Intelligence: Redux

[justinkick]

I've been thinking about intelligence again. In our last little discussion, we all seemed to agree that intelligence was, at its core, the ability to learn new concepts. What we disagreed on however, was how to measure this. I may have a solution

Comments

[abnormalfreak]

yes, but again, you're making a blanket statement for something that you can't make a blanket statement towards.

there are very, very rare cases where you find someone who is all around intelligent. i'm talking the people who make straight a's in all of their classes without sitting (awake at least) through an entire class or doing any work.

generally, the really smart people you find can do that in maybe one or two classes, or more like one kind of class. now, yes if you could find someone as good at everything as that specific savant was at math and language, then yes, he would be "more intelligent" than the savant, i suppose. but only in those areas.

but saying that someone is intelligent in the way that you are using it is like saying that one sports team is "better" than another. it's usually an easy distinction to make. UF has a better football team than UCF. but intelligence is like trying to make distinctions when it comes down to the finer aspects. some teams only score a few times per game, and would never be able to touch USC's impressive numbers. but they might have the best defense on the planet making USC not better than them overall.

i know that is incredibly off topic, but my point is, when it really comes down to it, rating one person as more "intelligent" overall is really something that is very difficult to do. there are of course, the bright shining stars, but those are very few, and very far between. even the most noted geniuses of the world had major weaknesses in some arenas of intelligence. i'd tend to doubt that Edison would have found an English class easy as he was dyslexic, as was Einstein, Bell, and Werner Von Braun.

you would be hard pressed to name people more intelligent than these, but they are only intelligent in one arena of thought. now, if there were a writer, painter, sculptor, musician, mathmetician, scientist on level with these men, than he or she would be more intelligent, but people like that don't exist.

[justinkick]

i disagree. savants have a disorder (pardon the wording, whether or not they suffer is up to you). i agree that someone who could learn anything as fast as the savant would indeed be a genius. but i'm not talking about geniuses. im talking about normal people who are able to grasp concepts quickly from their given learning styles. these people, when compared with people who must be taught concepts through simple metaphors, must be considered more intelligent.

but yea, someone who is savant-like in all areas of study. i wouldn't wish that on anyone.