I know plenty of people who are good at verbalizing but fall short on logic or common sense…MANY politicians and academics, for example.
I look for signs of creativity, inquisitiveness and problem solving ability.
Penis length? Dumber guys are hung like horses.
I frequently run into folks who are convinced that “improper” speech, writing, and spelling are highly correlated with low intelligence. This is incorrect. Instead, I have found that these *beliefs *are often correlated with low intelligence.
I’m working on another theory here about people who look at and think about clothing too much :rolleyes:
I have a high rate of successful estimation, based on looking at someone’s face when I first interact with them. I can’t describe what I am looking for or what I see, but 95% of the time my initial impression (dumb, average, smart, genius) is correct.
Speech pattern, accent, grammar, sense of humor, physical presentation, etc seem to have very little to do with it. There are a lot of different ways to be smart, too.
I’m 53 and over time I’ve learned that in the real world there are several types of intelligence. I’ve met intellectually nimble funny people with progressive attitudes who had zero innate skill in analyzing or fixing things. I’ve met people who were absolute masters at handling people, and were technically skilled, but whose black and white conservative political opinions were not particularly well informed. I’ve met master gamers who were math mavens and were profoundly socially retarded.
ESOL people aside, I think language is the main clue to assessing general intelligence, beyond that it’s kind of a crap shoot, and strongly depends of them being in line with what you like or admire personally.
The term “subjunctive” gets applied to several distinct things by even people well-versed in grammar. So I wouldn’t use an explicit understanding of what that term means as any sign of anything, let alone intelligence.
Interesting thread. This is a useful discussion for me as I’m often in the position of interviewing “knowledge workers” for positions that require intelligence, so it’s useful to analyze my own criteria as well as learn what others use.
I agree with astro’s point, that, being vain humans, we tend to define intelligence as “acts or thinks in a similar way to me”.
With that caveat in mind, here are a few signs I look for. Lacking some of these is not a make-or-break for the person being “intelligent”, but the more of these I see, the more likely I am to conclude a person is intelligent.
[ul]
[li] Puns, and word-play in general.[/li][li] Asking probing, insightful questions, especially when it’s a domain with which the person is unfamiliar. For example, a non computer geek asking something like, “what’s the advantage of USB over older methods of connection?” I was flabbergasted once when researching LCD TVs for my aging mother-in-law; I had suggested a particular model, and she suddenly said, “But will it be upgradeable to Google’s TV platform?”[/li][li] The person makes me rethink a position I hold.[/li][li] A general sense of playfulness - people I consider unintelligent tend to take things very seriously, and at face value, not looking for irony, hidden meanings or humor. Even the most serious geek will occasionally laugh about something absurd or ironic in their chosen field.[/li][li] People who regurgitate news items, gossip, or general trivia without comment or insight tend to be unintelligent (hi, Facebook.)[/li][li] An ability to use metaphor and analogy to relate concepts which previously had appeared to be unrelated. Or, the use of analogy to relate something they’re trying to learn to something they already know. This is an egocentric one for me because I tend to think strongly in analogies.[/li][li] A passion for puzzles, riddles and other mental challenges. Just like that guy at the gym would relish the opportunity to show you how he can bench 300 lbs, an intelligent person will enjoy showing off their mental prowess, even if they’re shy about it.[/li][li] Being passionate about their hobby, to the point where they’ve read all about it, and learned the ins and outs. Whether it be baseball or quantum physics, they’ve devoured everything they can find on the subject, and have their own (non-crackpot) theories or at least a few deep questions.[/li][li] Their brain appears to “race”, to the point that they can’t get the words out quickly enough to keep up with what they’re thinking. There are some psychological disorders that can cause this, however.[/li][li] A subjective, intense sense of “interaction” - I feel that the person and I are actively engaged in conversation, and they are not “monologuing” or “talking past me”. Eye contact. (Yes, lack of eye contact can be simply a sign of introversion or shyness.)[/li][li] When answering a question on a message board, they present their answer in list form :D[/li][/ul]
Like many other posters here I think that how a person uses language is a key.
If you punctuate your speech with a lot of “umms” or “you knows?” , or the equivalent in a language other than English, then I think you may be a few brain cells short of a full load.
I declare you the second smartest person in the thread. Assessing a person’s intelligence by how smart they seem to you is sort of like assessing the quality of an HDTV by watching a Sony commercial on your old TV. Quality doesn’t seem much better.
Those were my safety schools.
So, you’re saying there’s no way to tell without extensive interaction, observation, and measurement? You can’t tell a person with an IQ of 130 apart from a person with an IQ of 75 within 5 minutes of meeting them? Really?
Theory of multiple intelligences
Currently, eight different kinds of intelligence are proposed.
1.1 Spatial
1.2 Linguistic
1.3 Logical-mathematical
1.4 Bodily-kinesthetic
1.5 Musical
1.6 Interpersonal
1.7 Intrapersonal
1.8 Naturalistic
1.9 Existential
Each of these would present itself in a different way.
Apparently I can.
Are we talking about identifying if someone is functionally retarded or telling the difference between regular intelligence and super smartness?
I actually use an additional 2.
As I said in the OP, we’re talking about getting a ballpark sense of a person’s general intelligence, not making a scientifically accurate measurement.
I pretty much go with sense of humor. The punchline of a joke usually involves a jump from one mental track to another. How quickly they make that jump tends to indicate the range and speed of their thought processes, which I consider a decent general indication of intelligence.
This reminds me of a Cracked article on the (statistically likely but not guaranteed) downsides of high intelligence. Item #1 is that more intelligent people have higher rates of substance abuse. A leading explanation is that smart people are more curious, and curious people are more inclined to seek out novel experiences, including use of psychoactive drugs.
Intelligence is harder to pick out than stupidity. Sometimes all that one needs is watching some people’s actions.
Being male, watching an asshole who uses a urinal, flushes the toilet with his foot and fails to wash his hands tells me: 1)His education is the equivalent of a snail and 2)he doesn’t read the Straight Dope.
I personally have witnessed a US Senator doing exactly that.
Years ago on a plane I struck up a conversation with the woman I was seated next to because the book she was reading (well not reading at that exact monent…) was co-incidentally entitled: “Apollyon”… yeah… that was the first time I’d encountered the “Left Behind” series… and then discovered that some of the readers actually believe them to be accurately predictive of the coming time of trials… long flight… will not make same mistake again… 
Well, no, I didn’t. One is enough. I wasn’t referring to readers (blessed be) I was referring to confidence.
Confidence and intelligence aren’t a perfect match, but I’ve never met a stupid person who would admit to not knowing how to pronounce a word.
Well, other than someone in sales.
I consider people intelligent when they are willing to examine their assumptions.
Agreed, DarrenS, and props to Maastricht for posting the different types of intelligences, too.
I still remember when the reality of multiple intelligences really hit me. Intellectually (;)), I knew about them for years, but there is definitely a difference between knowing the theory and truly having a great example of it.
I was working on my undergrad senior thesis, which was on Gabriel Garcia Marquez and magical realism. I absolutely adore Garcia Marquez; he is one of the most brilliant authors and storytellers of all time. Part of my research included reading the first part of his autobiography, which had just been published in English. In it, he says that he is absolutely incapable of even simple arithmetic. He has tried and tried (and people have tried and tried to teach him), but it makes no sense to him. (paraphrasing) “How can you take a 4 and a 7, and when you put them together, the result is two 1s next to each other? That makes no sense!” He also talks of his horrific spelling and the eternal thanks he gives his editors for making sense out of his atrocious writing/spelling.
I sat there utterly dumbstruck. Here is a man capable of some of the most moving and fantastic stories, utterly brilliant at weaving disparate threads together into an amazing whole… And he can’t SPELL? Or ADD?
And I realized that if I ever ran into him, not knowing who he was, there’s a damn good chance I’d see his horrific spelling or non-existent arithmetic skills and assume he was pretty damn stupid. I cannot overstate how wrong I would be.