In defense of intelligence

Spirituality
#1

I am going to take what seems to be an unpopular stance here and stand up for intelligence.

I can understand where the idea comes from that intelligence and arrogance go hand in hand. The people who are the most outspoken about how smart they are give brains a bad name. In my line of work I get the chance to work with some phenomenally smart folks; in my experience arrogance goes hand in hand with insecurity rather than intelligence. Education doesn’t make someone boastful, it just gives them something to brag about when they try to compensate for their perceived shortcomings.

I have often seen the term intelligence parsed into “book smarts” and “wisdom.” Id prefer to propose a definition of intelligence that I like rather than argue about what wisdom and book smarts are. I like “intelligence is the ability to create or recognize ideas or rules that more accurately describe the world that we exist in.”

Truthful ideas tend to stand on their own, not needing a charismatic personality to preach them. I am always wary of those who claim to be teachers but spend more time trying to convince me of their credibility than actually exploring the strengths AND especially weaknesses of their own hypotheses.

Anyway, I realize this may seem like a bit of a semantic argument, and maybe it is… But semantics are important! When we conflate intelligence with the boastful folks who claim to posses it, it changes our perception and makes us shy away from pursuit of genuine knowledge.

#2

I define intelligence as simply the faculty of discrimination by reason. It is basically critical thinking. The ability to catch assumptions, presuppositions and deduce the cause of an effect is the mark of intelligence. A truly intelligent person cannot be mistaken, fooled or misguided, because their minds are so alert, they will catch it.

On the other hand people who lack intellect are easily mistaken, fooled and misguided.

#3

[QUOTE=Boom_King;38076]I am going to take what seems to be an unpopular stance here and stand up for intelligence.

I can understand where the idea comes from that intelligence and arrogance go hand in hand. The people who are the most outspoken about how smart they are give brains a bad name. In my line of work I get the chance to work with some phenomenally smart folks; in my experience arrogance goes hand in hand with insecurity rather than intelligence. Education doesn’t make someone boastful, it just gives them something to brag about when they try to compensate for their perceived shortcomings.

I have often seen the term intelligence parsed into “book smarts” and “wisdom.” Id prefer to propose a definition of intelligence that I like rather than argue about what wisdom and book smarts are. I like “intelligence is the ability to create or recognize ideas or rules that more accurately describe the world that we exist in.”

Truthful ideas tend to stand on their own, not needing a charismatic personality to preach them. I am always wary of those who claim to be teachers but spend more time trying to convince me of their credibility than actually exploring the strengths AND especially weaknesses of their own hypotheses.

Anyway, I realize this may seem like a bit of a semantic argument, and maybe it is… But semantics are important! When we conflate intelligence with the boastful folks who claim to posses it, it changes our perception and makes us shy away from pursuit of genuine knowledge.[/QUOTE]

I absolutely agree. Intelligence doesn’t make a person arrogant, just like good looks don’t make a person arrogant. It’s neurosis and insecurities that make a person arrogant. Things like intelligence, good looks, wealth and power can easily be used as a pedestal to prop up ones inadequecies, but they are usually not the catalyst causes.

#4

@Boom_King

I do like your definition of intelligence. Totally agree with arrogance goes hand in hand with insecurity. A truly intelligent person would not be boastful or arrogant.

Question for you Surya about your definition. While your is also quite true, one sentence needs clarification.

A truly intelligent person cannot be mistaken, fooled or misguided, because their minds are so alert, they will catch it.

This is cyclical. Can you say there were no truly intelligent Nazi’s? Were they misguided? Absolutely. But they also absolutely believed in what Hitler was telling them. Does this negate their intelligence?

#5

[QUOTE=Boom_King;38076]I like “intelligence is the ability to create or recognize ideas or rules that more accurately describe the world that we exist in.”[/QUOTE]

This is a good statement, but I like it better without the word ‘more’ in it.

Intelligence can also be very subjective. My dog is very intelligent, for a dog. Also, whom I consider intelligent may not be thought of that way by another culture based on their value system.

There is an added dimension to intelligence that is difficult to measure. That is intuition or instinct, and the ability to use that in the recognition of ideas.

Arrogance is a condition, like shyness or dimentia, and really has nothing to do with intelligence.

#6

[QUOTE=lotusgirl;38111]

This is cyclical. Can you say there were no truly intelligent Nazi’s? Were they misguided? Absolutely. But they also absolutely believed in what Hitler was telling them. Does this negate their intelligence?[/QUOTE]

No, they were not truly intelligent. They were incredibly foolish, misguided by propoganda like race myths to commit acts of such horror that their souls would have had to suffer equally horrific karma. How can you call somebody intelligent who commits harm to themselves?

#7

[QUOTE=Surya Deva;38079]A truly intelligent person cannot be mistaken, fooled or misguided, because their minds are so alert, they will catch it. [/QUOTE]

Well spotted Lotusgirl. It’s a bizarre, absolutist statement. As if Intelligence is something you either have or you don’t. It’s like saying ‘a truly attractive person is able to sleep with anyone’. To say there were no intelligent Nazis is ludicrous.

#8

First of all, thank you Surya Deva, Yogi Adam, lotusgirl, and flexpenguin. As someone who doesn’t post here often, I was pretty happy to see your replies.

I don’t want to argue with people who contribute to this discussion, but I do want to elaborate on what I have said.

Flex, you wrote:

[QUOTE=FlexPenguin;38120]This is a good statement, but I like it better without the word ‘more’ in it.

Intelligence can also be very subjective. My dog is very intelligent, for a dog. Also, whom I consider intelligent may not be thought of that way by another culture based on their value system.
[/QUOTE]

I think (and hope) we are trying to say the same thing here, but I actually can’t stand by my original statement without “more.” It’s the subjective nature of intelligence that makes me put “more” in there. Discovery is incremental; new hypotheses only expand on what has been already shown. This doesn’t disrespect previous ideas. On the contrary I mean to say that to come up with an idea you must stand on the shoulders of giants.

Surya wrote:

[QUOTE=Surya Deva;38079]I define intelligence as simply the faculty of discrimination by reason. It is basically critical thinking. The ability to catch assumptions, presuppositions and deduce the cause of an effect is the mark of intelligence. A truly intelligent person cannot be mistaken, fooled or misguided, because their minds are so alert, they will catch it.

On the other hand people who lack intellect are easily mistaken, fooled and misguided.[/QUOTE]

Dude, so the reason I have shied away from this kind of definition of intelligence is that it focuses on the process and not the result. One thing I have learned as a scientist is that all of the inspired reasoning and critical thinking in the world doesn’t guarantee that your hypothesis is actually true. To be clear - I don’t mean to crap on your definition. I pay my rent with critical thinking. I am just saying that it is very easy to fall in love with your ideas and lose sight of why you are reasoning in the first place.

#9

Dude, so the reason I have shied away from this kind of definition of intelligence is that it focuses on the process and not the result. One thing I have learned as a scientist is that all of the inspired reasoning and critical thinking in the world doesn’t guarantee that your hypothesis is actually true. To be clear - I don’t mean to crap on your definition. I pay my rent with critical thinking. I am just saying that it is very easy to fall in love with your ideas and lose sight of why you are reasoning in the first place.

Namaste Boom King,

A hypothesis is often an ad-hoc idea that we then test. The results of our experiment may sometimes seem that they validate our hypothesis, but later we find contradictory results. A hypothesis is based on our prejudices, assumptions that often we are not even aware are there. This is why beginning with a hypothesis is not a valid way to reason. They invariably all get falsified in time.

Reason does not begin with hypothesis but with observable facts. You first are absolutely clear about the facts and record those facts objectively. Such as a ethnographer would do if they are doing a participant observation of a culture. They would simply record the cultural practices of the culture without analysing it or judging it. Reason begins when you have observed the facts and need to explain those facts consistently.

An example could be you see a certain type of smoke in the distance. Then you use reason to infer based on your knowledge this type of smoke is indicative of fire, that fire must be present.

If you are intelligent you have an acute awareness and you can catch even the most subtle of changes such as differentiating between microtones in music, slight changes in temperature, changes in anxiety levels in the voice, changes in body language etc. Such a person can see a film and spot the slight changes in camera movement, lighting end editing that most people would miss, which are there to elicit certain effects on the viewer. Such a persons cannot be mistaken, fooled or misguided because they will be aware of the assumptions, presuppositions, fallacies, rhetoric the other person is making.

The more acute your intelligence the more sharper your discrimination faculty. Animals are able to distinguish very subtle vibrations when an earthquake is approaching even before human instruments detect it and act instantly. Humans likewise are always receiving very subtle vibrations but their discrimination faculty is not strong enough to detect it. Thus they have to use their intellect instead and learn to recognise patterns which indicate an approaching earthquake.