Sunday, June 29, 2003
The learning curve
What is Intelligence?
From what I can make out, intelligence is the knowledge of or the ability to use existing knowledge to comprehend a given situation.
If this is correct, then is the difference between an intelligent person and a non-intelligent (stupid, foolish) person merely the knowledge gap?
By extension, the difference between a quick-witted person and a dim-witted person is again only the knowledge gap?
And by further extrapolation, given that knowledge can be gained by means of experience, teaching or analysis, any dim-witted person is potentially a quick-witted, intelligent person?
In effect, the only difference between the two extremes is the ability to interpret (and not necessarily react to) a given situation right now, without time for preparation?
Your opinions please.
PS: I'm aware of the commonplace Intelligent Quotient tests whose representation as the statistical average of a broad sampling takes the shape of a bell curve. This is however not related to what I'm trying to understand above.
From what I can make out, intelligence is the knowledge of or the ability to use existing knowledge to comprehend a given situation.
If this is correct, then is the difference between an intelligent person and a non-intelligent (stupid, foolish) person merely the knowledge gap?
By extension, the difference between a quick-witted person and a dim-witted person is again only the knowledge gap?
And by further extrapolation, given that knowledge can be gained by means of experience, teaching or analysis, any dim-witted person is potentially a quick-witted, intelligent person?
In effect, the only difference between the two extremes is the ability to interpret (and not necessarily react to) a given situation right now, without time for preparation?
Your opinions please.
PS: I'm aware of the commonplace Intelligent Quotient tests whose representation as the statistical average of a broad sampling takes the shape of a bell curve. This is however not related to what I'm trying to understand above.
satyap — Jun 29, 2003 9:09:49 PM — # ↩
archiekins — Jun 29, 2003 10:37:55 PM — # ↩
Is the intelligence we are talking about related to ability to study from the book and gargle in the exam or are we talking about the intelligence as pertaining to the ability of comprehending the situation and performing to the best of one's knowledge ?
What standards define the intelligence ? Who sets the guidelines and bars for it ? What are the norms of it - to score a GPA of 4.0 or to be able to work effectively in a real world scenario ?
Discussing Intelligence is not an easy topic, it varies in every individual and his/her perception. Its true that some people are more adept and intelligent in certain areas, but fail misreably in others. Like Bill Gates who dropped out of school and created a Billion Dollar empire. Is that Intelligence or Smartness ? While Harvard Graduates never go beyond being accountants in his firm.
Intelligence for me is the ability to adapt, comprehend and act in the best possible way as one perceives to create something effective or better than one's abilities. Its partly governed by the one's knowledge and learning, partially by one's ability to think in a broader perspective and from various angles, and to some extent based on present situation in life.
tariquesani — Jun 30, 2003 12:11:06 AM — # ↩
Given only the parameters which you are considering the ability is the key word.
The difference in ability to analyse and interpret correctly the same set of knowledge in the shortest possible time
mujib — Jun 30, 2003 1:31:16 AM — # ↩
To me, it's the ability; higher intelligence akin to a faster processor with a better instruction set, perhaps?
Came across this recently: http://www.livejournal.com/community/philosophy/386295.html
birdonthewire — Jun 30, 2003 2:56:23 AM — # ↩
It's like this- everyone at B-school learns Porter's five forces, the Customer profitability gradient etc. But what differentiates the intelligent person from the not so intelligent one is knowing when, where, and how to use it. In some sense it is also about self-discipline. Fully applying oneself to the problem at hand. Lackadaiscal approaches reflect in perceptions of relative "un-intelligence".
The other part of the answer is with respect to the "speed of processing". I think why some people process faster than others has less to do with intelligence, and more to do with genes, their early education etc... etc...
mindlace — Jun 30, 2003 3:37:18 AM — # ↩
Intelligence can not simply be the application of knowledge towards a situation. The way someone appraises a given context has much to do with what knowledge they can apply to the situation.
A classic example of how intelligence is not necessarily the application of prior knowledge is Leonardo da Vinci's observations on bivalves. While most of his erstwhile colleages were spouting claptrap about bivalve fossils being deposited in a great flood or being peculiar rock formations that happened to have the shape of bivalves, da Vinci correctly argued that the fossilizations occured in areas that were once seabed, even if they were now in Lombardy, some 400 km inland.
On the other hand, there are great intelligences like Paul Erdös, who worked as an entirely abstract mathemetician his whole life. It is difficult to suggest that his intelligence lied principally in open and aware observation of facts at hand. Nonetheless he seemed to have some capacity for letting glimmers of abstract possibilities tumble about in his head until they fell into a sensible configuration.
There are also theories that suggest that there are many different sorts of intelligence. One area where many stereotypicallly bright people often stumble is in the arena of emotional intelligence; they are neither adept at dealing with their own emotions nor those of others around them.
Fundamentally, equivalent knowledge does not result in equivalent intelligence; if this were true, we would expect much smaller deltas between students raised in broadly similar circumstances and provided similar educations.
I think dim/slow quick/fast witted is a false dichotomy.
rgiri — Jun 30, 2003 3:55:23 AM — # ↩
IMHO,Intellgience is the ability to use your AK(Accumulated Knowledge) in situation aptly.This relates to how fast your brain can search the AK db.If experience is more in a particular field,due to constant searching,accumulation,neurons index certain situations, like indexing of db.So people become smart ,sharp and act faster in certain strange ,weird situations.Theists believe AK increases through rebirths too!!
chetan — Jun 30, 2003 7:07:50 AM — # ↩
You're talking of impulsive decision making. The toughest species to find are these- people who can take decisions, and the right ones, on the spot.
zoombiee — Jun 30, 2003 11:03:29 AM — # ↩
A person is rendered dumb not because he dosent have the knowledge. He is rendered dumb because he cannot apply the knowledhe he has prply.also an intelligent person must be able to learn frm his/her mistakes.
Also tour third person it has been found that most ppl interpret situations prply. The difference in the solutions that they use is how they apply their existing knowledge to solve the problem. So application is the proper index of intelligence.
Given a problem one has never faced (or is not related to anythin known) most ppl have the same probability getting it rite.
hope i havent confused u more ;-)
satyap — Jul 1, 2003 12:43:40 PM — # ↩
Agreed.
:looks pointedly at rest of post, then at the majority of posts on certain mailing lists::
::wanders off::