Okay, I realize we’ve already went through two intelligence discussions that both got locked. All I’m posting this for is that I found something that someone said, that gave me a completely different outlook on it. I just wanted to share it.
If you decide to reply, keep it reasonable. If someone tries to start a flame war, please ignore it. There is no reason to act like animals on a forum that is supposed to be used to spread ideas. Anyway, what I found:
Efstratios Filippidis:
There is a widespread misconception that “memory prodigies” that can store tons of information in their brains are synonymous of “intelligent people”. My HARD DISK can do better than that and I hardly would call it “intelligent”.
Actually, really intelligent people are those capable of a prodigious creativity and imagin…ation; capable of seeing the world in a different way and, at the same time, give a deep, powerful and logical explanation ( scientific theory ) about its natural phenomena and make predictions that can be tested by science -or- those individuals capable of devising innovative devices, methods and concepts for solving challenging problems.
Einstein, himself, said: “IMAGINATION IS MORE IMPORTANT THAN INFORMATION” and yet many people still do not get it.
Sorry it was in bold, I even un-bold-ed it and it turned out this way, just how copy-pasta works sometimes (yes, it was MORE bold before).
I would think including this part is very important:
“at the same time, give a deep, powerful and logical explanation ( scientific theory ) about its natural phenomena and make predictions that can be tested by science”
This means you should still count your harddrive as a part of intelligence. It is the part of “natural phenomena”. Or with other words: It has a part of natural phenomena of great amount.
The situation where imagination becomes madness is where you lose the grip to “natural phenomenae”. But think it other way: Is it more worthy understand one thing well, or thousand things not-so-well? And the question about happiness: Is it worth understand the reality, if it makes you sad? Would it be more intelligent not to understand the reality, and become happy?
I read somewhere that there was a strong correlation between intelligence and curiosity. Which sort of makes sense as curiosity is what drives the will to understand things.
@SnifiX: I think that it would be wise to not understand reality if that understanding would make you sad. I don’t think it has anything to do with intelligence as intelligence would be your capability to understand that reality.
Reality in german is 1:1 is tranlated “Realität”. But we got another word. “Wirklichkeit”
I love it more.
“wirken” is the words base which means “to seem”
And freely translated “Wirklichkeit” means “That which (seems to have) has an impression on you”
Rendering the word Reality pretty subjective to ones sensoric input, which as a matter of fact it is. All we got to interpret reality are our senses as interfaces and we interpret them all slightly different.
So now memorizing things, building a knowledge base, thats determination, or curiosity.
That in combination with “Wirklichkeit”, a personal interpretation of sensoric input, woven in a thought pattern and the ability to see links or parallels or grasp tiny working bits of the big picture, that is intelligence.
The ability to derive new knowledge based on current knowledge with personal interpretation.
And the personal interpretation you might as well call artistry, creativity or a different view of the world…
I agree, that your brain is part of intelligence. I think what they mean by imagination, is maybe the ability to think of possibilities and things that could be done as well as looking for the logical explanations required to make it possible. This intern does require knowledge which does require your “hard drive”.
I think what he was meaning was people that just memorize things without purpose and don’t actually put the knowledge to use is what makes your brain not as important. Or, a little bit better worded, knowledge without action is useless.
Also I agree that, when you lose the touch on anything irrational, that’s when it goes from imagination to… insanity maybe? However, irrational thinking also can push humanity forward, well, whenever irrational thoughts suddenly become rational and possible (take going into space for example, in the 1800s would have probably been very irrational, but after it was accomplished it no longer appeared as a barrier).
I’m also in conflict with your next statement. I’m one of those, understand thousands of things not so well people… and honestly… I wish that I had one thing, that I was absolutely astounding at. I may be a whiz at mathematics and decent at science, but the farther you go from those (to say, 3d modeling and programming) the worse I am. So good at many, not great at any. While I wish I could just pick one out and be amazing at it.
And lastly, I think that it would be more intelligent to understand reality, and come to terms with it. It’s only sad if you look at something with the “glass half empty” mind set. On this note, I know I will die one day (glass half empty) but the circle of life will continue and others will be born and humanity will pursue on in it’s en devours (glass half full). I believe it’s more on how you look at something rather than what it is.
Also on this note, is it not more intelligent to understand than not? Maybe it’s just more sane/comforting/human to pursue happiness and rather, try not to understand. Ignorance is bliss after all.
I hope this thread stays on track and in line like it currently is.
@arexma That was an amazing post. absolutely agree with everything you said. You really tied up the words together in a very form fitting way. You may need to copyright your definition of intelligence, cause it’s outstanding.
This is as simple as intelligence can possible become…
-Intelligence is the ability for an organism to survive and be able to reproduce and immortalize his/hers genes.
-Intelligence is the ability for an organism to evolve and fine tune whatever skills they got.
Well, I believe that may be part of it, but I think there’s more to it. The first one is more instinctual than intellectual though. And the second one seems to relate to “practice makes perfect” and ability to adapt.
The first one is more instinctual than intellectual
Strong instincts is a sign of intelligence, people without instincts aren’t very smart.
“practice makes perfect” and ability to adapt.
Yeah to be able to adapt to new enviroments is a part of evolving and fine tuning your natural skills.
All these questions looked at from a scientific and evolutionary point of view is pretty obvious to anyone who knows the basics of any of these facts.
What is love? Love is a tool organisms use to gain allies and find mates. You treasure your parents your friends or your girl/boy friend because they help you in your quest to carry on your seed and develop your natural skills.
Some people doesn’t follow their natural instincts…for example some religious folks. But there are unreligious people too who doesn’t follow their natural instincts…there are many obese people in the world today. Their instinct sais no more food…go out and find a mate. But they don’t listen to their natural mind and stays in front of Dr Phil and Opera eating their fast food.
I wouldn’t call that intelligent behaviour…but maybe that is just me.
@Hermodr I do agree with you. But it seems more of the people that don’t follow instincts tend to have a mental disability of some kind. Are humans a flock of animals, most definitely, and it almost seems like we’re becoming the worst kind. Parasites. But, maybe it’ll change, very doubtful though.
@Sandrew can you not refrain yourself from making statements like that. Don’t start.
I would say intelligence is the ability to comprehend and learn from information you’re given or get from your surrounding environment with you senses.
In hopes of starting an interesting argument, rather than a flamewar, may I ask you what instincts people don’t follow, what mental disabilities go allong with it and what we leech off of if we are parasites?
Well, mental retardation is generally one disability that renders most normal instincts useless. There is a disability that causes people not to feel pain, that messes with your “fight or flight” instinct when you get hurt (since you won’t feel it nor acknowledge it most of the time). There are mental disabilities that cause you not to have a temporary memory, which, when paired with doing something that hurts, causes you to not remember you did it and repeat the process. I can’t quite think of any more at the current moment.
What do we leech off of. Well, everything. We eat uncontrollably, destroy the land to our benefit, mass breed animals to feed our hunger disregarding how grotesque and deformed they may come out to be. Certain animals have went (or are about to be) extinct due to over hunting by humans. Genocide of a whole breed of animals seems to be like a parasitic act to me. Maybe not on a smaller animal to animal scale, but more like, humans to earth scale. we’re parasitic toward the ecosystems we live in.
Ah good, I thought you too were going on the Religion tour with the instinct thing. I don’t know to what extent mental retardation inhibits instincts. As far as I know most retards will back away from things that hurt them, and in some cases even express the desire to reproduce. I will stop at this by the way, as it I realize it is fairly off-topic.
The leeching thing, isn’t that what all animals do? Eat until there is insufficient food to sustain the population, resulting in a decrease in population, resulting in an abundance of food followed by an increase in population where the proces starts all over again? The only difference is that we increase our food outputs when demand is becoming too large, which in some cases does indeed lead to questionable practices. As with the retardationg thing, I will probably leave this be as well, as this is not relevant to the thread.
Well, after you mentioned the whole animal’s feeding cycle thing, that does make it seem a bit more logical. But then you point out the other side, so I do agree with you. That does make our practices questionable. However, the destruction of land and other resources for our benefit is one that most other animals do not do.
And yes, some retards do express certain instincts (if that’s all they actually express) yet there are some that are born fully incapable of it almost in a vegetative state, but I suppose this happens in animals too. Just a way to “weed out the bad seed” I suppose. But yes, is kind of off topic.
Well, after you mentioned the whole animal’s feeding cycle thing, that does make it seem a bit more logical. But then you point out the other side, so I do agree with you. That does make our practices questionable. However, the destruction of land and other resources for our benefit is one that most other animals do not do.
And yes, some retards do express certain instincts (if that’s all they actually express) yet there are some that are born fully incapable of it almost in a vegetative state, but I suppose this happens in animals too. Just a way to “weed out the bad seed” I suppose. But yes, is kind of off topic. And I don’t normally attack or defend religion unless a discussion completely pushes me to it.
