Is "intelligence" a pseudo-scientific concept?

[Boojatta]

Poll question: Is "intelligence" a pseudo-scientific concept?

[Tuesday Afternoon]

1. lol

:hi:

[Boojatta]

2. What part is funny?

Or what aspect of the overall structure provokes your amusement?

I don't wish to be a miser with laughter-inducing material; I am simply curious.

[Tuesday Afternoon]

3. I found the whole condect and deliverance of thread to be smile inducing

perhaps I am easily amused :shrug:

[Boojatta]

4. Shifting a thread from a discussion of intelligence in general to ...

a discussion of heritability of intelligence probably wouldn't provoke the label "hijacking."

I presume that heritability, reproduction, sex drive, and fertility are related.

[Tuesday Afternoon]

5. and don't forget

the pseudo-science of it all....

[Boojatta]

7. Don't forget that it's a question.

I attempted to include at least one answer option that explicitly asserts that the concept of intelligence isn't pseudo-scientific.

[Tuesday Afternoon]

8. hey, I voted

At least one of the above answer options shouldn't have been made available to choose, and none of them is a satisfactory choice.

but, now I want to change my vote.....

Yes, it's almost infinitely flexible. If you have tenure and label any test you like as an intelligence test, then by definition it is a test of intelligence.

thanks.

[DetlefK]

6. Here's a "crazy" definition of intelligence:

What parts human (intelligent) from animal (non-intelligent)?

The animal is bound by its pre-determined behavioral imperatives. The animal will never act counter to its instinct, unless some externally induced learning process proved that the new way is better than the old way.
Example: prejudice. We humans have the instinct "strange is bad" and it depends on a learning-process to overcome this instinct.

The human is not mentally bound to the perceivable world. The human is able to invent abstract mental structures like "religion", "time", "fractional numbers", "insanity"... But how would you know, whether birds invented such structures? Or a whale-like alien-species without technology?
Indeed, insanity is the easiest way to deduce intelligence: Insanity is the ability to do things that are ultimately destructive for the person himself and/or others.



So here is my definition:
A species is intelligent, if it contains individuals that are needlessly destructive/self-destructive.
(I know, using "individuals" in the definition means that it doesn't cover swarm-entities.)

Example: Consider someone, who wastes his time and energy to carve a statue from stone. That's needless waste of ressources. Is he intelligent?

[dimbear]

9. My grandfather had a dog that took to killing sheep for fun.

Of course the world was soon short one dog.

The same sort of thing drives the plot of a Thomas Hardy novel, um, Jude the Obscure maybe?

Where does that put dogs?



Later: Far From the Madding Crowd. oops. :)

[WatsonT]

10. It does seem to be extremely subjective

we aren't very good about measuring it in people, a species we know quite a bit about.

Often times it seems to be measured in the terms of "does the patient respond as I/the average person would in this situation"?

Some of it can be objective: memory and ability to perform mathematical equations. But not all.

[sofa king]

14. We naturally define "intelligence" as OUR intelligence... or lack thereof.

Yet every day we discover that the strategies of ants and cockroaches, bacteria and fungus repeatedly and inevitably confound our ability to outthink them. In the meantime, we work diligently within our own considerable limitations to create new mechanisms for our own destruction.

The definition of our word "intelligence" clearly tries to isolate some of our own better qualities, but those qualities are so obviously counterbalanced by instinctive urges which are difficult or impossible to overcome that it's clear we don't even correctly apply the definition to the human race as a whole.

Smart-like-us ain't all that damned smart, as anyone who reads fark.com already knows implicitly. One might even conclude that beings more intelligent than we would have all sorts of excellent reasons never to disclose themselves to us, lest we become the annoyingly clever roaches in their pantry.

[hunter]

11. Plants are much more sophisticated than animals.

They have to be. When an animal has a problem it simply moves away.

(I forgot who said that.)

[Boojatta]

12. Does a zebra simply move away when attacked by a pride of lions?

[gtar100]

13. Yes. And the one who moves away the slowest

or in the least productive direction forfeits its gene pool to the lions.

[pscot]

15. Define intelligence

in scientific terms.

[themadstork]

16. It's culturally defined hooha. A good way of making sure the children of affluents get the material

advantages they "deserve."

If used at all it should be broken down into several intensely specific intelligences. And better yet, can the word entirely and use something akin to "skillset." Something that emphasizes it's materiality, its role in society. IQ as a vague entity that is gifted to the lucky few is useless.

Further, if one were to design similar metrics for other traits related to human productivity, I'd argue that skills like persistence, vigilance, creativity, empathy, cognitive openness, curiosity, and etc. should all be valued above IQ.

[Boojatta]

17. Kick