I've done that "Matching Wits with Mensa" book, and I do well with the analogies, but not the mathematical portion (I do well in number series though). I pride myself in my common sense, and my ability to problem solve a technical (perhaps not the right word, since technical usually goes hand in hand with math, but I can't think of the word) problem (not math-based). Actual THINKING is important of course - since some people neglect this portion of decision-making and problem-solving, and just choose what pops up in their head first. Ok, enough of that. Hope this is as enlightening to you as it was for me :D
 
I took an iq test and i got 115 but it was in english and half of the questions were based on words sometimes i didnt understood. Anyone knows a page or program with iq test with spanish support?

And yea i understand how you feel about good grades. Ill be brutally honest: i have been too fucking down since 7th grade to care about school. I never do a fucking homework if at all possible i skip classes and so on. Yet ive never been exeptionally bad at school. I almost never fail and my grades rate from 70s to 90s ( we use 1-100 for grades ) and it depends almost on how much weight do the final test has. When the final test its all that counts i go up to the 90s cause thats what i get usually. When it only counts 70 percent i try to do 2 or 3 homeworks, and get by with 70s. This is pretty fucking weird cause ive never studied more than 2 or 3 hours for a test no matter how hard it is but usually i just check stuff out for 30 minutes. I just remember everything that was said in class ( since almost all classes count assistance to even do the final test i dont get to skip too many of them with weird exeptions ) and i just remember how things are done in math or physics ( i never actually do any numbers before a math test ) or remember things that got my atention in a certain subject in classes like management or history and build up or guess from there, and it has paid off. I will never understand how my brain works but i just have like huge bookmarks on a subject inside my head and i figure out the rest of it from there, usually right at the time im having the test.

I do not consider myself intelligent, because by my standart i just have a weird good memory that is well chained and brings up endless details from a major event, however i dont consider problem solving intellingence. Most problems are figured out in a rather quick fashion with deficient results that do the job but just barely, no one has invented a 95% efficient engine in the middle of the desert with nothing but a few tools and metal to work with, yet everyone consider a person intelligent if they create something that kinda works like an engine with something like 15 or 20% efficience. Fast thinking and a ability to solve problems in a fast practical way is not intelligence to me. I consider intelligence the capacity to create. Create something that works, its useful, make all the mental process to figure out what works best, usually the skills a nice scientist who focuses on creation and research has. But i think intelligence is a word that is far too open to interpretation and everyone has a different concept of it so we probably never agree on something, so discussing intelligence is not very intelligent of us
go figure :p
 
Here;s what I think about intelligence - and I will not recite the dictionary.

An intelligent person needs a combination book smart and street smart qualities, as well as common sense and logical reasoning. There are some straight A type people who are morons - just because they can retain knowledge from a book doesn't make them intelligent. 90%+ of the crap you learn in school doesn't equate to real life. Real life begins once you're done with school - which is a pity, because the education system doesn't teach you about life - just about facts.

An intelligent person has to know how to get out of his/her own way. They need to face life with an open mind, need to make decisions on the fly, and need to deal with success and failure. Does making a million dollars make you intelligent? I don't think so. Is a doctor intelligent? Most think so. I have my doubts though. Yes - they're smart. But they spend all their time married to their work - ridiculous hours. When these type of people have families, that's where "workaholic" type jobs fall short. Families suffering because of work is not intelligent. To have your own kids grow up without you, because you think your work and the money you make is "all that" is not intelligent to me. It's all about balancing your life.

Excelling at your job, being termed a genious, or a great athlete doesn't make you intelligent. Just because you can articulate words doesn't make you intelligent. An intelligent person balances all facets of life, and at least tries to look at everything. I don't think most people can fully succeed at this, but if you're thinking in these terms, I think you are intelligent.

I've become more intelligent over time. I'm smart, but didn't study hard enough in school to prove it with grades. I've been married for almost 21 years. I've always been there for my kids. I've worked hard, but haven't missed my kids growing up. When the kids were just born, I thought it was all about making money to support them. But I learned that support is more than money - it's presence. They know I've been there for them - I think that makes me at least somewhat intelligent. I'm constantly learing about balancing life - and what is "important".
 
Nice read, this thread. I'll try to sum up (since I've got nothing interesting to add beyond what was already said):

Intelligence = flexibility and creativity backed up with objective brainpower.

D Mullholand
 
An interesting thread, with many good points made, especially by Metalmancpa, who I guess would have the most life experience out of all of us here :)

When talking about Intelligence, I feel that to save confusion and make it a bit more clear, we need to talk about Wisdom as well, as the 2 are often mixed up or put together. As mentioned earlier, we may have different undersandings of definitions, but I will try to make mine as user-friendly as possible :D

I define Intelligence as factual knowledge, straight information, eg. the world is round, 2 + 2 = 4, Electrons have a negative charge, etc.
Wisdom I would define as the application of knowledge, knowing when to act (and when not too;)), being somewhat 'street-smart', life experience, etc.

As I think most of us can gather from intuition, intelligence is nothing without wisdom. Also, I can't perceive how a person can be wise if the have nothing to base that wisdom on ie. information

I too saw in school how useless the setup was for people who can't necessarily recite a whole book of facts, but have good qualities elsewhere. It didn't take into account the person as a whole, it was more like a processing plant: not ready to understand people for the unique beings the were, not nututring their growing abilities in cognitive and abstract/lateral thought; they were just there to push us through so we would be separated and prepared to become working robots...

Er, um, where was I? Oh yes, Intelligence. Intelligence is good as long as you can nuture Wisdom at the same time.
 
Originally posted by Bumblefoot
I have an IQ of infinity.
Click to expand...

You probably don't mean this, but I do.

How is it 100% accurate to determine someones intelligence?
It's NOT.

You cannot measure how much one knows, how much one understands, unless you are prepared to ask one EVERY SINGLE FUCKING QUESTION, unless you can account for the fact that you are constantly learning, your mind is evolving, you're always THINKING. Your intelligence is boundless, no matter how "smart" you are.
 
What I find ridiculous that they give you IQ tests when you're a naive 5 years old, genereally in possession of little applicable knowledge...there's a reason why one of my high school riends referred to pre-teens as fetuses! If my IQ at 5 was 135 (true story), it has to be pushing 200 by now! :) To further the bragging session, I have a 3.8 average through seven semesters of college :)
 
Originally posted by Sullen Jester


You probably don't mean this, but I do.

How is it 100% accurate to determine someones intelligence?
It's NOT.

You cannot measure how much one knows, how much one understands, unless you are prepared to ask one EVERY SINGLE FUCKING QUESTION, unless you can account for the fact that you are constantly learning, your mind is evolving, you're always THINKING. Your intelligence is boundless, no matter how "smart" you are.
Click to expand...

I agree with you dude. :cool:
and you have 666 posts. :)
 
I agree with MetalmanCPA's definition of intelligence. My strength is in thinking/daydreaming, and language. I'm good at like, figuring stuff out, or thinking out of the box (no pun intended :lol: ) I like thinking about Satorish questions if you know what I mean. I like to say I'm good at foreign languages, but I've only been learning German, which comes very easy to me, of course, that may just be its similarities to English, I enjoy learning stuff like that too, so that helps.

My weaknesses are the mathish things, like remembering a process and using it exactly like you learned it. I always say i'm weak in this area, I don't know if that's necesarrily true, I've taken Algebra I THREE TIMES. The first time was in eigth grade, I found the stuff so boring and annoying, we'd be learning something and it was like "God this is giving me a headache", it was either because it was too hard to learn or I didn't care, one or the other. So I just daydreamed through class, and copied my friends' homework every day :rolleyes: I failed every single test, failed the class, took it again in ninth grade. Same exact thing in ninth grade, I failed every test with a 50 or lower, I amazingly passed the first semester, the second semester I failed. So I had to go to summer school to make it up, the program was on a computer, I found out how to cheat the program, and I cheated through Algebra I in one week, w00t! It's over now, I've defeated Algebra I, I'm in some dumbass mathclass now and still only getting a C :rolleyes: :confused: :rolleyes:
 
How is it 100% accurate to determine someones intelligence?
It's NOT.
Click to expand...
Very true, i did about 7 IQ tests a month or two ago. My scores were roughly as follows - 157, 155, 151, 149, 125, 115, 108. All were between 10 and 60 minutes long, and i only took ones that seemed like they knew what they were talking about. The top 4 marks focused on problem solving, the '125' was problem solving too but i thought there were 40 questions and paced myself only to realise there were 50 questions when i had a minute to go (so ignore this result, theres no way to tell what i would have got). and the 115 and 108 were focusing more on knowledge and meanings of words and such.. i gave up on a few other tests that focused on similar things so you can assume thered be a few more marks around the 110-120 mark. So what does all this tell you? NOTHING. Im dumb, im smart, im average... all at once. I found these results more amusing than anything.

Which brings me to MetalmanCPA's post. You bought up some points that i was meaning to bring up in my original thread, about the other areas of life that can be called 'intelligence'. Such as wisdom, skills at sport, skills with people, etc. All can be called 'intelligence' in some way. I think wisdom is very very important obviously, MMCPA said it well. And its definitely one of the least measurable intelligence things. Unless you consider what it consists of, are there previously mentioned 'intelligence's that make up street-wise. Is it to do with observing and being able to hold many different choices in your thoughts at once? And being able to think objectively obviously helps?



Heres another of the thousand things that ive been thinking about with this subject: Unsure if this will make sense:
Type 1:
There are people who remember the base data, and the processes to analyse that data. This takes less memory usage (you know how in a database you arent supposed to store things which can be calculated from other things already in the database?) but it requires more calculations whenever something needs to be done. As a basic example, instead of remembering the fact 'the earth is round', you remember what 'round' is and what the earth looks like and calculate the answer from the data. Or you remember what the number 1 is and remember how to add two numbers and calculate the answer to 1+1.

Type 2:
Then there are the people who just remember the facts, the results of such processes. Once they analyse something for the first time they then store the answer in their mind and reference that in future. The type of person who will recite opinion such as "Blah blah is a good singer" long after they've actually held the opinion. You ask 'Why?" and they are forced to re-evaluate and then they realise what their actual opinion is (unless they already have the answer to 'Why?' already stored, which happens!). This type of person would remember that "1+1=2".

Understanding so far??
Well obviously people are a mixture of the above two things, and while you see people who follow one way more than the other generally most use both methods. We all store the common things in our heads, the ones that arent going to change (eg 1+1=2, nobody would calculate that every time, most simply remember the entire fact), but is the balance of Type 1 amd Type 2 important? Is it something we are born with? or something we develop? or can we choose to suddenly start being more Type 1, or more Type 2?
Or am i just analysing something that isnt there, and we're all just the same?
 
Hard work is much more valuable than intelligence. Unless everyone in the world is working their hardest only THEN would IQ matter, but we are all (or mostly all) kidding ourselves if we think we work hard... get pissed off at me if you like, but we wouldn't be posting on some stupid message board if we were using our time effectively. I say the average person (not including sleep) wastes AT LEAST 2/3 of their time awake doing something that could be done either more productively or not needed to be done at all. So WHAT THE FUCK DO WE NEED TO KNOW OUR IQ'S FOR?!?!?! BRAGGING RIGHTS? Most likely, the average human also has a MASSIVE ego and hates admitting (even to themselves) when they are wrong. Me included... you know i am right. (hehe)
 
I say the average person (not including sleep) wastes AT LEAST 2/3 of their time awake doing something that could be done either more productively or not needed to be done at all
Click to expand...
Very true actually!!

But why does hard work matter? What do we get from working harder? I think we are forced to work too much, we are focused too much on getting up and doing something visibly worthwhile. Resting and relaxing and taking time out to think are very important, and things that cant be rushed.

What i mean is hard work is important for people who want to achieve things that take hard work. Intelligence is important to people to people who want to achieve things that take intelligence. Everyone needs a mixture of both and maybe you're right, maybe hard work should have a bigger slice of the pie.
 
i am CERTAIN hard work takes a bigger slice of the pie. And did you ever tink that Hard Work and Intelligence are somewhat interchangable? An idiot who works very hard will do better in life than a genius who doesn't work hard at all. how? Easy, first, the only time intelligence helps is to learn things faster.. only the MOST brilliant people are actually comming up with NEW things, so chances are you won't be doing anything innovative. This means that an idiot had to have worked HARDER than the intelligent person to learn the things the intelligent person learned. Once you learn things they become habit and instantly recallable. That is why we learn things, so we can do them without thinking too much. So let's say for example we have 2 engineers. One is brilliant, the other is a moron. The moron is conditioned to hard work, so once they have learned what they need to know they can work hard and it is no change for them. Now the genius on the other hand NEVER had to work all that hard to learn his shit and when it comes time to apply it all... this new concept of WORK is brought up.. He suffers because he is not as dedicated as the idiot is... make sense? The only area i can't see this applying to is creative things, like music or art. Sure you have to work a bit to get a level of proficiency on your instrument or you have to practice painting, but the vision you DON'T have to work for and the idiot has no vision... there the idiot is screwed. Ideally you would want to be a hard working genius, but the problem is that being that intelligent means that compared to the things that the average person has to accomplish it is much easier for you to accomplish and therefore the extra work is not required. It requires a HUGE personal motivation for a genius to just "decide" he or she wants to work hard when they can get away without it for most things.
 
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