Why aren't men smarter than women?

[Zoe]

astro: If women tend not to fall into this standard deviation cohort as often as men why does it have to be “prejudice” vs innate differences in cognitive skill sets that yields the “fewer female scientists” result?

Because of scientific studies that were done at one time to evaluate the source of the “problem.” That has been a long time, however, and I’ve been out of education for almost nineteen years. I don’t know what current studies are saying. At one time it was a matter of things you might consider trivial such as the number of times that females were called on in a classroom versus the number of times that males were called on, the percentage of classtime focused on males versus the amount of time focused on females.

There is so much greater equity now that such things almost sound absurd. But back in the days of sliderules, I never saw a girl carrying one. Do you remember when all of the astronauts were male – time after time? All of the Ivy League Schools were male. The general consensus was that men were the smart ones. We grew up thinking that and didn’t know differently. We believed it all. I didn’t know until I was 17 that I could compete on “their” level. That was sad finding out so late in the game.

[astro]

@Zoe

Because of scientific studies that were done at one time to evaluate the source of the “problem.” That has been a long time, however, and I’ve been out of education for almost nineteen years. I don’t know what current studies are saying. At one time it was a matter of things you might consider trivial such as the number of times that females were called on in a classroom versus the number of times that males were called on, the percentage of classtime focused on males versus the amount of time focused on females.

There is so much greater equity now that such things almost sound absurd. But back in the days of sliderules, I never saw a girl carrying one. Do you remember when all of the astronauts were male – time after time? All of the Ivy League Schools were male. The general consensus was that men were the smart ones. We grew up thinking that and didn’t know differently. We believed it all. I didn’t know until I was 17 that I could compete on “their” level. That was sad finding out so late in the game.

I’m 50 and slide rules were before even my time. We had portable HP calculators in high school (granted they were LED). I did my high school labs side by side with female lab partners. This was the 70’s and progressivism and female empowerment has been in full swing for over 40 years. No one was telling girls what they could or could not be. I was there in the classes so telling me there was some kind of oppressive patriarchy at work in the 70’s crushing girls yearning to be scientists is IMO, a self indulgent, historically revisionist fairy tale.

[lynne-42]

I think the cultural argument for fewer women scientists (I don’t think that would include biology) doesn’t stand up to any systematic research. I would be delighted to be pointed to some which results from strong data not from politically correct desires.

Her work is controvertial, but I have found the research of Camilla Benbow to be very convincing and reflect what I found in over 30 years in the classroom. To quote the page linked to:

“The results Dr. Benbow and co-author Julian Stanley reported in 1980 suggested that gender differences in mathematical reasoning ability may have a biological origin, and that the intellectual disparity between males and females in math is only exacerbated by environmental influences, such as differential course-taking and socialization (Benbow & Stanley, 1980). The data, obtained from nearly 10,000 gifted middle school students participating in the longitudinal Study of Mathematically Precocious Youth (SMPY) demonstrated that the large gender differences in mathematical reasoning ability are robust, stable and emerge early in life. In the years since the original study, data from the SMPY have continued support this hypothesis (Raymond & Benbow, 1986; Benbow & Lubinski, 1993).”

A lot of people don’t like that finding. I certainly didn’t when I was first confronted with it. But you can’t reject evidence just because you don’t like the findings. My focus was always writing curriculum to match research findings on the optimum teaching of high ability students. In doing so, I was involved in working closely with those doing research with Benbow, and found the outcomes irrefutable. It didn’t impact greatly on what I wrote, in that my material doesn’t bias to males, but it did stop me following th path some were taking back then in trying to turn math more girl-friendly. My top level girls objected as much as the top boys did!

As a women, I am rather proud of the fact that I was even accused as being a ‘male chauvinist’ in one heated meeting when I opposed the proposal: water down of the mathematics content of senior physics courses so we’ll get more girls.

[Wendell_Wagner]

astro writes:

> This was the 70’s and progressivism and female empowerment has been in full
> swing for over 40 years.

I don’t know what sense in which they had been in full swing for forty years (which I guess means since about 1930), but they hadn’t accomplished much over most of that time. In 1965 the proportion of women in med school and law school and in grad school in math, science, and engineering was about 5%. The proportion of women in college was well below 50%. Now the proportion of women in law school and med school is around 50%. The proportion of women in college is well above 50%. The proportion of women doing graduate work in math, science, and engineering is much higher than it used to be.

There’s a claim the higher proportion of men than women in science, math, and engineering even today shows that men are better than women at math. Then why is the proportion of women with math Ph.D.'s larger than the proportion of women with engineering degrees? (Math Ph.D.'s are about 25% female and engineering Ph.D.'s are about 10% female.) Whatever the difference is, it doesn’t correlate strictly with the math content of the subject.

I think that there is a lot of problems with any argument that goes: “There is obviously no bias in the acceptance of group X in field Y. Forty years ago the proportion of group X in field Y was about 5%. Today the proportion of group X in field Y is about 25%. It’s utterly obvious that the fact the proportion isn’t 50% means that group X is on average less able to work in field Y. If that were not true, the proportion of group X in field Y would currently be 50%. It should be intuitively obvious to you that no prejudice exists in the field anymore.”

The proportion of women in science, math, and engineering fields has slowly and consistently grown over the past forty years. Will the proportion continue to grow? I have no idea, and neither do you. Does the fact that the proportion isn’t 50% yet (although it’s closer in some fields than others) mean that women are less capable in these fields? I have no idea, and neither do you. Any argument that claims that current proportions of men and women working and studying in various fields are obviously the right and natural proportions and can’t possibly be affected by societal bias is begging the question. This is a standard “We’re not prejudiced anymore, since current society is perfect” argument. Nobody knows how much the current proportions of men and women working and studying in various fields is affected by biological factors and social factors.

[astro]

@Wendell Wagner

astro writes:

> This was the 70’s and progressivism and female empowerment has been in full
> swing for over 40 years.

I don’t know what sense in which they had been in full swing for forty years (which I guess means since about 1930), but they hadn’t accomplished much over most of that time. .

“Has been” not “had been”. I am writing in 2008 about what expectations for male & female students were in the 70’s. I was referring to the 70’s to date Wendell, not the 1930’s to the 70’s.

Male and female secondary students have been on pretty even ground for over 40 years now. If anything the overall attitude in the schools over the past 40+ years has been much more “you go girl” than “girls aren’t scientists”. If there is a continuing gap in female scientists vs male scientists while women have infilled in practically every other academic and professional discipline, to keep arguing that this lack in female participation at the uppermost levels of science is almost certainly due primarily to some continuing and extended form of patriarchal oppression is an argument that’s getting pretty threadbare bordering on silly in 2008.

[Wendell_Wagner]

I’m not arguing that it has anything to do with patriarchal oppression (a term that I’ve never used in my life). I’m saying that nobody knows why the difference exists. The proportion of women in science, math, and engineering fields has slowly but consistently increased over the past forty years. Nobody knows whether it will continue to increase or not. Nobody knows whether the differences have to do with social constraints, biological constraints, or something else.

[Jackmannii]

We are smarter than women, except that vast amounts of baseball statistics crowd our brains and block out the book learnin’.

[kimera]

@astro

If there is a continuing gap in female scientists vs male scientists while women have infilled in practically every other academic and professional discipline, to keep arguing that this lack in female participation at the uppermost levels of science is almost certainly due primarily to some continuing and extended form of patriarchal oppression is an argument that’s getting pretty threadbare bordering on silly in 2008.

Since this is a high-jack, I can give you a detailed analysis of this question in another thread if you’d like it, but I’ll give you a summary of the points that lead me to believe it is a cultural phenomena rather than a biological one:

1. Sexism I have experienced as a female scientist (and I’m only 26).
2. Conversations with other female scientists.
3. The fact that females aren’t inherently bad at math. In fact, they outscore males in certain types of math. There are some subsets at math at which they are worse than males, but others in which they are better than males (calculation being one).
4. That science is a very varied field and math isn’t strong in some fields. I just finished the data analysis of a study I conducted with some classmates and the level of math necessary to analyze the data wasn’t nearly as a high as, say a computer programmer’s.
5. Discussions with professors on this phenomena. For example, my professor who teaches graduate level statistics found that women are much more easily discouraged and assume that they can’t do math compared to men. He didn’t find much difference in cognitive abilities.
6. The experience of people like Ben Barres, who is a ftm transsexual. He talks about the sexism he experienced as a woman and how people now treat him with more respect that he’s a man. I do a lot of my volunteer work with transsexuals in support groups and I’ve talked to many transsexual scientists who experienced sexism against women. Since these individuals presumably do not change their cognitive ability, I can think of no other explanation for why mtfs in very traditionally masculine fields consistently report having their positions discounted or ignored after they transition. Perhaps it is due to the fact that they are transsexual, but even transsexuals who pass (like Ben Barres) report this sexism.
7. Studies like the one where they sent the same CV to various academic departments applying for a position as a professor and the ones with a male name had a higher acceptance rate.
   etc…

Not to say that some fields aren’t going to be male dominated and other females aren’t going to be female dominated. Organic science (such as biology, chemistry, medicine, social sciences, etc) seems to be developing to be dominated by women versus inorganic science (such as physics, computer science, engineering, etc) which remains dominated by men. Perhaps these differences are biological for the same reason computer programmers tend to be male. However, as Wendell Wagner, no one can really say how the trend will go and what aspects are biological and what are cultural.
Sorry OP, I’ll go back to your question.

I think an important distinction that my professors repeatedly hammer into my head when discussing evolution needs to be clear.
The causes of differences within populations don’t predict causes of differences between populations. Likewise, the causes of differences between populations (in this case males versus females) doesn’t mean that those factors cause a difference within that population (so in a group of males).

As female mammals are constrained by pregnancy and lactation, it pays for a female to develop into a fully functionally adult as quickly as possible. As male mammals are more typically constrained by their ability to acquire mates, males spend more time developing so they can better compete with other males. A small human male might not be better able to fight against other males, but he can learn how to hunt better or other useful skills that might help him score with the ladies. Thus his reproduction is delayed.

Now as to testosterone poisoning- testosterone is a very Faustian hormone. It makes men strong and better able to compete with other males, but it also causes them to over-estimate their own abilities, be more aggressive, challenge other males more, and has many other negative side effects (not that it is all bad, it has many beneficial side effects too). Highly intelligent boys tend to have lower testosterone levels compared to boys of average intelligence cite. This helps to explain why smart teens have less sex and the stereotype of the nerd cite. (For the record, low intelligence is also correlated with low testosterone, so having low testosterone doesn’t automatically cause intelligence).

Now, my focus isn’t on humans but I could’ve sworn that the brain continues developing after puberty. This sciam article suggests that the brain continues to develop into the 20s. Brain development and maturation could be independent of sexual maturity (and the more I think about it, the more I bet that is so).

[hibernicus]

@kimera

6. The experience of people like Ben Barres, who is a ftm transsexual. He talks about the sexism he experienced as a woman and how people now treat him with more respect that he’s a man. I do a lot of my volunteer work with transsexuals in support groups and I’ve talked to many transsexual scientists who experienced sexism against women. Since these individuals presumably do not change their cognitive ability, I can think of no other explanation for why mtfs in very traditionally masculine fields consistently report having their positions discounted or ignored after they transition.

This part (that I have underlined) caught my attention, as I’m not sure your presumption is correct. In February I listened to an NPR program where a female to male transsexual gave first-hand report of changes in cognitive ability and his increased interest in science following androgen treatment.

I was unable to find details of the program online, but when I googled for “female to male transsexual change in cognitive abilities” the results included various links that suggest that hormones do have an effect. For example “Activating effect of androgens on cognitive performance: causal evidence in a group of female-to-male transsexuals”. abstract here.

The administering of androgens was clearly associated with an increase in spatial ability performance. In contrast, it had a deteriorating effect on verbal fluency tasks.

[Capt.Ridley_s_Shooting_Party]

6. The experience of people like Ben Barres, who is a ftm transsexual. He talks about the sexism he experienced as a woman and how people now treat him with more respect that he’s a man. I do a lot of my volunteer work with transsexuals in support groups and I’ve talked to many transsexual scientists who experienced sexism against women. Since these individuals presumably do not change their cognitive ability, I can think of no other explanation for why mtfs in very traditionally masculine fields consistently report having their positions discounted or ignored after they transition.

Seriously? You can’t imagine that being a trans-sexual has a lot to do with it, despite how PC nearly every scientist claims to be?

[Capt.Ridley_s_Shooting_Party]

Perhaps these differences are biological for the same reason computer programmers tend to be male.

? What biological reason causes implies male programmers?

[DrDeth]

@Stranger On A Train

Any surmise based of the premise of differences in measured I.Q. has to be carry the caveat that I.Q. is a poorly understood and difficult to uniquely categorize (in terms of practical effect) concept.

True. But another thing to consider is that being “blessed” with that Y, us males populate the far ends of the curve more- and since being “slow” is much more likely than being a supergenius, I’d think that the average IQ of males would be a bit lower.

[lynne-42]

@kimera

Not to say that some fields aren’t going to be male dominated and other females aren’t going to be female dominated. Organic science (such as biology, chemistry, medicine, social sciences, etc) seems to be developing to be dominated by women versus inorganic science (such as physics, computer science, engineering, etc) which remains dominated by men. Perhaps these differences are biological for the same reason computer programmers tend to be male. However, as Wendell Wagner, no one can really say how the trend will go and what aspects are biological and what are cultural.

I agree with much of what you say, and do feel a need to clarify my claims above that the bias to males in the inorganic sciences and computing is strongly biological. That is not to say there are not key social impacts. No research to back this, but in 30 years of teaching girls I am convinced that confidence and behavior has a significant impact. This is a rash generalization, but if a girl faces a math problem she cannot do, she will often just assume that she can’t do it and put up her hand and wait for help asking for the neat and tidy method. A boy will often say something like: “No idea how to do this, what if I try …” I tried to introduce methods which helped girls understand they can make a mess, muck about with the math and then do the result neatly later.

I am also convinced that many girls (probably boys as well, but my observations indicate that the impact might be stronger with girls) that parents and others give endless clues that math is hard. Note over the next few days how often you hear a radio or TV commentator or a parent, comment proudly that they were no good at math at school or don’t understand math now. They will usually laugh. The impact of that on confidence in math is huge. I never hear anyone proudly admit that they are no good at reading.

[goodie]

I will just say before I start to rant that I am a stay at home mom, so obviously I am biased.

Why are women smarter? BECAUSE WE HAVE TO RAISE THE CHILDREN!!!

Any job that humans have to do or have ever had to do that became, over time, a job that is traditionally “male” only did so because it was not a safe place to take small children. Not that women couldn’t hunt, mine, or work with dangerous chemical in a lab, they, the vast majority, had to prepare to, or were already, thinking of their childrens well-being and the kind of work they could safely do while tending an infant.

I have found that raising children takes a huge amount of problem solving ability, I have to deal with engineering issues,“Mom this is broken! Can you fix it?”, Spatial problems, How to fit 2 kids and 20 tons of toys and games into a 10x12 bedroom?, And cooking a healthy and cost effective menu every week is chemistry and math.

I am joking a bit, but really, the job of rearing the young is the most important job of every species, that’s the females are smarter. The hunting, the protecting, these are SOMETIMES jobs, and not always needed to get the kids to adulthood. So, number one, you don’t need as many of the more evolved, successful men as women in a group for it to thrive, and they just don’t need to be as intelligent.

Someone mentioned sewing as a traditionally female job that required some of the same mental skills as the male jobs, lets not forget how essential the fabric crafts were to society for thousands of years and they haev always been primarily the womens domain.

The biggest reason that women show up in a smaller percentage than men in high level jobs of every field is that such a large proportion CHOOSE not to be there in order to be with their children more, and the ones that don’t spend most of their time raising children are subject to a lifetime of outdated sexist opinions and opressive behavior from the men they work with.

[JustThinkin]

@astro

I’m 50 and slide rules were before even my time. We had portable HP calculators in high school (granted they were LED). I did my high school labs side by side with female lab partners. This was the 70’s and progressivism and female empowerment has been in full swing for over 40 years. No one was telling girls what they could or could not be. I was there in the classes so telling me there was some kind of oppressive patriarchy at work in the 70’s crushing girls yearning to be scientists is IMO, a self indulgent, historically revisionist fairy tale.

Well then, I lived that fairy tale. I graduated high school in 1977. When I was a pre-teen I wanted to be a scientist. In grade school, I always had excellent grades in science and math. In 8th grade, my scores took a dive. Why? Because the message I consistently got from my family and culture (granted, more sexist than most) was that I was just going to grow up to be a wife and mother. Why worry about a career? I know many women my age that had similar experiences. Yup, I did labs alongside the boys in high school. That doesn’t mean that I had the same support they got.

Back on topic:
This thread has really made me curious about just how much hormones affect how our brains work. I’m going through some peri-menopausal hormone shifts right now and I’m noticing some differences in how I think about stuff and react to stuff. It’s mostly emotional, but it makes me wonder. It also annoys me, but that’s for another thread.

[astro]

@JustThinkin'

Well then, I lived that fairy tale. I graduated high school in 1977. When I was a pre-teen I wanted to be a scientist. In grade school, I always had excellent grades in science and math. In 8th grade, my scores took a dive. Why? Because the message I consistently got from my family and culture (granted, more sexist than most) was that I was just going to grow up to be a wife and mother. Why worry about a career? I know many women my age that had similar experiences. Yup, I did labs alongside the boys in high school. That doesn’t mean that I had the same support they got.

I can’t speak to your family issues, but with all due respect unless you were living on some sort of compound I’m not sure sure how you came to interpret the American Zeitgeist of the 70’s as anything but pro female. Female empowerment was in full blossom. “Women can do anything a man can do” was the message of the day and women acted on it. They went out and got law degrees, and business degrees, and medical doctorates, but hard science was different. Women did not occupy positions in the upper levels of the hard sciences the way they did other highly challenging occupations and professions.

Was it somehow more culturally acceptable for a a woman to become a doctor, lawyer or corporate executive than scientist? Are hard scientists somehow more prejudiced against women than males in any of the aforesaid groups? Upper level scientists as a group tend to be more socially liberal and progressive than the other three professional classes I listed where women have made much greater strides.

I’m just about one year older than you are, and I’m was in precisely the same cultural cohort you were in the 70’s. Nowhere in any middle class or upper middle class family social environment did I hear parents telling their female daughters that wife and mother was the preferred life path for a young woman. No girls I spoke to indicated that they were being pressured or influenced in any way to direct their energies and ambitions toward being wives and mothers vs getting an education.

If your family was 20 years behind the times culturally that is what it is, but to state or imply that the academic and cultural spirit of the age in the 70’s was repressing women’s occupational choices is absolute revisionist nonsense. If you’re looking for a scapegoat for your eighth grade academic nosedive, beat on your family all you want, but don’t blame the Zeitgeist of the 70’s, it doesn’t play.

[JR_Brown]

@astro

I’m just about one year older than you are, and I’m was in precisely the same cultural cohort you were in the 70’s. Nowhere in any middle class or upper middle class family social environment did I hear parents telling their female daughters that wife and mother was the preferred life path for a young woman. No girls I spoke to indicated that they were being pressured or influenced in any way to direct their energies and ambitions toward being wives and mothers vs getting an education.

If your family was 20 years behind the times culturally that is what it is, but to state or imply that the academic and cultural spirit of the age in the 70’s was repressing women’s occupational choices is absolute revisionist nonsense. If you’re looking for a scapegoat for your eighth grade academic nosedive, beat on your family all you want, but don’t blame the Zeitgeist of the 70’s, it doesn’t play.

During the 70’s I wasn’t old enough to be paying attention to that kinda stuff :D, but my mom graduated college at the very end of the 60’s; she did quite well with her bachelor’s degree (in theology, but still…), and her professors encouraged her to go on to graduate school. She was offered a scholarship to cover tuition, but would have been responsible for her own living expenses. When she discussed the offer with her parents, they scoffed; why spend all that time, energy and money on a useless degree? After all, sooner or later (and preferably sooner) she’d have to get married and spend the rest of her life being a good little housewife; no sensible, normal woman would want a career. Mind you, this was a successful middle-class professional family that sent all their kinds to college and expected them to do well in life.

So she married a guy she had met in college and had a baby instead (that would be me).

JRB

[astro]

@JR Brown

During the 70’s I wasn’t old enough to be paying attention to that kinda stuff :D, but my mom graduated college at the very end of the 60’s; she did quite well with her bachelor’s degree (in theology, but still…), and her professors encouraged her to go on to graduate school. She was offered a scholarship to cover tuition, but would have been responsible for her own living expenses. When she discussed the offer with her parents, they scoffed; why spend all that time, energy and money on a useless degree? After all, sooner or later (and preferably sooner) she’d have to get married and spend the rest of her life being a good little housewife; no sensible, normal woman would want a career. Mind you, this was a successful middle-class professional family that sent all their kinds to college and expected them to do well in life.

So she married a guy she had met in college and had a baby instead (that would be me).

JRB

Which is kind of my point. I can easily believe that that attitude may have been expressed in a middle class 50’s or 60’s family. There was huge sea change in American culture from the 50’s to the 70’s. The foment of the 60’s saw fruit in the 70’s. It was an epochal decade for women’s rights and progress. “Woman Power” was the watchword. Women were encouraged to take on almost any profession they desired as long as they could perform.

If someone says their family was pushing them toward being a wife or mother over taking on an occupation I’ll take them at their word, even though that’s not what I saw or heard in middle class 70’s households. But, to step beyond that and claim that there was some sort of politically improbable, narrowly focused laser beam of repression and prejudice that specifically targeted budding female scientists while the rest of the high intellect end of the female bell curve went on to become lawyers, doctors and Indian Chiefs is a hard argument to swallow.

[doreen]

@astro

I’m just about one year older than you are, and I’m was in precisely the same cultural cohort you were in the 70’s. Nowhere in any middle class or upper middle class family social environment did I hear parents telling their female daughters that wife and mother was the preferred life path for a young woman. No girls I spoke to indicated that they were being pressured or influenced in any way to direct their energies and ambitions toward being wives and mothers vs getting an education.

If your family was 20 years behind the times culturally that is what it is, but to state or imply that the academic and cultural spirit of the age in the 70’s was repressing women’s occupational choices is absolute revisionist nonsense. If you’re looking for a scapegoat for your eighth grade academic nosedive, beat on your family all you want, but don’t blame the Zeitgeist of the 70’s, it doesn’t play.

I can’t speak for JustThinkin’, but I graduated from high school in 1981. I was discouraged from taking certain classes by my guidance counselor, my relatives and neighbors thought I should be taking typing, shorthand and maybe bookeeping, just in case I had to work until I had children, and when I insisted that I was going to college, they assumed I would be a teacher or a nurse. Those were the only female occupations which required a college education. You might be right about the middle and upper-middle classes- I wouldn’t know. I grew up working class at best, and “women are meant to be wives and mothers” hung around a lot longer there. Boys weren’t expected to go to college either, but they weren’t looked as as if they had two heads.

[starryspice]

@astro

“Has been” not “had been”. I am writing in 2008 about what expectations for male & female students were in the 70’s. I was referring to the 70’s to date Wendell, not the 1930’s to the 70’s.

Male and female secondary students have been on pretty even ground for over 40 years now. If anything the overall attitude in the schools over the past 40+ years has been much more “you go girl” than “girls aren’t scientists”. If there is a continuing gap in female scientists vs male scientists while women have infilled in practically every other academic and professional discipline, to keep arguing that this lack in female participation at the uppermost levels of science is almost certainly due primarily to some continuing and extended form of patriarchal oppression is an argument that’s getting pretty threadbare bordering on silly in 2008.

You go girl? Really? I graduated with my BS in 2004 and am now pursuing my PhD. Nobody has ever said to me the equivalent of “you go girl.” Nobody verbally discouraged me either, but every single professor I’ve had in my undergraduate and graduate courses has been male. That’s not discouraging? There are two female professors in my department, out of 30 or so total. That’s not discouraging? As a graduate student, I do not have the option of getting maternity leave, and maternity leave is also rarely offered for post-docs. That’s not discouraging? I’m not arguing that there is patriarchal oppression. But saying that sexism ended in the 70s and there are zero stumbling blocks for women today (as compared to men) is pretty silly as well. I think Kimera’s post, especially point #7, hits that nail on the head.

Also, I think lynne-42 also raises a good point: the ability to do something and the confidence to do it are separate issues. Ability may be biological, but confidence is instilled by society.

On a somewhat separate note, science/academia is not comparable to business/law. The two incorporate change on different timescales. Businesses started offering maternity leave in the 70s (I think?) and universities are only starting to offer it now. Academia, where innovation costs you money with little return, is inherently more entrenched in tradition than business, where innovation can set you apart and generate profit.

Sorry I continued the hijack, but this issue of women and science always gets me interested (and passionate).

For the OP, I’m not sure how to answer the question because I think I get stuck on the word “smart.” I can do most things I put my mind to - play music, write a book, solve an equation, etc. Sometimes I have trouble, but with enough hard work and patience I can do a lot of things. So if “smart” is purely ability-based, then the only people who are “dumb” are those that are simply not able to do something, no matter how hard they try. For example, someone with brain damage might not be able to put a sentence together correctly, and we might say they’re not verbally “smart,” but really that’s just the brain damage. That seems to imply that most people are smart at everything, as long as they don’t have brain damage. So is “smart” defined by what takes me the least amount of hard work? Most people can solve a given equation if they have the right training. Am I “dumb” at math if it takes me a long time to solve an equation, even if I get the right answer at the end? That seems to be what an IQ test measures, since it is timed, but that doesn’t seem right to me either. What is a good measure of intelligence, if not an IQ test?