# Is intelligence the ability to remember and repeat? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [February 5, 2019, 1:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-intelligence-the-ability-to-remember-and-repeat/828983 "2019-02-05T01:23:52Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![scarface54345](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/90ced4/32.png) [@scarface54345](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/scarface54345)\ **Post date:** [February 5, 2019, 1:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-intelligence-the-ability-to-remember-and-repeat/828983/1 "2019-02-05T01:23:52Z")
I don’t feel like my grades from when I was in school were a good indicator of my intelligence or lack of. I used to think that doing well in school was a sign of high intelligence, and I can’t remember why I did, but I realized that a lot of it just involves memorizing useless material, regurgitating it on exams, then forgetting all of it not too long after taking the exam. I thought intelligence was defined as one’s cognitive ability after realizing that most of schoolwork is all about memorizing. Up until I graduated high school, my teachers kept telling me and other students that school gives us critical thinking skills, but honestly, I didn’t really feel any smarter when I graduated compared to when I walked in as a freshman. ---
**Author:** ![Isamu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/7c8e57/32.png) [@Isamu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Isamu)\ **Post date:** [February 5, 2019, 1:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-intelligence-the-ability-to-remember-and-repeat/828983/2 "2019-02-05T01:27:06Z")
No, that’s knowledge. Intelligence is the ability to do something new based on extrapolating from given information. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [February 5, 2019, 1:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-intelligence-the-ability-to-remember-and-repeat/828983/3 "2019-02-05T01:31:19Z")
If your tests in school were just based on regurgitating memorized information (useless or otherwise), then you didn’t have very good teachers. ---
**Author:** ![Llama\_Llogophile](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/49beb7/32.png) [@Llama\_Llogophile](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Llama_Llogophile)\ **Post date:** [February 5, 2019, 1:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-intelligence-the-ability-to-remember-and-repeat/828983/4 "2019-02-05T01:55:26Z")
Rather than intelligence, if you want to consider what is meant by “learning”… The best definition of learning I’ve heard is “change”. To be a bit more nuanced, I’d say it is a non-temporary, positive change of thoughts and / or behavior. So to the OP I would ask, what in your experience has caused you to learn? For many people, it’s not school. In very unfortunate people, the answer is sometimes nothing. ---
**Author:** ![Wesley\_Clark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wesley_clark/32/20581_2.png) [@Wesley\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wesley_Clark)\ **Post date:** [February 5, 2019, 2:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-intelligence-the-ability-to-remember-and-repeat/828983/5 "2019-02-05T02:09:14Z")
I don’t know if there is a universally accepted definition. Intelligence seems, in a meta sense, to be the ability to engage in premeditated and intentional goal oriented behavior in a hostile environment. I know people who have high IQs who make terrible decisions (pick terrible partners, abuse drugs/alcohol, blow their money, etc). According to this, intelligence is related to brain connections between distinct regions. So when they can communicate better, intelligence is higher. > **[Smarter People Have Better Connected Brains](https://neurosciencenews.com/intelligence-brain-connection-8013/)** > > A new study reports that certain brain regions interact more closely, while others are less engaged, in people with higher intelligence. ---
**Author:** ![Riemann](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/riemann/32/3133_2.png) [@Riemann](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Riemann)\ **Post date:** [February 5, 2019, 2:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-intelligence-the-ability-to-remember-and-repeat/828983/6 "2019-02-05T02:11:18Z")
It’s much easier to remember things if you understand how or why they are happening. An expert historian may be able to recite the succession of Kings and Queens of England for a thousand years effortlessly, because he knows the historical circumstances surrounding each; an expert chemist can probably list the first 100 elements of the periodic table quite easily, because he’s intimately familiar with the chemical significance of the position of each. Both may _appear_ to be nothing more than skills in rote memorization to a non-expert, because somebody who doesn’t have their depth of understanding might have no other way to match their feat other than by rote memorization. So what you attribute to “memorization of useless material” in others might in fact be because they had better understanding than you. ---
**Author:** ![DSeid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dseid/32/20194_2.png) [@DSeid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSeid)\ **Post date:** [February 5, 2019, 2:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-intelligence-the-ability-to-remember-and-repeat/828983/7 "2019-02-05T02:41:48Z")
Success at cognitive work involves both possession of an adequate for the task fund of knowledge and domain specific problem solving skills that apply that fund of knowledge, ideally in novel ways to novel problems. In school settings the fund of knowledge aspect is much easier to assess. It gets over-weighted. School performance is an imperfect predictor of future excellence at cognitive work. Valedictorians are [not so often so successful](http://money.com/money/4779223/valedictorian-success-research-barking-up-wrong/). Oh well in college yes, but future “home run hitters”? No. Doing _very_ well in school requires a strong desire for external validation and to be an excellent rule-follower. That’s a great recipe for being strong middle management, but not where the great thinkers, leaders, and creative risk-takers, come from. [Similar results are seen in China](https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/freedom-learn/201305/be-glad-our-failure-catch-china-in-education) for the top performers on the big standardized test there, the gaokao. > [@](#): > > The highest scorers on the gaokao each year are celebrated in the Chinese press; they and their parents become temporarily famous. But follow-up studies reveal that test scores don’t predict future success. The high scorers do not achieve beyond their lower-scoring peers once they leave school; in fact, the results of one study suggested that the highest scorers achieved less, on average, than those who scored lower.[7, p 82] Indeed, according to Yong Zhao, an expert on Chinese education, a common term used in China now to refer to the general results of their educational system is gaofen dineng, which means, literally, high scores but low ability. Because students spend nearly all of their time studying, they have little chance to do anything else. They have little opportunity to be creative, take initiative, or develop physical and social skills. I suspect that the saying about medical school applies to most fields: you don’t your doctor to have been the one at the very top or the very bottom of their class. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [February 5, 2019, 2:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-intelligence-the-ability-to-remember-and-repeat/828983/8 "2019-02-05T02:48:36Z")
Knowledge is all of the things you’ve learned. Wisdom is the ability to apply the things you’ve learned. Intelligence is a combination of knowledge and wisdom. ---
**Author:** ![Kent\_Clark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kent_clark/32/105_2.png) [@Kent\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kent_Clark)\ **Post date:** [February 5, 2019, 3:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-intelligence-the-ability-to-remember-and-repeat/828983/9 "2019-02-05T03:36:44Z")
> [@DSeid](#): > > Success at cognitive work involves both possession of an adequate for the task fund of knowledge and domain specific problem solving skills that apply that fund of knowledge, ideally in novel ways to novel problems. In school settings the fund of knowledge aspect is much easier to assess. It gets over-weighted. This. Particularly in the early years, education consists of teaching the “process,” the rules, and a base level of facts one needs to plug into the process. Later on, there’s more emphasis on integrating facts and processes from multiple areas into something new and more complex. > [@](#): > > I didn’t really feel any smarter when I graduated compared to when I walked in as a freshman. In eighth grade I wrote book reports that were basically just summaries (regurgitated facts,) and usually weren’t longer than one side of a sheet of notebook paper. By the time I was a senior in high school, I was able to write a 1,500 word paper that started with a premise, cited research from multiple sources, used language that more clearly reflected shades of meaning, and led logically to a conclusion. Are you sure you didn’t get smarter during high school? ---
**Author:** ![Balthisar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/balthisar/32/2825_2.png) [@Balthisar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Balthisar)\ **Post date:** [February 5, 2019, 3:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-intelligence-the-ability-to-remember-and-repeat/828983/10 "2019-02-05T03:45:35Z")
> [@kunilou](#): > > In eighth grade I wrote book reports that were basically just summaries (regurgitated facts,) and usually weren’t longer than one side of a sheet of notebook paper. By the time I was a senior in high school, I was able to write a 1,500 word paper that started with a premise, cited research from multiple sources, used language that more clearly reflected shades of meaning, and led logically to a conclusion. Are you sure you didn’t get smarter during high school? I’m not him/her, but I don’t feel I got smarter during high school. I learned a lot about the proper way to do things, but that’s not an indication of greater intelligence, but of greater skill. ---
**Author:** ![Rover](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/f19dbf/32.png) [@Rover](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rover)\ **Post date:** [February 5, 2019, 4:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-intelligence-the-ability-to-remember-and-repeat/828983/11 "2019-02-05T04:38:51Z")
I personally feel the term intelligence may be kind of misleading in quite a number of circumstances. Many people may claim that people who graduated with higher degree are likley to have higher intelligence, but what does it really pertain actually? More life skills? Hardly guranteed through courses taught in school. Better decision-making ability? Hard to gain that without sufficient level of experience in various settings and learning from some setbacks/mistakes. Instead of using intelligenc as predominant criteria to differentiate invididuals, we should take other tangible, substantial attributes into account. ---
**Author:** ![Ashtura](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ashtura/32/2963_2.png) [@Ashtura](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ashtura)\ **Post date:** [February 5, 2019, 5:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-intelligence-the-ability-to-remember-and-repeat/828983/12 "2019-02-05T17:27:01Z")
Most IQ tests don’t measure regurgitating memorized matierial. Getting good grades requires a different skillset than mere intelligence. A modicum of intelligences is required however. ---
**Author:** ![Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/left_hand_of_dorkness/32/7156_2.png) [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)\ **Post date:** [February 5, 2019, 5:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-intelligence-the-ability-to-remember-and-repeat/828983/13 "2019-02-05T17:36:52Z")
[Bloom’s Taxonomy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloom%27s_taxonomy) describes several different kinds of learning, and is a very useful framework for a discussion like this. If your teachers are only working within one or two of these domains, they’re not very good teachers. But it also may be that they’re trying to get you\* to work in multiple domains, and that you’re not doing so, in which case maybe you’re not a very good student. \*Impersonal you, not the OP. ---
**Author:** ![Flyer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/flyer/32/7298_2.png) [@Flyer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Flyer)\ **Post date:** [February 5, 2019, 7:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-intelligence-the-ability-to-remember-and-repeat/828983/14 "2019-02-05T19:26:02Z")
I have a reasonably high IQ. I have taken various online tests, just for fun, and I have read about intelligence. There have been numerous times when I’ve been thinking about something, and I got the distinct impression that my brain was quite literally working **faster** than the brain of an average person–almost as if the neurons were physically firing faster. Obviously, there is no way to verify this–but it is nevertheless a very real feeling. It is notable that a smarter person will quite often finish a given test faster than somebody who is not so smart. Whether that is due to faster/more efficient recall of facts, or some other physical difference, or something else altogether, is unknown. In the final analysis, about all we can really say is that intelligence is what an IQ test measures. ---
**Author:** ![Darren\_Garrison](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darren_garrison/32/92_2.png) [@Darren\_Garrison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darren_Garrison)\ **Post date:** [February 5, 2019, 8:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-intelligence-the-ability-to-remember-and-repeat/828983/15 "2019-02-05T20:50:50Z")
> [@scarface54345](#): > > Up until I graduated high school, my teachers kept telling me and other students that school gives us critical thinking skills I can’t remember anything outside of learning The Scientific Method in high/medium/primary school that attempted to teach critical thinking skills. In fact, schoolboards and governments fear and fight the prospect because it leads to (scary voice) questioning things!(/scary voice.) To teach critical thinking skills, there would have to be classes on things like [this](https://michaelshermer.com/2001/11/baloney-detection/), [this](https://michaelshermer.com/2001/12/more-baloney-detection/), and [this](https://www.brainpickings.org/2014/01/03/baloney-detection-kit-carl-sagan/). As for remembering and repeating things from my school days, I remember that a baloo is a bear, wuzzle is to mix, and a yonker is a young man. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [February 5, 2019, 9:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-intelligence-the-ability-to-remember-and-repeat/828983/16 "2019-02-05T21:00:29Z")
> [@scarface54345](#): > > I don’t feel like my grades from when I was in school were a good indicator of my intelligence or lack of. I used to think that doing well in school was a sign of high intelligence, and I can’t remember why I did, but I realized that a lot of it just involves memorizing useless material, regurgitating it on exams, then forgetting all of it not too long after taking the exam. I thought intelligence was defined as one’s cognitive ability after realizing that most of schoolwork is all about memorizing. Up until I graduated high school, my teachers kept telling me and other students that school gives us critical thinking skills, but honestly, I didn’t really feel any smarter when I graduated compared to when I walked in as a freshman. Most of my schoolwork was not about memorizing. What exactly did you have to memorize? As **Riemann** said, intelligence is partially about finding patterns in information. For instance, I can rattle off the list of Presidents in order not because I’ve memorized them but because I’ve read enough history to put them in context. I was on Jeopardy because I am good at linking information, and so can get the answer from the clue very well. There is the famous experiment where chess masters could memorize a board from a real game very well, much better than non-masters, but were no better at memorizing truly random boards. BTW, when I was at MIT you were allowed to bring a single piece of paper on which you could write down important formulas and the like. Tests there were not about memorization, but about understanding. ---
**Author:** ![monstro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ba9def/32.png) [@monstro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/monstro)\ **Post date:** [February 6, 2019, 1:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-intelligence-the-ability-to-remember-and-repeat/828983/17 "2019-02-06T01:49:02Z")
Academic performance probably correlates well with intelligence. But it probably correlates more closely with conscientiousness, work ethic, agreeableness, and conformity. These have nothing to do with intelligence. And they aren’t bad traits to have in moderation. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve come to appreciate the diversity contained in the word “intelligence”. Some smart people are deeply analytical. Some smart people are creative. Some can synthesize seemingly disparate pieces of information and thus develop a deep understanding of complex concepts. Some smart people can do all of these things, while some can only do one or two of these things. Smart people come by these talents naturally. And then there are almost all the rest of us–those who learned how to be “smart enough” in school through a combination of practice and performance art. Someone who has been pushed hard enough in school and who is motivated enough to perform to their highest potential will ideally develop a tool box that allows them to compete against (and possibly surpass) the true smarty pants. In most contexts that you will encounter in the “real world”, someone who is naturally smart and someone who been trained to think smart are pretty hard to distinguish. ---
**Author:** ![RaftPeople](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/6f9a4e/32.png) [@RaftPeople](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RaftPeople)\ **Post date:** [February 6, 2019, 1:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-intelligence-the-ability-to-remember-and-repeat/828983/18 "2019-02-06T01:50:33Z")
> [@Flyer](#): > > There have been numerous times when I’ve been thinking about something, and I got the distinct impression that my brain was quite literally working **faster** than the brain of an average person–almost as if the neurons were physically firing faster. Obviously, there is no way to verify this–but it is nevertheless a very real feeling. Sure it’s a real feeling, but given that it’s not based on any data whatsoever, it seems pretty safe to say that it’s an error to think that. ---
**Author:** ![puddleglum](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/puddleglum/32/137_2.png) [@puddleglum](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/puddleglum)\ **Post date:** [February 6, 2019, 6:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-intelligence-the-ability-to-remember-and-repeat/828983/19 "2019-02-06T18:21:05Z")
> [@Flyer](#): > > I have a reasonably high IQ. I have taken various online tests, just for fun, and I have read about intelligence. > > There have been numerous times when I’ve been thinking about something, and I got the distinct impression that my brain was quite literally working **faster** than the brain of an average person–almost as if the neurons were physically firing faster. Obviously, there is no way to verify this–but it is nevertheless a very real feeling. > > It is notable that a smarter person will quite often finish a given test faster than somebody who is not so smart. Whether that is due to faster/more efficient recall of facts, or some other physical difference, or something else altogether, is unknown. > > In the final analysis, about all we can really say is that intelligence is what an IQ test measures. This is true. Cognitive processing speed is [highly](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0160289683900065)related to intelligence. The reason is not that the actual neurons are physically firing faster, since chemistry works the same everywhere, but rather that more intelligent brains are both [bigger](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2770698/), and more [efficiently](https://www.sciencealert.com/high-iq-correlation-lower-neuron-dendrite-density)connected. ---
**Author:** ![senoy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/dbc845/32.png) [@senoy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/senoy)\ **Post date:** [February 6, 2019, 9:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-intelligence-the-ability-to-remember-and-repeat/828983/20 "2019-02-06T21:20:20Z")
You’re starting from an invalid premise. The purpose of schools is not to make you intelligent (how would they even do that) or to measure your intelligence. It is to make you into a ‘good’ member of the state however that is defined. In the US, this is typically defined as someone contributing in a meaningful way to the economy, but in other countries it may be something else. Intelligent people usually do well at school because intelligence typically gives you a leg up in being a good industrial cog, but this does not always mean that you ARE a good industrial cog. Just like being athletic can give you a leg up at a soccer camp, but it doesn’t make you good at soccer. It’s important to remember that modern schooling is largely based on the Prussian Education System which was designed to give the Prussian military and industrial complex a leg up on the rest of the world. It wasn’t to make you a better person or measure your attributes, it was to make sure that the next time Napoleon came calling, Jena–Auerstedt would not be repeated. Pretty much that’s still what modern schooling aims for. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-intelligence-the-ability-to-remember-and-repeat/828983.md?page=2)