Intelligence / measure of intelligence.

D.P. · 12 Oct 2006 at 09:42

JollyGreen said:
Intelligence to me is the speed at which you learn new things or grasp concepts.

Knowledge != Intelligence

So just because you can learn stuff really fast doesn't make you intelligent. It makes you knowledgeable. MasterMind players are knowledgeable, but they don't necessarily have to be intelligent.

D.P. · 12 Oct 2006 at 09:49

Here is a good brain teaser I learnt from my degree.

There are n children playing together. During
their play some of the children, say k of them, get
mud on their foreheads. Each can see the mud on
others but not on his own forehead. Along comes a
father, who says, “At least one of you has mud on
your head”. He then asks the following question, over
and over: “Can any of you prove that you have mud
on your head?” Assuming that all the children are
perceptive, intelligent, truthful, and that they answer
simultaneously, what will happen?

The answer and proof are here: http://staff.science.uva.nl/~mmartine/AFSetTheo/muddy-children.pdf#search="muddy children k"

RoboCod · 12 Oct 2006 at 10:17

ElRazur said:
I wanna guage people's insight and opinion into this and see what we all got to say.

You can be clever but lacking intelligence I think. My oppinion is intelligence is the ability to adapt to your environment, to manipulate it and interact well with it, just like apes that came down from the trees. By this I mean using our mind's, our hands and our ability of speech, this includes interaction with fellow humans. I know a very clever person who knows a lot of facts but his interpersonal skill are shocking! He just doesn't know how to interact with people well but he thinks he knows more than most. I think he's clever but he lacks intelligence in that he can't function correctly in a social environment.

Mr_Sukebe · 12 Oct 2006 at 12:44

Here's a few additional thoughts:
- I remember talking to my lecturer about how they graded work by undergrads. To get a 2:2, you needed to be able to recount facts given you. To get a 2:1 you needed to be able to analyse the data in question for thoughts on theories and models to explain the facts. To get a 1st, you needed to be able to extrapolate that models to something genuinely useful, thus creating some new and insightful. That might help the discussion.
Having said that, I went to a Uni that genuinely made it difficult to get 1sts. Roughly 2-5% of students got them. I know of other unis who were ex Colleges who quite happily gave away 1sts, with one story I heard of, 50% of their students getting them. Talk about how to devalue the grade. So you need to put the grade into context.
- Ref subjects at school. Not convinced about intelligent students always doing well in all subjects. To me, that's a reflection of their determination to study as I don't think that GCSEs are designed to really pull out the "best of the best". In addition, different subjects require different skills. For example, I believe that languages are mainly "knowledge" driven, whereas sciences tend to be more "intelligence" driven.
- Regarding social skills, again I think that a lot of that is related to knowledge based skills on interactions. An intelligent person might be able to adjust faster a completely "new" environment, but just how often are people really faced with those.

Stag · 12 Oct 2006 at 14:29

Finishing Uni with a first is not a sign of intelligence, it's a sign of dedication and determination.

For me the semantic minefield of "intelligence" can be shown and explained in the ability to grow, adapt and become a better human. (Opens up another semantic arguement about what exactly constitutes a better human

)

neocon · 12 Oct 2006 at 14:30

ElRazur said:
I was having a convo with a lady today about intelligence and this got me thinking - what is intelligence and how do you measure intelligence. As we are all human, i believe there is a basic level of intelligence that is accepted whether socially or mentally. Take for example, someone who comes out with a first class degree will be considered intelligent but, is education a yardstick for measuring intelligence?
Do the society dictates what is accepted as a form of intelligence or what needs to be done for someone to be accepted s intelligent - Education, a good career, well paid job etc?

I wanna guage people's insight and opinion into this and see what we all got to say.

Women have smaller brains than men.

JollyGreen · 12 Oct 2006 at 14:31

D.P. said:
Knowledge != Intelligence

So just because you can learn stuff really fast doesn't make you intelligent. It makes you knowledgeable. MasterMind players are knowledgeable, but they don't necessarily have to be intelligent.

Oh I agree totally, I don't mean memorising, memorising isn't learning by my definition, I meant learn skills or ideas, not memorise reams of facts.

Zefan · 12 Oct 2006 at 14:32

neocon said:
Women have smaller brains than men.

neocon · 12 Oct 2006 at 14:34

And they get really mad if you say that to them. LOL

Stag · 12 Oct 2006 at 14:49

neocon said:
Women have smaller brains than men.

You could possibly argue that some but not all women have less "acedemic" or "logical" intelligence than men. However they more than make up for it by having more "emotional" or "feeling" intelligence which covers things such as social skills.

This is of course my perceived generalisation where there will always be examples that disprove it, but on the whole I have found it to be true.

cleanbluesky · 12 Oct 2006 at 14:51

Stag said:
You could possibly argue that some but not all women have less "acedemic" or "logical" intelligence than men. However they more than make up for it by having more "emotional" or "feeling" intelligence which covers things such as social skills.

This is of course my perceived generalisation where there will always be examples that disprove it, but on the whole I have found it to be true.

That is an anachronistic attitude.

Stag · 12 Oct 2006 at 14:57

In what way, am I ahead of my time or rather old hat?

cleanbluesky · 12 Oct 2006 at 14:58

Stag said:
In what way, am I ahead of my time or rather old hat?

ooooh, its an old fashioned attitude encouraged by academics. It was unfair to brand it anarchronistic when there are many that would encourage you to think that way, I think your attitude is better described as plain wrong.

Zefan · 12 Oct 2006 at 15:03

Females are actually outperforming males acedemically (I think the study I saw was on secondary and further education) nowadays.

robmiller · 12 Oct 2006 at 15:11

Brain size does not have a proportional relationship with intelligence anyway. I'm pretty sure there's a link between the body size to brain size ratio and intelligence, though, in which case women having smaller brains would be perfectly reasonable and expected since they are typically smaller in body size than men.

zetec452 · 12 Oct 2006 at 15:12

Wardie said:
Creativity impresses me much more.

Ditto, it's not easy at all to teach somebody how to be creative.

Stag · 12 Oct 2006 at 15:14

Men and women are neurologically different, how much of that is nature and how much nurture is a tricky subject. Women were/are traditionally brought up (nurtured) differently, this is changing of course and maybe we will see the acedemic balance equalise at some point.

Attribute it to sociology, or to genetics there are more men in acedemic roles than women. (yes i'd love to back it up with facts

) The trend is changing though as far as I can see. Discrimination could well be a factor, it's quite a large topic. One that is off topic and worthy of it's own thread.

Don't get me wrong, women can be just as acedemic than men, more so in cases. However to dismiss it as plain "wrong" appears somewhat shortsighted.

D.P. · 12 Oct 2006 at 16:29

cleanbluesky said:
ooooh, its an old fashioned attitude encouraged by academics. It was unfair to brand it anarchronistic when there are many that would encourage you to think that way, I think your attitude is better described as plain wrong.

It is supported by science though.

In general, males are better at things such as rotations, pattern matching, abstract thought and problem solving, mathematics, etc.

In general, women perform better at emotion recognition and processing tasks, social network processing, understanding emotional situations, and also language acquisition.

These findings are both reliable and valid. It has support at the neurological level, with areas of the male brain dedicated for mental rotations and problem solving being slightly better developed (larger). Females have more developed face processing (including emotion processing) and language processing brains It has also been verified genetically looking at identical and non-identical twins. This brain development is thought to be linked to hormones such as testosterone.

The difference of course is slight and very generalised, but very definite as well. No different to the fact that women generaly have better hearing and vision than men.

cleanbluesky · 12 Oct 2006 at 16:46

D.P. said:
The difference of course is slight and very generalised, but very definite as well. No different to the fact that women generaly have better hearing and vision than men.

generalised is in fact the word, there is absolutely no evidence to show that there is any objective differences and as far as 'englarged' brain sections are concerned, such things are spurious to say the least given the small sample size and inability to test particular subjects given for abilities given that the researcher is already slicing their brains. Also, is 'ability' a product of brain section size or is brain section size a product of ability?

D.P. · 12 Oct 2006 at 17:25

cleanbluesky said:
generalised is in fact the word, there is absolutely no evidence to show that there is any objective differences and as far as 'englarged' brain sections are concerned, such things are spurious to say the least given the small sample size and inability to test particular subjects given for abilities given that the researcher is already slicing their brains. Also, is 'ability' a product of brain section size or is brain section size a product of ability?

There is plenty of object evidence, if you care to beleive it is another matter.

Sample sizes for Cat scans are in the hundreds, and can be up to the thousands or tens of thousands. There are databases with exact measurements from CAT scans, as well as fMRI etc. If all you are doing is measuring brain shape and size then this is easy through CAT scans. To collect such data one could simply save data from every single CAT scan at every single hospital and build a vast database. Building a database of functional mapping is harder as it requires the pateitn to perofrm particular tasks. This can only be done under specific cirumstances.

Evidently the results are statistically significant. The effect is just slight

Brains cannot change size or mass, they cannot grow neuronal matter. Therefore increased size of parts of a brain is an innate function. Similarly, experience does not alter genetics.

So the direction of causality is probably:
Increased size of particular brain area --> increased ability

However, it is most definitely NOT this:
Increased ability, through experience --> increased brain size.

The latter is simply not possible. Functionally, an area might become more active with time with new neural connections, as you might observe through fMRI. But area and volume cannot change.

Intelligence / measure of intelligence.

Man of Honour