Intellegence

E

Enigma'07

Who turned out the lights?!?!
Registered Senior Member
When people say that some one is smart, is it because they think about things in a differant way than most people, or is it that they just know more? While we're at it, what exactly is intellegence? What do we mean when we say that someone is intellegent?
 
Intelligence is a word much like love in the sense that we use one word to describe an entire spectrum of different mental qualities. There are many different mental abilities that we describe as intelligence, but individuals can score very high in some areas, and very poorly in others.

In popular usage it often means little more than being a hard worker. Many people make the mistaken assumption that good grades in school are a sign of high intelligence. Most often though, they are a sign of a reasonably intelligent disciplined hard worker. People of exceptional to very exceptional intelligence often get poor grades, since they often don't feel motivated to achieve something they may consider unimportant.
 
People of exceptional to very exceptional intelligence often get poor grades, since they often don't feel motivated to achieve something they may consider unimportant.
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That describes me pretty well. People that make A's are just doing everything the teachers ask them to do, not that they think about stuff or anything.
 
haha great question, enigma, I used to argue about this with other people in my careers studies class all the time.
Basically there are like about 5 popular theories of intelligence proposed by different people in the past century. They all suggested different perspectives on intelligence, some say it is mainly about memory and verbal fluency, some others say it has to do with biological brain capacity, and some believe it's based on the person's ability to reason. The most accepted theory in today's society is The Multiple Intelligences Theory proposed by Dr. Howard Gardner in 1983. He suggested that a person can be smart in his/her unique ways. He proposed 8 types of intelligences: spatial, lingustic, mathematic/logic, kinesthetic, musical, naturalist, intrapersonal, and interpersonal.

it's actually interesting how most of the society and school views intelligence, while they all have their different definitions of intelligence (eg. creativity, memory, learned knowledge), they would ultimately judge the person's intelligence by his/her school performance or marks. and our current education system mainly rewards and recognizes spatial and logical intelligences
 
intelligence is actually a completely subjective concept, because everybody has a different definition of it, and I think it's stupid for the government to create some kind of standard to measure a person's intelligence

so when we call others smart, we really don't mean the same thing. You may think this person is smart because he has good grades, I may think this person is smart because he is creative
 
Yeah, but if you think someone's creative don't you say they're imaginative or something like that?
 
if a person is creative, he would be able make new things that may be beneficial to us. Einstein was creative, Edison was creative, that's why they came up with things that others never thought of. Every man-made thing you can see around you is created by a creative person
creativity is the main key to development
 
So what you're saying is that creativity combined with logical reasoning leads to great contributions to what we currently know, right?
 
exactly, creativity is very important because it gives us the ability to make new things that have never been thought of
 
when i describe a person as smart, it is usually because they can find answers to questions i did not even know were questions. :m:
 
Someone who knows a lot isn't necessarily intelligent or smart, and someone who is intelligent doesn't necessarily know a lot.
 
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He proposed 8 types of intelligences: spatial, lingustic, mathematic/logic, kinesthetic, musical, naturalist, intrapersonal, and interpersonal.
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there are many more than these and they only fit a mold that is pushed to control peoples ability to fit into a space for easy employment and not to intellectualy challenge anyone in any position of authority.
i find it rather sad and retarded
its such a slow and frustrating process watching the grass grow,
only to have it soon replaced with full lawn installments and then by synthetics(robots)
while all along people only realy truely value the trees that require an entirely different method of care and attention.
crazzy ol world
:)
 
i dunno, different types of intelligence sounds to me a bit egalitarian. have you ever considered that some people are just plain stupid? :D

and it completely destroys value judgements based on ability to think rationally. yet we do agree that intelligence is not in what you know so much as how you think?
 
I'd think that anyone who can adapt to the conditions that they find themselves in so they can survive would be one way to show intelligence. To go beyond survival would show creativity and imagination.
 
Alpha said:
Someone who knows a lot isn't necessarily intelligent or smart, and someone who is intelligent doesn't necessarily know a lot.
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Quite right. IQ and Knowledge can be compared to the Processor and Mass Storage device.
 
Repo Man said:
People of exceptional to very exceptional intelligence often get poor grades, since they often don't feel motivated to achieve something they may consider unimportant.
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that also applies to lazy idiots, it's often hard to tell the difference.

But I do agree that "intelligence" is a catch-all word. I knew a guy in highschool that was totally lost in classes but he could tell you sports statistics from 50 years ago in 10 different sports (and he didn't spend his youth memorizing, he just remembered them for some reason). I knew another guy that was a bona fide mensa genius and he had the "social intelligence" of a particularly stupid colony of slime mold. They're both brilliant in some areas and clueless in others. We focus on "book intelligence" because it's a little easier to quantify.
 
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