Intelligence?

[rabbitearbandicoot]

what is Intelligence?

Are we more or less Intelligent than those who lived 50 years ago?

Are we more or less Intelligent than those who lived 500 years ago?

Are we more or less Intelligent than those who lived 5000 years ago?

Is a person of today who can read, more intelligent than the people of x,000 years ago who recognised the need for written language and set about designing one (well many)?

I am not talking about learned knowledge although that could be a subject all on it's own - I am talking about Intelligence or the ability to reason, learn.

[lind9650]

Einsteins explanation makes sense to me. A person can be very knowledgable, but do nothing with it. Another person with the same knowledge or even less, will imagine a situation or gadget and use his knowledge to make an improvement or a better gadget.

Knowledge alone does nothing. One has to use imagination to achieve an end result.

Erica

[chameleon54]

Erica What you ( or Eintsein ) are saying is that a person needs to be able to apply knowledge in some practicle way and if some imagination and new or experimental thought comes in to it all the better.

I feel the current emphasis on academia ( Knowledge nation etc. ) for the sake of it, is failing our young people and society in general. There is so much emphasis on university learning of theoretical skills and precious little on how we can actually get on and "do stuff". We risk becoming a nation of educated theorists who sit in offices shuffling paper, without actually doing anything or producing anything of value. There seems to be less and less people actually "doing stuff" and more and more talking about stuff, teaching stuff,  and making rules about stuff ( stifling those actually "doing stuff" ) 

This is why we have a continually rising national debt. The academics with an over inflated sense of self importance have taken over the national debate on the countries future direction, meaning we have become a nation of talkers instead of doers. If we dont reverse this dangerous situation we will end up financially bankrupt as a nation.

IQ has its ( important ) place in science, medicine, industrial research etc. but you cant feed a nation on it. ( and those that think you can are theoretical dreamers showing very little, practicle, life skill intelligence )

[rabbitearbandicoot]

This is a very interesting topic - well to me anyway. So far then, we have the following:

Intelligence - which I maintain is the key to all of the others below, but some disagree. 

Memory - the mechanism by which we store and  'profit' from the Intelligence, Experience and learning cycle

Knowledge - learned STUFF that our Intelligence allows us to store in our memory and profit from.

Experience -  similar to Knowledge in that it is 'learned STUFF'.

Imagination - a 'predictative' skill? what if? based on Experience and Knowledge?

Intuition -  another 'predictive skill' which is an example of using Learned Knowledge in combination with Imagination. and Experience?

Ability - which must be a result of Knowledge and experience and possibly Imagination.

Skills - similar to ability

The above are MY definitions drawn from what I understood and what people have said so far. I welcome additions to or alterations of those definitions.

I realise that this is a huge subject and people have been studying all these areas for years, but, why can we not come up with our own ideas - after all we are all Intelligent, aren't we?

I also realise that some of the above 'over-ride' others - eg a person may be Intuitive and not be particularly Intelligent, a person may be very Able at a task through years of experience in that or similar tasks.

[lloydslights]

A few notes from a most unscientific person.......me.

Watched a bit of a documentary recently about  Ruby Payne-Scott (Radioastronomy - Radar).  

An intelligent capacity to absorb knowledge and use it.

Imagination + stubbornness + intelligence = success of a particular goal.

Is the base of  intelligence,  the capacity to understand Mathematics?  

DEB

[i-need-a-martini]

What many of you missed is this bit of my post:  That tool is based on knowledge of what is available and what he has learned in his life and is able to apply critical thinking to in order to take this knowledge further.

Knowledge is meaningless unless you have the ability to think critically.

Critcal thinking is exactly what  Einstein was referring to in his famous quotes about  "imagination". He was actually talking about the value of imagination in scientific research and how necessary it was in order to think beyond existing knowledge.

[lind9650]

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@chameleon54 wrote:

Erica What you ( or Eintsein ) are saying is that a person needs to be able to apply knowledge in some practicle way and if some imagination and new or experimental thought comes in to it all the better.

I feel the current emphasis on academia ( Knowledge nation etc. ) for the sake of it, is failing our young people and society in general. There is so much emphasis on university learning of theoretical skills and precious little on how we can actually get on and "do stuff". We risk becoming a nation of educated theorists who sit in offices shuffling paper, without actually doing anything or producing anything of value. There seems to be less and less people actually "doing stuff" and more and more talking about stuff, teaching stuff,  and making rules about stuff ( stifling those actually "doing stuff" ) 

This is why we have a continually rising national debt. The academics with an over inflated sense of self importance have taken over the national debate on the countries future direction, meaning we have become a nation of talkers instead of doers. If we dont reverse this dangerous situation we will end up financially bankrupt as a nation.

IQ has its ( important ) place in science, medicine, industrial research etc. but you cant feed a nation on it. ( and those that think you can are theoretical dreamers showing very little, practicle, life skill intelligence )

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Another of Einsteins quotes.

                     

And  

Erica

[myoclon1cjerk]

Old Bertie could have added to that last quote 'and concentrates wealth in fewer hands'.

[rabbitearbandicoot]

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@rabbitearbandicoot wrote:

This is a very interesting topic - well to me anyway. So far then, we have the following:

Intelligence - which I maintain is the key to all of the others below, but some disagree. 

Memory - the mechanism by which we store and  'profit' from the Intelligence, Experience and learning cycle

Knowledge - learned STUFF that our Intelligence allows us to store in our memory and profit from.

Experience -  similar to Knowledge in that it is 'learned STUFF'.

Imagination - a 'predictative' skill? what if? based on Experience and Knowledge?

Intuition -  another 'predictive skill' which is an example of using Learned Knowledge in combination with Imagination. and Experience?

Ability - which must be a result of Knowledge and experience and possibly Imagination.

Skills - similar to ability

The above are MY definitions drawn from what I understood and what people have said so far. I welcome additions to or alterations of those definitions.

I realise that this is a huge subject and people have been studying all these areas for years, but, why can we not come up with our own ideas - after all we are all Intelligent, aren't we?

I also realise that some of the above 'over-ride' others - eg a person may be Intuitive and not be particularly Intelligent, a person may be very Able at a task through years of experience in that or similar tasks.

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@rabbitearbandicoot wrote:

This is a very interesting topic - well to me anyway. So far then, we have the following:

Intelligence - which I maintain is the key to all of the others below, but some disagree. 

Memory - the mechanism by which we store and  'profit' from the Intelligence, Experience and learning cycle

Knowledge - learned STUFF that our Intelligence allows us to store in our memory and profit from.

Experience -  similar to Knowledge in that it is 'learned STUFF'.

Imagination - a 'predictative' skill? what if? based on Experience and Knowledge?

Intuition -  another 'predictive skill' which is an example of using Learned Knowledge in combination with Imagination. and Experience?

I missed out another - Instinct - I guess that's somehow connected to ability and or Imagination?

Ability - which must be a result of Knowledge and experience and possibly Imagination. Also, ie some are born more with natural 'ability' or natural Instinct for a situation - whereas, most have to acquire that ability through the learning process..

Skills - similar to ability

The above are MY definitions drawn from what I understood and what people have said so far. I welcome additions to or alterations of those definitions.

I realise that this is a huge subject and people have been studying all these areas for years, but, why can we not come up with our own ideas - after all we are all Intelligent, aren't we?

I also realise that some of the above 'over-ride' others - eg a person may be Intuitive and not be particularly Intelligent, a person may be very Able at a task through years of experience in that or similar tasks.

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[rabbitearbandicoot]

Einstein: "I fear the day that technology will surpass our human interaction. The world will have a generation of idiots".

A typical example of this - the current generation, and we oldies to a lesser extent, have become a nation of idiots because of the continued use of 'mechanical devices' like calculators, cash registers and computers. Ask one of the cashiers in Wollies to add up something in their heads - in the majority of case they have no idea.

[bright.ton42]

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@rabbitearbandicoot wrote:

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@bright.ton42 wrote:

I think if intelligence is measured by knowledge then it would figure that most of today's educated/civilized people would be far more intelligent than Einstein and da Vinci.  I do agree that imagination has to play a big part.   Then there is emotional intelligence which surely can't be separated from general intelligence.

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what do you class as 'emotional inteligence'?

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This link explains it better than I can

http://psychology.about.com/od/personalitydevelopment/a/emotionalintell.htm

"All learning has an emotional base."
-- Plato

The ability to express and control our own emotions is important, but so is our ability to understand, interpret, and respond to the emotions of others. Imagine a world where you couldn't understand when a friend was feeling sad or when a co-worker was angry. Psychologists refer to this ability as emotional intelligence, and some experts even suggest that

it can be more important than IQ. Learn more about exactly what emotional intelligence is, how it works, and how it is measured.