Is intelligence the ability to remember and repeat?

Great Debates
21

I am unaware of any online IQ test that has any validity whatsoever. I am aware, however, of certain controlled substances which will also give you the distinct impression that your brain is working faster than the brain of an average person.

There are areas of life where I’m pretty far along one end of the spectrum. I can solve number puzzles fairly quickly, and I’m not terrible at wordplay, and I’m pretty adroit with words in writing.

There are other areas of intelligence where I’m pretty far at the other end of the spectrum. I tend to solve visual/spatial puzzles by translating them mentally into words, solving them, and then translating them back, which means I can solve them, but slower than most people. If a puzzle is difficult to translate into words, I’m pretty terrible at it. And I’m absolutely awful at remembering names.

I’ve done some graduate work in Academically/Intellectually Gifted (AIG) education (my state discontinued master’s pay for teachers, so it wasn’t a good investment for me to complete my degree). The concept of g, or general intelligence, is pretty controversial.

As I work with students, I often find that the students with the most muscular brains aren’t always the students who wave their hands the most; and I’ve come to appreciate quiet, steady hard work as a key aspect of intelligence.

22

Simply remembering and repeating stuff (without a capacity to learn new things and differentiate between valuable knowledge and crap) is not a mark of intelligence.

23

I have an amazing memory, and did very well in school just regurgitating facts.

i also support the idea of the “brain’s brain” the part of the brain you cannot control from which springs creativity (and probably a lot of mental illness). Ask any creative person where they get their ideas, and the answer will probably be “They just come to me.”

Robin Williams had an amazing brain, and I can understand his actions when he lost control of it. Indeed, I’m amazed he managed to stay in control for so long,

24

Of all the verbiage on this thread so far the word *understand *appears 6 times. Riemann used it 3 times. Voyager, monstro, and Annie-Xmas used it once each.

I’m supposedly intelligent. I’ve been tested six times over a period of 30 years with tests that last two days; eight hours each day with an hour break. I was tested all the other times because of the results of the first test which was IQ 175. My parents couldn’t believe I scored so much higher than my big brother, who took calculus and chemistry in high school. I was a lowly artist! How could that be intelligent? Personally, I find math boring. But, intelligent people LOVE math! Don’t they? So, my parents became convinced this Intelligence Quotient thing wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. I understood.

I raised this young man from childhood. He was eight when we first met. He was designated as retarded by his school’s psychiatrist. He was *convinced *he was retarded because he *must *be if the school psychiatrist *said *he is! From what I saw, he was only different. What amazed me about him was his memory - like a tape recorder. He’s now a theoretical physicist. He understands things that psychiatrist can’t formulate into words. This kid’s mother told me something once that’s stuck with me. “People who aren’t intelligent can’t identify intelligence in other people.” Of course, I’m always skeptical when people toss out one-liners which seem to slam doors. However, I understand the logic in what she said.

I told this young man, “Only an intelligent person can be stupid.” He did not believe me at first, so I said, “If someone isn’t very smart, and he does something not so smart, that’s normal for him. It’s to be expected. However, if an intelligent person does something that’s not so smart, that’s stupid. That’s not applying this intelligence.” He understood what I meant. He could do that and not have to accept what I said as fact. (He always suspected I might be saying nice things to him just to make him feel good about himself; nice things which may not be true. He understood parents do that sometimes.)

For the most part the posts above tend to be two-dimensional. How many said anything about the correlation of information? How many mention cross-referencing and recall? How many mention appreciation, or comprehension? Uht oh. Intelligent people tend to be quite boring at times as well. Things are complicated and layered. Things are subtle and indistinct. Things of this nature can rarely (if ever) be cogently discussed with ripping one-liners, or definitive anecdotes.

Then, I told him, “Intelligence is like a bucket. Some people have bigger buckets than others. However, just because someone has a big bucket that doesn’t mean he has filled his bucket. A smart person can have a smaller bucket but fill it to the top and an intelligent person might not fill his ending up with less in his bucket than the smart person with a smaller bucket.”

Would you rather be smart, or intelligent? Some guy once said, “I’d rather be lucky than smart.”

You understand?