the nature of intelligence


jts

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I am puzzled by Chris Langan and Rick Rosner and others with a super high IQ and don't do much that is worthy of their IQ. I kind of tend to think there should be some correlation between IQ and achievements in life.

Isaac Asimov on intelligence:

http://talentdevelop.com/articles/WIIA.html

What is intelligence, anyway?

When I was in the army, I received the kind of aptitude test that all soldiers took and, against a normal of 100, scored 160. No one at the base had ever seen a figure like that, and for two hours they made a big fuss over me.

(It didn't mean anything. The next day I was still a buck private with KP - kitchen police - as my highest duty.)

All my life I've been registering scores like that, so that I have the complacent feeling that I'm highly intelligent, and I expect other people to think so too.

Actually, though, don't such scores simply mean that I am very good at answering the type of academic questions that are considered worthy of answers by people who make up the intelligence tests - people with intellectual bents similar to mine?

For instance, I had an auto-repair man once, who, on these intelligence tests, could not possibly have scored more than 80, by my estimate. I always took it for granted that I was far more intelligent than he was.

Yet, when anything went wrong with my car I hastened to him with it, watched him anxiously as he explored its vitals, and listened to his pronouncements as though they were divine oracles - and he always fixed my car.

Well, then, suppose my auto-repair man devised questions for an intelligence test.

Or suppose a carpenter did, or a farmer, or, indeed, almost anyone but an academician. By every one of those tests, I'd prove myself a moron, and I'd be a moron, too.

In a world where I could not use my academic training and my verbal talents but had to do something intricate or hard, working with my hands, I would do poorly.

My intelligence, then, is not absolute but is a function of the society I live in and of the fact that a small subsection of that society has managed to foist itself on the rest as an arbiter of such matters.

Consider my auto-repair man, again.

He had a habit of telling me jokes whenever he saw me.

One time he raised his head from under the automobile hood to say: "Doc, a deaf-and-mute guy went into a hardware store to ask for some nails. He put two fingers together on the counter and made hammering motions with the other hand.

"The clerk brought him a hammer. He shook his head and pointed to the two fingers he was hammering. The clerk brought him nails. He picked out the sizes he wanted, and left. Well, doc, the next guy who came in was a blind man. He wanted scissors. How do you suppose he asked for them?"

Indulgently, I lifted by right hand and made scissoring motions with my first two fingers.

Whereupon my auto-repair man laughed raucously and said, "Why, you dumb jerk, He used his voice and asked for them."

Then he said smugly, "I've been trying that on all my customers today." "Did you catch many?" I asked. "Quite a few," he said, "but I knew for sure I'd catch you."

"Why is that?" I asked. "Because you're so goddamned educated, doc, I knew you couldn't be very smart."

And I have an uneasy feeling he had something there.

Isaac Asimov on his experience with chess:
http://www.oocities.org/siliconvalley/lab/7378/asimov.htm

Failure at physical sports has never bothered me...What bothered me, though, was my failure at chess. When I was quite young and had a checkerboard, but no chess pieces, I read books on the game and learned the various moves. I then cut out cardboard squares on which I drew the symbols for the various pieces, and tried to play games with myself. Eventually I managed to persuade my father to get me real chessmen. Then I taught my sister the moves and played the game with her. Both of us played very clumsily indeed.

My brother, Stanley, who watched us play, learned the moves and, eventually, asked if he might play. Ever the indulgent older brother, I said, "Sure," and prepared to beat the pants off him. The trouble was that in the first game he ever played he beat me.

In the years that followed, I discovered that everyone beat me, regardless of race, color, or religion. I was simply the most appallingly bad chess player who ever lived, and, as time went on, I just stopped playing chess.

My failure at chess was really distressing. It seemed completely at odds with my "smartness," but I now know (or at least have been told) that great chess players achieve thier results by years and years of studying chess games, by the memorization of large numbers of complex "combinations." They don't see chess as a succession of moves but as a pattern. I know what that means, for I see an essay or a story as a pattern.

But these talents are different. Kasparov sees a chess game as a pattern but an essay as a mere collection of words. I see an essay as a pattern and a chess game as a mere collection of moves. So he can play chess and I can write essays and not vice versa.

That's not enough, however. I never thought of comparing myself to grand masters of chess. What bothered me was my inability to beat anyone! The conclusion that I finally came to (right or wrong) was that I was unwilling to study the chessboard and weigh the consequences of each possible move I might make. Even people who couldn't see complex patterns might at least penetrate two or three moves ahead, but not I. I moved entirely on impulse, if not at random, and could not make myself do anything else. That meant I would almost certainly lose.

And again - why? To me, it seems obvious. I was spoiled by my ability to understand instantly, my ability to recall instantly. I expected to see things at once and I refused to accept a situation in which that was not possible.

Some misc random points about intelligence:

* Steve McConnell in his book "Code Complete" devotes a page and a half to the relationship between intelligence (as in IQ) and ability to program. Obviously, all else being equal, the more intelligent person will be the better programmer. But according to Steve McConnell, even more important than intelligence is focus. His next point is intelligence is something you can't do much about but focus is a skill that can be learned.

* Edward de Bono says having a high IQ (powerful brain) is like having a car with a powerful engine (lots of horsepower). It doesn't make you a good driver. He says some people have a powerful brain and don't know how to use it.

* David King (himself with a high IQ) says that what IQ tests actually measure is aptitude for thinking. Then he explains what he means by aptitude for thinking. You can have an aptitude for music or math but it doesn't mean you know music or math; it means you can learn it. An aptitude for thinking doesn't mean you know how to think; it means you can learn how to think.

* Gary Kasparov (world chess champion 1985-2000) in his book "How Life Imitates Chess" devotes a chapter to talent. He says talent for chess or piano playing or whatever is a set of things together. For example to be a world class piano player you need to be good at music and you need good hands, both. If you have one or the other and not both, you won't make it as a world class piano player.

So what is the point of all this? No point. I'm just puzzled by some people with an extremely high IQ whose achievements don't match their IQ.

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I'm amazed by the number of smart people I know who spend most of their leisure hours with a club, tapping a little white ball across a field.

FF:

Do you put on your effete cap on when you are amazed?

I assume you are talking about golf and not Croquet.

"Tapping" is a poor word choice. Driving, fading and other gerunds work better.

A...

another reason why Objectivism had problems penetrating the "masses" who love sports in all there wonderful ecstasies.

Post Script:

The greater the intelligence, the greater the need for play. One of the Enterprise crew...

Golf...a great walk ruined...Mark Twain

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