I can’t think of a more trivial measure of a person’s intelligence, and I’m flippin’ brilliant.
-Cem
I think it’s arrogant and stupid for a person to think they can gauge someone else’s intelligence. I don’t think the term is even solidly enough defined - and naturally I don’t even trust the IQ people’s authority on the subject. What makes some schmoe think he’s up to impromptu intelligence testing. I even balk and protest when someone calls me intelligent.
The most consistent definition for “intelligent” I’ve observed is “thinks like me”. That’s not to say only mental clones are viewed as “smart” - I mean more of a “values” clone. For example, a person who admires the ability to determine an object’s position in space accurately enough to project another object to hit it will think someone who admires the same thing and can do so well is intelligent. The same goes for sharing the same sense of humor, worldview, sense of justice, musical interests, etc. A person with a deep interest in comedy is going to think someone who laughs at pedestrian gags because he hasn’t “heard 'em all” yet, or doesn’t laugh at nuanced comedy because he hasn’t learned to temper tastes to a more sophisticated sense of humor is stupid.
So I don’t judge anyone’s intelligence, I just determine whether a person’s mentally compatible with me. Yes, I do think to myself sometimes that certain people are “stupid”, but intellectually I know that what’s really going on is simply that they don’t think the same way I do.
How so? Sure the context (playing games) is trivial. But it seems to me that to succeed, you need ready access to a variety of intellectual skills. If that doesn’t imply “being intelligent”, then I don’t know what does.
Granted, I’ve met plenty of people who are very smart and NOT good at Celebrities. But I can’t imagine someone who was a great player – ie, could very quickly deduce just the right direction to go to get their teammates to come up with the right answer, could adapt quickly if one strategy didn’t work, could agilely leap from topic to topic, not to mention being able to identify a wide range of trivial facts – but was NOT what I would consider intelligent.
I think it’s arrogant and stupid for someone to think they can perfectly and systematically and accurately gauge someone’s intelligence. On the other hand, are you saying you’ve never met someone and thought “wow, that’s a smart person”. Heck, there are quite a few people on the SDMB who I think are smart. I think that they are smart. Is my thinking so, which is in a very real sense gauging their intelligence, arrogant and stupid?
Professor Hubert Farnsworth: There’s only one way to determine how intelligent an organism is: dissect its brain!
Futurama
“Wow, that’s a smart person” as a colloquial way of saying “that person thinks like i do and with highly satisfactory results (i.e. they apply the same values I do well, and maybe even better)”, sure I might think that, but I’m wary of those who genuinely think that to mean “this person has generally (operative word, I should point out) superior, natural mental ability”. I guess you can say I’m in the multiple intelligences camp, but even then I’m wary of the codification put forth in Gardner’s theory. I just doubt that general mental abilty varies significantly among individuals.
In short, I agree 100% with Edison: “Genius is one per cent inspiration and ninety-nine per cent perspiration.” That a person with so many technological breakthoughs credited to him decided to attribute his accoplishments to his effort rather than his “superior intellect” is telling.
Sure. It tells us that intelligence doesn’t automatically result in accomplishing amazing things. It does not, however, invalidate the idea of intelligence. I am absolutely positively certain that I am, in a meaningful sense, an “intelligent” person. Does that mean that I’m better than other people? Or that I’m going to accomplish more in life than other people? Not at all… I’m a bit of an underachiever, and not hugely driven. But I don’t see why there should NOT be a meaningful concept of intelligence. I mean, some people are taller than others. Some people run faster than others. Why shouldn’t some people be smarter than others?
(And yes, I’m aware that “smarter” is poorly defined. And no, I don’t claim that it’s purely genetic, or purely environmental, or anything.)
“Faster” and “taller” are descriptors of physical phenomena, and thus have nothing to do with “intelligent”, which describes an abstract concept. There could never be any disagreement over whether something is taller or faster than something else.
No, “intelligent” can be compared with “good”, “just”, “hip” and other abstract concepts. Describing someone as “good” is only meaningful on an individual level. Who’s a “good” person to one person might be evil to another. In fact, one could dismiss the entire concept of goodness in humanity (such as through behaviorism). The same could be said for “intelligent”.
What’s to prevent someone from taking that logic a step or two further and saying that “fast” or “tall” don’t exist until we say they do. That the ideas called “fast” and “tall” are only there because we’ve, first, noticed those differences, then designed methods to measure those. Until that time, until that is done, neither “fast” nor “tall” exist.
The fact that that’s not the next logical step.
This just tells me that I’m not intelligent enough to pun my way to a good whoosh.
-Cem
I like to use 667–Across the street from The Beast, but I believe that only works in America.
Well, it’s arguable whether intelligence is more like “tall” or more like “good”. However, that doesn’t address my basic point, which is that people constantly measure and judge other people’s intelligence, just as they are judging people’s tallness, and just as they are judging people’s goodness. The fact that this judging is not necessarily objective or quantifiable doesn’t mean it doesn’t occur, nor does it make it arrogant or rude to engage in said judging.
I feel that I can meaningfully say “Bricker is a smart guy” without first being able to comprehensively and exhaustively define exactly precisely what I mean by intelligence in all possible contexts.
No, actually it is.
I judge them by their actions, not what they claim their IQ scores say. I have met many people who have claimed 150+ IQs but only 3 that demonstrated 1 in 10,000 ability.
[Werner Brandeis]
So you’re saying my vanity plate does not impress you?
[/Werner Brandeis]
I usually don’t make a quick judgement of a person’s smarts. However, some folks will come right out and show me. One guy, in the first three minutes, showed me a trademark from the back of a toothpaste box. He proudly told me that most people don’t know the toothpaste maker is owned and run by devil-worshipers. I didn’t have to look down to know he had instructions written on the heels of his boots.
As Asknott indirectly pointed out, people who believe the really ridiculous UL’s are none too bright, IMO.
Nobody I think is smart ever tried to demonstrate to me how smart they were. I know several complete idiots who make that thier life’s work.
Smart people know the limits of thier knowlege, and are not ashamed of those limits, so they tend to ask questions that idiots fear to ask for fear of looking stupid.
If they show any interest in Paris Hilton they are out.
Funnily enough, I mention how good Stephen Hawkings “A Brief History Of Time” (book) was and if they imitate his voice, or reference his disability they ain’t that smart. 