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0 pointsderefr12y ago0 comments

Rather than a personal definition, I really was, in my comment, defining intelligence according to the (narrow, not-all-encompassing) definition used by people who create tests of IQ or "g". IQ is tautologically defined as "the number output by IQ tests." And what an IQ test, tests, is your ability to recognize and exploit novel patterns, generalized across different domains (word problems, pictures, music), under time pressure. So as far as someone having a high IQ is correlated to the common-sense perception of them being "intelligent", and as far as a low IQ is correlated to a common-sense perception of them being "stupid", then those two properties, in their common-sense usage, have something to do with pattern-recognition.

But I think, in your comment, what you're doing is conflating intelligence with rationality. Raw intelligence doesn't help you to notice when you have an ingrained-but-senseless belief (thus predicting precisely your "candidates who are esteemed scholars, scientists and technologists, who are nevertheless fervently religious".) One of the primary properties of modern religion is its non-falsifiability -- it makes no predictions about your everyday experience you could keep track of to form a sense of "how it's doing." Because of this, a religion can sit comfortably in your mind alongside everything else you "know", and no piece of evidence you run into will ever rub up against it and wear it away.

Noticing that you have beliefs that aren't causally attached to the rest of your experience is a skill which you have to learn explicitly. This set of skills (instrumental rationality) together are a multiplier for the productive output of your intelligence, but they don't make you any more or less intelligent. Really intelligent people might come up with these skills on their own, as meta-patterns that seem to hold between pattern in different disciplines, but most anyone can learn to be more instrumentally rational by being trained in these skills by someone else. You can't learn to be more intelligent. (Though good sleep, exercise, and stimulant drugs all seem to help... at least according to IQ tests.)

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krakensden12y ago

> And what an IQ test, tests, is your ability to recognize and exploit novel patterns, generalized across different domains (word problems, pictures, music), under time pressure

It's worth pointing out that most criticisms of IQ tests are that the amount of novelty in the problems is pretty heavily dependent on your cultural background.

derefrOP12y ago

Very true! I'm surprised there isn't some well-known trick of scientific process to screen this out, actually.

One that comes to my mind pretty quickly: after the first test to collect people's "novel" results (the one that'll be used as input for the final score), have them take 2-5 more tests with the same tasks (enough so that the questions are utterly non-novel by the end.) Show them the correct answers for the problems on the test they just did between each session.

Now take the scores from all the tests (including the first one), and fit a curve to them. The second derivative at the point of the first test then (might!) represent the novelty they were experiencing at that point. Now figure out how much extra novelty they experienced compared to an average member of the population, and use that as a coefficient to the final IQ score from the first test.

wozniacki12y ago

I will try to not appear as though I am convinced that these differences between "instrumental rationality" and intelligence - in the context of the current discussion - are specious.

Actually I find your delineation, quite satisfying an explanation.

However it begs one to ask what good is an impoverished measure of intelligence (IQ) that only computes your ability to recognize and exploit novel patterns, generalized across different domains (word problems, pictures, music), under time pressure if it doesn't so much as envelope the simple ability of a person to observe and verify that certain beliefs he or she holds subscribes to aren't causally attached to the rest of his or her experience

Isn't that simple enough a mental exercise?

Indeed, isn't that also a similarly intelligent exercise that constitutes the ability to recognize consistent patterns of denials and refusals in one's unremitting adherence to a religious faith?

What good is to ascribe intelligence (as in high IQ) to a person if the measure of intelligence is so narrowly defined?

I am left wanting for an explanation as to why the large majority of experts would concoct such an useless gauge of intelligence.

For the sake of pedagogy, instrumental rationality, I am certain, is a very fulfilling piece of terminology. I am also quite certain it is composed of attributes that are not necessarily equivalent to those of intelligence.

However if instrumental rationality is a skill than is not bestowed to you at birth unlike intelligence (from what I derive from your You can't learn to be more intelligent line) then what - in its thinnest scope - does intelligence constitute ?

Although I am not all that perturbed by it, this jargon of instrumental rationality and its neat separation from intelligence seems to have been contrived by theologians in a divinity school somewhere so as to not hurt the sentiments of the religious devotees.

I wouldn't be one bit surprised if also the various contrivances of intelligence - spatial, kinesthetic, rhythmic, linguistic, naturalistic, existential, mathematical, intrapersonal and interpersonal - are also more inventions of convenience than clearly circumscribed goods or measurable quantities.

realitygrill12y ago

The book to read here is What Intelligence Tests Miss, by Keith Stanovich. In it he argues cogently for both the importance and validity of IQ and the limitation of its scope. Rationality is not a concept contrived by theologians! (I find this idea extremely funny.)

You are referring to Howard Gardner's popular idea of Multiple Intelligences, which has been roundly criticized for having pretty much zero support. To quote the book,

Consider a thought experiment. Imagine that someone objected to the emphasis given to horsepower (engine power) when evaluating automobiles. They feel that horsepower looms too large in people's thinking. In an attempt to deemphasize horsepower, they then being to term the other features of the car things like "braking horsepower" and "cornering horsepower" and "comfort horsepower". Would such a strategy make people less likely to look to engine power as an indicator of the "goodness" of a car? I think not. [...] Just as calling "all good car things" horsepower would emphasize horsepower, I would argue that calling "all good cognitive things" intelligence will contribute to the deification of MAMBIT [Mental Abilities Measured By Intelligence Tests].

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