moar theeeries
Recently I've had the occasion to consider my visceral reaction to insults of intelligence. I think I take them so seriously because of the importance I place on learning and self-improvement. In my mind, intelligence is intimately linked with the capacity to provide insights and useful information, and a flat-out denunciation of the intelligence of someone denies the denouncer's capacity to learn from the subject of denunciation. In my experience, everyone and everything has its own sort of intelligence, that is, information-transmitting ability. I think it is mainly useful to talk about relative intelligence in terms of specific types of information-processing (most significantly, transmittal), like various flavors of artistry and craftsmanship or kinesthtic ability or social sensitivity or emotional awareness. For example, I don't think that a person would be good at a menial task like truck driving because ze is dumb, but perhaps ze could adapt to an environment with fewer intellectual inputs (which, by according to the Wikipedia entry on intelligence, would actually make zir "smart"). Not all creative or logically intelligent people require constant inputs, some of them have very rich inner worlds, of contemplation or imagination. But maybe I am using too broad a definition of intelligence for useful discussion.
This whole topic is meshing pretty well with my current thought-obsession with informational stimuli (mainly thinking of television vs printed media). People like Tim Leary thought that the advent of television would herald a new age of super-intelligence, due to the sheer density of information that humans could expose themselves to. Clearly, that hasn't exactly happened, and now research has shown that passive consumption of information actually hinders cognitive processes [source needed]. Even websurfing, a much more interactive type of consumption - dulls the attention span and thus constrains the brain's propensity for focus-oriented tasks [source needed].
So my animistic definition of intelligence is what works for me, it's a little lie that keeps my world working in proper order, but it needs to be re-evaluated (or at least analyzed) when it causes a hitch in communicating with other people.
This whole topic is meshing pretty well with my current thought-obsession with informational stimuli (mainly thinking of television vs printed media). People like Tim Leary thought that the advent of television would herald a new age of super-intelligence, due to the sheer density of information that humans could expose themselves to. Clearly, that hasn't exactly happened, and now research has shown that passive consumption of information actually hinders cognitive processes [source needed]. Even websurfing, a much more interactive type of consumption - dulls the attention span and thus constrains the brain's propensity for focus-oriented tasks [source needed].
So my animistic definition of intelligence is what works for me, it's a little lie that keeps my world working in proper order, but it needs to be re-evaluated (or at least analyzed) when it causes a hitch in communicating with other people.