What is Intelligence?

“He’s such a idiot!”

Have you heard this before? You may have agreed, argued, or debated whether or not “he” was really an idiot. But was he?

Redefining Intelligence

The IQ test was invented by Alfred Binet in 1904. It was essentially created as a tool to reinforce an old belief that used to be held that certain people had certain “thresholds” of intelligence. They figured that since a mentally retarded youth would obviously not benefit from advanced university classes, then maybe a less-than-intelligent one shouldn’t either. The idea that intelligence could be classified into a number was in fact later rejected by Alfred, who stated that he realized the incredible limitations of his test.

But of course, the test seeped into the USA and took a meaning much different than what it was going to have been. It is now commonly known as a test of intelligence.

Specialized Knowledge vs. Reasoning

This is where the title comes in. Commonly, you can be called an idiot for anything, even something as trivial and not knowing who played James Bond in Quantum of Solace (personal experience). Let’s face it, most of what we need to know in life comes from prior knowledge. Citing a statistic such as 5% of Americans not being able to find the US on a map is frequently complemented with a lament about how stupid we are all getting.

But facts can be learned, and knowledge can be acquired. What, then, are we to make of this landscape of knowledge? Does the “intelligent” person know the facts, or know how to use them?

We’re all “Idiots”

Compared to Obama, I’m an idiot at public speaking. I’m an idiot at music compared to Mozart. And I’m hopelessly clueless about the trends of modern R&B. But hey! The person who thinks I’m dumb for not recognizing Flo Rida is equally likely to be scorned by me for not grooving to Kamelot or Symphony X. Music analogies aside, the point is that we as humans have a limited capacity for knowledge. If we don’t know something, chances are, we don’t need to know it.

So What is True Intelligence?

True intelligence is hard to find. I would personally argue it is the capacity to amass factual data from the world around us and process it. The advantage of “intelligence” is to learn quickly when you do not know.

How could this be measured? As Binet himself said, it is rather difficult to do so in a quantitative setting. But if you have a good friend and you have known him for a while, you probably have some idea of how “intelligent” he is.

And of course, as we have all learned, “book” intelligence gets you nowhere, while many a savvy “street smarts” person has gone far. What I would say now is that that “street smarts”, that “X factor”, whatever you want to call it… that is true intelligence. Something that cannot be measured, only demonstrated. Something that may be there at one time or not be there at another. Can it be measured? No, but it can be perceived.

The kinds of questions on IQ tests are valid though, they are an excellent test of how well someone can do in an academic setting. And here we go back to Binet’s explanation and original purpose.

Conclusion

There you have it. Debate and discuss in the comments if you wish.