in·tel·li·gence [in-tel-i-juhns]

noun

1. Capacity for learning, reasoning, understanding, and similar forms of mental activity; aptitude in grasping truths, relationships, facts, meanings, etc.

2. Manifestation of a high mental capacity: He writes with intelligence and wit.

3. The faculty of understanding.

4. Knowledge of an event, circumstance, etc., received or imparted; news; information.

5. The gathering or distribution of information, especially secret information.

Source: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/intelligence

I have this friend of mine, and she is fantastic, lovely, interesting, intelligent, but ever so slightly arrogant about relative intelligences.

So what do I mean by arrogant about intelligence?

Well I think I am no dope, at least I think I am relatively intelligent when compared to my fellow passengers on planet earth. Maybe I am arrogant? No, I try to be humble about my own intelligence, because I realise there is so much I don’t know, and so much of what I do know is based on the assumptions of others. My friend is always questioning, not a bad thing to do I think, but what gets my goat is the constant comparison of my intelligence to others. To me the obvious implication is that my intelligence is less than these ‘other’ people, as if there is a relative benchmark to compare intelligence, like a Wheels Magazine ‘Car of the Year’ comparison tool, but for intelligence.

It hurts to be continually told that you are not as intelligent as someone else, even if you know that the person is not consciously being insulting. What hurts most is that the comparison is based on what those mysterious other benchmark ‘intelligent’ people ‘know’ or have ‘learnt’.

In my opinion what each us knows is small proportion of all knowledge that we individually know almost nothing. Also, basing intelligence measurement around someone’s ability to punch holes in someone else’s argument or knowledge is in my view not intelligent, but smacks of intellectual arrogance.

But what is intelligence anyway?

Well here is what a couple of famous ‘intelligent’ people said about it…

Einstein said, “The true sign of intelligence is not knowledge but imagination.”

Socrates said, “I know that I am intelligent, because I know that I know nothing.”

Types of Intelligence

There is this really great discussion which kind of echoes my views, that there are multiple types of intelligence with each of us has different levels of intelligence, within each type of intelligence. You can get a full discussion of that at http://bigthink.com/.

Dr. Howard Gardner was interviewed by BigThink.com about the types of intelligence, below is an extract with a link to the full interview.

Question: Is our culture biased towards one type of intelligence over another?

Howard Gardner: Well the theory claims we all had these eight intelligences and people are different from one another in their profile of intelligences and there’s no necessary link between one intelligence and the other. It also is based on the assumption that we wouldn’t have these intelligences if they haven’t been valuable in human evolution.

He argues that these various forms of intelligence wouldn’t have evolved if they hadn’t been beneficial at some point in human history, but what was important in one time is not necessarily important in another. “As history unfolds, as cultures evolve, of course the intelligences which they value change,” Gardner tells us. “Until a hundred years ago, if you wanted to have higher education, linguistic intelligence was important. I teach at Harvard, and 150 years ago, the entrance exams were in Latin, Greek and Hebrew. If, for example, you were dyslexic, that would be very difficult because it would be hard for you to learn those languages, which are basically written languages.” Now, mathematical and emotional intelligences are more important in society, Gardner says: “While your IQ, which is sort of language logic, will get you behind the desk, if you don’t know how to deal with people, if you don’t know how to read yourself, you’re going to end up just staying at that desk forever or eventually being asked to make room for somebody who does have social or emotional intelligence.”The full interview is at http://bigthink.com/ideas/16280

Another key concept that Dr. Gardner discusses in this interview is what is stupid.

Question: If there are so many ways to be smart, what does it mean to be stupid?

Howard Gardner: The first thing I would say is that life isn’t fair and some people are going to be strong in a lot of intelligences and some people aren’t. I think of the intelligences as a set of computers. If you wanted to summarize my theory in a sentence, we used to think there was just one general computer in here and if you were good at one thing, you’d be good at everything. If you’re lousy in one thing, you’re smarter across the board. Stupid across the board. I think the step I took, I would call it an advance is you can be very smart with language, average with music, lousy with understanding other people, or vice versa. There’s no necessarily correlation between the two.

I think stupid has two very different connotations. One is that your computer isn’t very good. For example, I’m not biologically very good spatially, but the truth is with a map and a position determiner and some special attention to the environment I can do perfectly well, but I suppose if there were a test of spatial intelligence I wouldn’t do very well.

So, one meaning for stupid is it takes you a long to do what it takes other people who are smarter in that intelligence. I’m very musical, especially when I was younger, I heard something once, not only could I remember it, I couldn’t forget it. So that’s smart in kind of a technical sense.

But the other sense of stupid, but I think is much more important, is how do you go about leading your life? Do you know what you’re trying to do? Can you achieve it? When you make mistake, do you make same mistake again? Or do you simply stick in a rut? That has to do with your own understanding of yourself, what you’re trying to achieve; what I call intra-personal intelligence. I much rather to have somebody who was stupid in the first sense but had a good sense of how to negotiate their way through life, than somebody who had the computers going full blast but kept knocking their head against the wall.

I make fun of Mensa—I don’t know a great deal about Mensa, that’s the high IQ group—but I say, “To get into Mensa, you have to have a high IQ, and once you get in, you spend your time congratulating people who are in Mensa with you.” To me that’s a pretty stupid way to spend your life.

I agree, simple academic measures should not be the only measure of intelligence

Emotional Intelligence

Another way of understanding intelligence is by understanding the concept of emotional intelligence.

Big Think also interviewed Dr. Daniel Goleman, author of the bestselling “Emotional Intelligence,” and spoke with him about his theory of emotional intelligence, which comprises four major poles: self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, and relationship management.

You can watch the interview at Daniel Coleman and Emotional Intelligence

Here is an interesting question I intend to pose to my friend next time I see her.

Question: Are women more emotionally intelligent than men?

Daniel Goleman: Well, I get asked that question in a different way, which is, are women more emotionally intelligent than men? And you have to remember that emotion intelligence is a range of abilities, self-awareness, emotional self-management, empathy, social skills. Women tend to be better than men on average at empathy, particularly emotional empathy, sensing in the moment how the other person is feeling and also, at social skills, at keeping things feeling good between people in a group.

Men, on the other hand, tend to be better on average at self-confidence, particularly in group, and at managing distressing emotions. But what’s very interesting is if you look at leaders who were in the top 10%, there’s no difference between the men and the women on any of those variables. In other words, you have a whole human being. So I would say that on average, there probably are differences men and women in this domain of ability. But as people develop their skills, as people become more effective, they pick up strengths in areas that they need.

So the Arrogance of Being Thick

So am I relatively thick? Or are others thick? I think that people who think they know more than anyone else or know everything are really thick. As I said at the beginning, none of us know even a fraction of all that there is to be known. Even worse are those people who assume that their knowledge is unchallengeable, especially when it is sourced from just one source, my basic issue with religious beliefs, they are absolute and based on interpretations of a single source document.

As far as I can see, nothing in the universe is absolute, or certain. What we know about everything is based only on what we know now. Truly great thinkers realise that and understand how knowledge should be based on what we can prove, explain, demonstrate, but balanced by the realisation that the next experiment or discovery may change our understanding completely.

Are scientists arrogant?

Well, here is a discussion about being thick as a brick… I found this interesting as it discusses why science and the views of scientists are not arrogant, or invalidated just because their views are based on theories and assumptions. True arrogance for me is living in the belief that your knowledge is in some way the only answer that others are thick because they don’t get it, i.e. your view or your assumptions.

So am I less intelligent to others? No I don’t think I am, as intelligence is based on so many different skills, types of knowledge, abilities. What I think makes me intelligent is that I can recognise that I don’t know anything (self awareness), that I have an enquiring and open mind, and that I am willing to accept the views of others without Arrogance.

I agree with Howard Gardner and Daniel Goleman, intelligence has multiple dimension, and that intelligence is an amalgam of each ‘intelliegence’ not just an IQ score, or how smart you are in social discussions, or how charming, or how you can punch holes in arguments and belittle others views. No, true intelligence is having an inquiring mind, self-recognition of our own limitations, and the ability to listen to others with empathy, tolerance, and a willingness to learn.

Capt. Savage

(I know almost nothing about almost everything, and I am so glad I can see that)