Doing badly in an exam does not demonstrate lack of ability to do well in exam in the same way that doing well in an exam demonstrates an ability to do well. The measure is of minimum ability which only someone a bit silly could not link with ability.

As it is with IQ tests, scoring 80 doesn't mean you couldn't score 180 but scoring 180 is still highly meaningful.

Not sure still whether the other two chatting think the same as the quotes or agree with me?

Honestly this is mind blowing for me to hear people come on here and say something like this. I can't say you are wrong but I can't help but think you don't understand my shotty explanations. I am suggesting you are missing a hidden assumption though.

Here is what I'm saying that you are suggesting: A good pattern recognizer, came up with the truth that pattern recognizing is intelligence. Someone then said prove it. So he showed the skeptic he could recognize patterns well, and the skeptic said 'Well you can sure recognize patterns well, so you must be intelligent and therefore you are correct'

There is still no basis? How did you decide that is the definition? If you tell me an answer I will ask if you are intelligent enough not to give a wrong answer. You will say yes, and I'll ask by what definition, and you will say 'My own?'



this is what school, democracy, daily life, religion, work, everything conditions us to believe.... there is no basis to say this until you first define intelligence.

if your first paragraph is true yes, but if its not then its possible you've made an assumption about time passing.


its not that, its just I don't want to assume its the only way. But the 12+ years of schooling taught me it is. I've also seen a lot of successful people preach goals, but I've seen unsuccessful people preach and fail at goals too. Sometimes I wonder if its ruthlessness that achieves these goals, and they aren't planned goals and random things some people prize when they have them.


yes but you can't make a goal of having no goals. or even if you could what would happen?



yes that shows who's good at achieving goals...what if they are only good at achieving bad goals for the entity? what if the entity is unable to choose? What if it makes bad choices and then always achieves those goals?


Bad form. You can't use non existence like this. Some might suggest that you can't accomplish non existence because you can't make it a 'goal'.

I have provided a definition of intelligence. Clearly it depends greatly on the definitions of 'environment' and 'adaptation', but why have you not directly addressed the definition yet?

newguy, I do not appreciate you lumping me in with a person who has been conditioned by those groups. If you suffer from this I am sorry, it is a struggle to get out of it for sure, but essentially you are using a straw man argument instead of addressing my points.

if you're including creative processes like writing poetry or coming up with new mathematical ideas within the scope of "higher intelligence" then that's pretty hard to believe.

unless a strong correlation is all you're claiming, the existence of that correlation doesn't do much to justify your statement.

FYP

your definition from how I understand it, assumes that two separate entities or any entity for that matter does better by survival. In my opinion that would be an assumption.

Why haven't I directly addressed the (your) definition yet? Isn't it clear why? Because I don't think we can say an entity can serve itself better yet.

Apologies if I offended you, but I don't think I meant it in the way you are offended. Generally people will give a definition of intelligence in the form of ability or quality to successfully go from point a to point b. That could be achievement or an accomplishment or whatever....but it assumes goals and accomplishments etc.


yes I am still questioning the grounds on which your points stand. It is the point of this. I realize your points are likely all perfect ducks in row. But I am questioning the foundation because if the foundation is incorrect then the points don't matter.


I am constantly being accused of not answering peoples points but I take each persons comments and dissect them and answer each

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I think that you are saying that creativity produces something new that wasn't derived from pattern, or at least has some quality or qualities that were not born from pattern. If thats what you mean then I don't think you are correct....all man made things are purely manifestations of old pattern, nothing free from that has been created.

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you said this in a way that doesn't explain why you said it so I have to ask what you meant? I think you mean definitions are relative which is for sure what I was pointing to.

Your main point appears to be that you don't want to make any assumptions. Then I don't think you can get anywhere at all. If we want to get anywhere with this then we need to have some starting assumptions and see where they lead. We can try many wildly different assumptions independently and see if they lead to anything that is appealing/contradictory/etc.
Three things:
1) What do you mean by 'can say an entity can serve itself better'?
2) What is holding us back from saying it?
3) How does this relate to the adaptation/environment definition?
Whether I'm one of those people or not is irrelevant to this discussion. Stop criticizing the person (straw man) and focus on criticizing the argument (you have some good points, you should elaborate on them). Please explain how the adapt/environment definition is guilty of what you are describing, and then I can come back and show how either it isn't really a problem or if it turns out to be a problem then I can possibly come up with a better definition.
Your sarcastic remark about "perfect ducks" is once again a straw-man based argument. If there are ducks not in a row then address them (you have done so a few times which is great but you also are doing this straw-man thing and making heavy assumptions about a person you don't know and trying to use that as an argument. Just cut out the latter and things will go better for everyone).


The adapt/environment definition does make an assumption that there is more than one entity (there has to be a first entity and an environment so at least 2 entities). This seems like a great assumption to start with and see where things go, since if you assume that there is 1 or no entities then you can't get anywhere with intelligence. Or do you see a way that you can? If so please explain.

You seem to assume two things. First, you assume that there's something to get wrong when defining "intelligence". Second, you implicitly characterise intelligence yourself when you suggest that someone needs to be intelligent not to get something wrong (like the definition).

Let's consider the following two sentences:
newguy is good at pattern recognition
newguy is intelligent

If intelligent ≝ good at pattern recognition, do you a reason to reject the second sentence assuming the first is true? Is there a reason to reject the definition?

Of course. The problem is that people don't understand that ability means "current ability" in some contexts and "potential ability" in others.

As of yet, we have no ways of testing potential ability, yet people think IQ is such a measure.

But that is where people (not you) get very confused. 80 indicates there is a problem, but you have to dig a bit deeper to determine whether it is primarily inherent ability or current ability that is the issue, and (more importantly) what is the underlying cause and whether it is something that you can change or ameliorate. If you get to that you actually have something to work with.

It all gets back to your simplified example of being tested in French from a while back.

180 would be a pretty impressive score if it were possible. It would mostly indicate that the tester made a typo, since 160 is as high as the tests are capable of measuring. Approximately one out of every 30,000 people score 160...

Again, then I realize that we agree and more people see this the way I do, so if we can't get it wrong then we can change it to what we want, I hope you simply quickly and agree with that because if we agree I think I can enact change.

Yes I agree and that is intelligence showing intelligence its own definition doesn't make sense. I don't need its definition to be correct, if its wrong its wrong, and I'm also showing here if its right its wrong.

Intelligence will tell you it needs a foundation to be true and it doesn't have a foundation itself, so by its own account its invalid.

I don't know what you are asking here....I don't know what the =/def sign means....but I think you are asking if its all logical which it is but they are all assumptions.

This 'if' you state, where does that come from....do I have a reason to reject the definition? No but I have no reason to accept it. Where does the basis for it come?

Damn I'll leave my words and put this at the top......you did answer it yourself.


Do you find it a coincidence that school teaches the same thing you are suggesting here?

saying this doesn't even ask if we can ever get anywhere at all. I believe that the starting assumption is important because its the source of the worlds problems .

is this world appealing? isn't it full of contradictions in every aspect man has created?

1) Its possible that nothing we do betters anything. That achievements are always meaningless. We have to explore that before we assume thats not true.
2)exploring the possibility an entity can't serve itself better. also as a hint, realizing that its dividing yourself into a separate entity that could be the issue, therefore an 'entity' can do no good but to reintegrate to the whole (possibly).
3) because first there must be an entity to adapt.


Thx for having thick skin about it (everyone I offend too) I may be being straw man...but I really think that I'm not doing what you are saying but instead that its a really big paradigm shift.

no no, wasn't meant like that and wasn't mean sarcastic...i believe all your ducks are in a row, thats how our logic works, but the premise is wrong. I hope I explained above so don't be upset I'm repeating. I started threads about democracy, intelligence, belief, descartes...and I have a few more that are important and the same...their premise is wrong. Thats why everyones premise is wrong, I realize I don't know you but I do assume that your premise is wrong, and when you come here to explain intelligence I already know (well its my belief) that you can't possibly have a known correct premise.

Its not 'current ability' either. Someone might score 80 and have the current ability to score 180. As before, even so scoring 180 is highly meaningful. I've scored zero in 3 formal exams, not even my most stupid teachers would have confused that with my then current ability.

Low exams scores are a bit like absence of evidence - they are not stronge evidence of absence. Unlike high exam scores which are strong evidence of ability. All exams scores are both - they are strong evidence of what you can do and weak evidence of what you cannot do.

Only the bozzos, what it actually measures is intelligence.


or just motivation in its various guises, you might call that a problem, I might have been very rude (and even vindictive when I was a child) if you had said it to me. Of course sometimes it is a problem, low expectations is a big one or maybe undiagnosed blindness - I know someone the 'experts' thought was a stupid infant until someone finally realised he couldn't see properly.

one of my zeros. There was no problem, just a lesson that teachers shouldn't tell well-meaning bad lies to kids (especially if they have high blood pressure). But no-one would make the mistake of saying rulers dont measure distance just because the user was too drunk to wield it.

even if you were right, and creativity could only produce combinations of existing ideas, it wouldn't be relevant. the insight that a particular combination of ideas or patterns is somehow desirable requires a different kind of abstraction than the ability to identify patterns in the first place.

I have read quite a few of the posts here & here is my 2 cents.

My first cent is I like the above reply the best.

My second cent is just an observation & isn't any kind of argument about how to define intelligence.

It is that obviously somebody could have found the best dictionary & defined it that way. And, I'm guessing that a lot of folks don't think that definition would apply after reading many of the posts here.

So I guess if thats true - it should be stricken from the dictionary. And if that word is stricken - a whole bunch more would have to be stricken too.....using that train of thought.

Hey - I just found another cent. And I'm really curious about something (that could apply to this topic).

If you were walking from where you parked your car to a shopping mall....& you saw a dime on the ground....would u pick it up? And finally, what about a quarter?

It is definitely hard to believe. Still true though.

We observe and combine. That is all. You can come up with some wonderful things by observing and combining.

I don't discuss people in terms of correlations except for when saying such and such tends to go with such and such other things.

I am making the claim that how we actually do the work of thinking is through pattern recognition. (well, that and adherence to methods that were developed through pattern recognition - we are excellent at sharing previously discovered patterns)