
Issac Asimov: What Is Intelligence, Anyway? - rblion
http://talentdevelop.com/articles/WIIA.html
======
ThomPete
A friend of mine used to be a welder. I always found his political views
simplistic to say the least. He couldn't control his liqueur and one day he
felt down from high up and his arm got trashed.

I always thought that he was going to end up as a looser, although I love him
as a good friend.

Years went by and he never really got anywhere, of course supporting my theory
and increasing my concern.

Then a friend suggested (for whatever reason I don't know) that he should take
up system administration. So he took a couple of courses and lo and behold got
an apprentice position at Maersk.

He blazed through the various Sisco certifications without any issues as such
exceeding what was normally considered possible. Basically flooring those who
hired him and our common developer friends.

I was puzzled and asked him how he was able to advance so fast and he
basically said to me.

"You know it's not really that different from installing and welding pipes. I
see things needing to be connected and I connect them"

The moral of the story.

Sometimes things that seem very complex and require a tech centric mindset is
really very simple. The welder, electrician and the plumber also deals with
complex systems, they just have different names for them.

My friend is still the simple minded person that I know (and love) but he sure
know how to lay pipes.

~~~
kahawe
Another moral here is: you were seeing him as less clever and less successful
because he was "just" a welder.

A skilled craftsman who understands what he is doing, understands a bit of the
market and the chances available to him can run circles around any struggling
internet startup, if only because the equipment and training needed are
typically not as easy to come by as a Rails or AJAX or web handbook.

~~~
ThomPete
Well my father is a plumber my mother a cleaning lady. So I don't really have
those kind of prejudice just because of peoples trades.

It was more some of the other experiences I had with him.

------
corin_
This is the most important lesson my mother ever taught me. I (like her) have
that same type of intelligence, the type that makes IQ tests and school exams
far easier than they should be, and yet often isn't really that useful in
life. I still find myself placing far too much importance in it when judging
people, can only imagine how big headed I would be about it if she hadn't
constantly reminded me how little IQ really means.

Stephen Fry made a similar, though briefer, point (I think in one of his auto-
biographies, though I could be wrong)... Actually instead of quoting from
memory I googled, it is indeed from his first auto-biography, and here it is:

 _"I actually went so tragically far as to send off for and complete a Mensa
application test...It was only then I realised the kind of intelligence that
wants to get into Mensa and succeeds in getting into Mensa and then runs Mensa
and the kind of intelligence that I thought worth possessing were so
astronomically distant from each other that the icing fell off the cake with a
great squelch.It is occasions like this I thank God for my criminal
tendencies, my homosexuality, my jewishness and loathing of the bourgeois, the
conventional and respectable that these seem to have inculcated me. I could so
easily given the smallest twist to the least gene on the outermost strand of
my DNA have turned into... [one of those awful Midas types on politics forums
boasting about my Mensa membership and 'high' IQ.]"_

~~~
hackinthebochs
I don't understand these meme of degrading IQ as having little real world
value. That mentality seems to fly in the face of just about every observation
one can make. It seems obvious that in general, smarter people tend to get
ahead. Of course there are many counter examples, but overall the trend seems
obvious. Why is it everyone must apologize, make excuses for, or somehow
downplay their own intelligence? Maybe it's just a ploy to be able to say "IQ
tests and school exams far easier than they should be" without coming off as
boasting?

~~~
tokenadult
_I don't understand these meme of degrading IQ as having little real world
value._

Haven't you read Lewis Terman, author of the Stanford-Binet IQ test, on the
subject?

"There are, however, certain characteristics of age scores with which the
reader should be familiar. For one thing, it is necessary to bear in mind that
the true mental age as we have used it refers to the mental age on a
particular intelligence test. A subject's mental age in this sense may not
coincide with the age score he would make in tests of musical ability,
mechanical ability, social adjustment, etc. A subject has, strictly speaking,
a number of mental ages; we are here concerned only with that which depends on
the abilities tested by the new Stanford-Binet scales." (Terman & Merrill
1937, p. 25)

Or perhaps you would prefer the point of view of David Feldman, a psychologist
specializing in the scholarly study of precocious and highest-IQ individuals?

"Put into the context of the psychometric movement as a whole, it is clear
that positive extreme of the IQ distribution is not as different from other IQ
levels as might have been expected. . . . While 180 IQ suggests the ability to
do academic work with relative ease, it does not signify a qualitatively
different organization of mind. It also does not suggest the presence of
‘genius’ in its common-sense meaning, i.e. transcendent achievement in some
field. For these kinds of phenomena, IQ seems at best a crude predictor. For
anything more, we will have to look to traditions other than the psychometric
and to variables other than IQ." (Feldman 1984)

The one independent science writer who has had access to Terman's longitudinal
study files at Stanford points out that IQ tests are a great way to miss
future Nobel Prize winners. Amazingly, Terman’s study catchment area in
California included two future Nobel Prize winners, but both were rejected
from inclusion in the study because their childhood IQ scores were too low
(Shurkin 1992, pp. 35, 395).

REFERENCES

Feldman, David (1984). A Follow-up of Subjects Scoring above 180 IQ in
Terman's Genetic Studies of Genius. Exceptional Children, 50, 6, 518-523.

Shurkin, Joel N. (1992). Terman's Kids: The Groundbreaking Study of How the
Gifted Grow Up. Boston: Little, Brown.

Terman, Lewis & Merrill, Maude (1937). Measuring Intelligence: A Guide to the
Administration of the New Revised Stanford-Binet Tests of Intelligence.
Boston: Houghton Mifflin.

After edit: I see several replies elsewhere in this thread are citing
Wikipedia articles as the last word on their subjects. It's important to point
out that most Wikipedia articles don't reflect the best research literature
known even to Wikipedia editors,

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:WeijiBaikeBianji/Intellige...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:WeijiBaikeBianji/IntelligenceCitations)

largely because the Wikipedia articles on human intelligence as a broad
subject have been the subject of much edit-warring for years

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Race_and_intelligence)

and some editors continue to push their point of view, relying on unreliable
sources, into multiple Wikipedia articles.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Race_and_intelligence#Case_amendments)

~~~
hackinthebochs
I appreciate the well-sourced comment, upvoted. Although I'm not sure exactly
what you're arguing. All those points I agree with. Any discussion of IQ must
be based on a realistic interpretation of its meaning. But this doesn't mean
it has no real world value at all.

I would disagree with the focus on ability to do "academic" work as the only
useful result from IQ. While academic challenges is the "tool" we generally
use to measure IQ, it is likely to be measuring something that goes much
deeper than just academic ability (g factor). This can be seen by the high
correlation between different types of intelligence tests. The academic style
questions are simply the tool used, since its assumed that most people have
had (roughly) the same exposure to the concepts.

The most obvious real world result would be that people who have IQ, and thus
have a mind that is able to perform academic work at a high level, would also
be able to perform various "knowledge based" work at a similar high level. It
seems pretty obvious to me that there is much crossover in the mental
faculties needed to do academic work and "real world" work of business value.
Since this is the direction the world is moving, it seems short sighted to
want to dismiss IQ as having no real world value.

------
baddox
I would ask Mr. Asimov: Do you think that, given a reasonable amount of
training, your "intelligence" could be applied toward automobile repair? Or do
you truly believe that your mechanic friend had a different sort of
"intelligence" that made him better at car repair, while your brand of
"intelligence" lent itself toward academia?

~~~
bahman2000
I second this one. Mr. Asimov could easily become a mechanic if he were to
apply himself. His mechanic, most probably, would never become an academician.

------
siglesias
This reminds me of a prevalent attitude I encountered in college where it was
assumed that disciplines required more intelligence as they got more abstract.
It's a persistent and seductive intuition that this is the case, but as Asimov
points out it is only a matter of convention. Some geniuses can be very bad at
dealing with mathematical abstractions and very good at performing in a
specialized domain. Gifted athletes come to mind.

Wittgenstein puts it this way:

 _I can play with the chessmen according to certain rules. But I can also
invent a game in which I play with the rules themselves. The pieces in my game
are now the rules of chess, and the rules of the game are, say, the laws of
logic. In that case I have yet another game and not a metagame._

------
grandalf
I think this essay makes a good point but largely misses the mark.

Much of what the vast majority of people do with their brains is a biproduct
of training, and little of it can be attributed to intelligence.

In most fields there is some combination of motivation and intelligence
necessary for success. It is my view that an IQ of 110-120 is more than
sufficient for abundant success in nearly any field. 40% of the population
falls in this range.

So Azimov's "discovery" that his mechanic possesses intelligence even though
he lacks education just illustrates Azimov's own biases. I'd argue that the
mechanic, if properly cultivated, would likely have been able to excel in a
wide variety of careers thought to require far more intelligence than being a
mechanic appears to Azimov to require.

Also, Azimov's description of the mechanic's work style suggests that he found
it oddly crude but appreciated it in a mystical sense, as if it was so far
removed from his own abilities as to be unfathomable, which is absurd.

~~~
ominous_prime
An error that may change your outlook a bit-- only about 16% of the population
fall into the 110-120 range (roughly 74th to 90th percentiles)

~~~
grandalf
It doesn't really change it. One in 6 is close to saying one person in every
household, and so intuitively it negates the notion that intellect sufficient
to achieve at the highest levels is scarce.

------
billconan
When I was in high school, I topped my class. Some of my classmates started to
call me about questions in their quizzes. I could remember the exact
descriptions of the quiz questions back in few months. So when they asked me
about certain question, I didn't need my exam papers. They told me the number
of a question, I could give both the question and the answer. I didn't
remember the question on purpose, I simply did because I took the quizzes. I
lived in an Asian country, where daily quizzes were more than 1 hour long,

My classmates admired my ability of remembering things. I enjoyed that feeling
quite a bit. Yet, I couldn't take any intelligence test.I was afraid that the
result of my test might look bad.

I often hear about Gene scientist saying that they have discovered certain
gene that defines certain "ability" of people, for example, "good-looking
gene", "criminal gene". It seems that everything is deterministic (to some
extend) by genes.

It sounds like at certain time in the future, they can discover a "loser gene"
such that a child can be tagged in his young age.

Gene technology is making Determinism more true than ever before. And that is
a very horrible fact. If I knew that I would be a loser, I would have given up
my life.

I was afraid of IQ tests, I still am. I want to try different things in my
life, no matter if I am inherently good, or bad at it. IQ tests are evil. They
are the ruthless lifetime sentence against endeavor.

~~~
pjscott
Genes are a lot more complicated than that. Unless you get some really blatant
genetic problem, like Down Syndrome, there's a very heavy environmental
component to how you turn out. And that's exactly what you want, isn't it? You
want your life not to be predetermined, or even predictable -- and that seems
to be the way things really are!

Of course, some people do wind up with, say, a genetic predisposition to
alcoholism or depression. But if you have something like that, wouldn't you
like to _know_ about it? If you know that you're predisposed to alcoholism (or
whatever) then you can _do_ something about it, instead of just letting it
happen to you.

~~~
palish
Apologies, but this attitude is quite annoying: "As long as you're healthy and
a hard worker, you too can be a genius! It just takes time!"

If anyone bothered to try to answer the question "do genetics matter much?" by
examining real-world prodigies, they would be forced to conclude "Yes,
genetics are equally important to upbringing/environment".

Read through this, then claim genetics don't matter:

 _"This was Richard Feynman nearing the crest of his powers. At twenty-three
... there was no physicist on earth who could match his exuberant command over
the native materials of theoretical science. It was not just a facility at
mathematics (though it had become clear ... that the mathematical machinery
emerging from the Wheeler–Feynman collaboration was beyond Wheeler's own
ability). Feynman seemed to possess a frightening ease with the substance
behind the equations, like Albert Einstein at the same age, like the Soviet
physicist Lev Landau—but few others."

— James Gleick, Genius: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman_

Fun fact: Feynman mastered Calculus by age 15. He didn't just learn it; he
derived it himself.

~~~
pjscott
I'm also irritated by the inaccuracy of that attitude, which is why I never
expressed it. Of course genetics are a big deal. They just aren't the _only_
thing, which was the subject at hand.

~~~
palish
Sorry! Didn't mean to imply _you_ did. It was sort of a tangent... a lot of
people think that way, and so I sort of had a bone to pick with 'em. Cheers.

~~~
pjscott
Ah! I withdraw my indignation. :-)

------
wallflower
An example does not prove the point but Click and Clack of "Car Talk" both
graduated from MIT.

Their 1999 Commencement address to the graduates of MIT:

<http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/1999/clickclackspeech.html>

------
adulau
I especially enjoyed the final part "Because you're so goddamned educated,
doc, I knew you couldn't be very smart."

If you think about it, it's very similar when you try something new that
breaks the conventional boundaries. If you have a huge education, you tend to
avoid it because you usually learned this before. Sometimes, you need to ditch
your education, to try something not conventionally accepted. In other words,
education is key to find the things you should experiment.

It's like in art you have to know the rules to break them into an useful way.

------
6ren
I totally agree, so far as _merit_ is concerned, but the value society places
on intelligence is entirely economic (at least at the moment). And academic
intelligence has great economic value because it scales: it's abstract, so can
be applied broadly; and is information, so can be replicated and transmitted
widely.

Asimov's books, textbooks and articles need be written once, but have been
replicated many times. Likewise his insights and perspectives (including this
article). And the nature of insight and knowledge is there's no danger of
mining them out, because you can always make finer distinctions - so there's
room for arbitrarily many suppliers, each in a minuscule specialization.

------
michaelpinto
Don't let that article fool you kids — I met Issac back in the day and while
he may have been modest about his IQ it didn't make him shy about using powers
of the mind to charm the ladies. He was also an advocate of using your smarts
to get ahead...

------
xm1994
It's a nice story. I agree with his point about testing. But it seems to me
he's just apologizing for his intelligence and education. I'd bet Dr. Asimov
would make one hell of a auto repair mechanic if he dedicated his life to it.
I'd let him work on my cars!

~~~
javert
Hell, I'd probably let him work on my car even if he were terrible at it.
(Then again, maybe not - what a waste of talent that would be!)

------
bpd1069
IQ-like tests reward speed, and as such all alternative/possible answers are
not explored. In his story, he failed because he quickly devised the pattern
from the deaf-mute and extrapolated gestures as the method of communication.

Deliberative thought is penalized in IQ-like tests and that is, in my opinion,
a huge mistake.

------
mynameishere
Headline: Man with extraordinary high IQ becomes extraordinary author.

I'm not sure what his point is. Intelligence, by even the crudest methods of
measurement, is the core _human_ trait, and will help determine every
important thing every human does. He assumed a mechanic was stupid because he
seemed low-rent. Headline: The mechanic probably wasn't stupid in the first
place.

------
monkeypizza
The problem with this is that we now have totally abstract IQ tests, the
invention of which did not break the concept of intelligence as a measurable
thing. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ravens_Progressive_Matrices>

~~~
lusr
Interesting definition of "now" ;)

"J. C. Raven first published his Progressive Matrices in the United Kingdom in
1938."

"all entrants to the British armed forces from 1942 onwards took a 20 minute
version of the SPM"

 _edit_ Just found a copy of and tried the standard test. Very easy once you
see what they're testing in each group. Basic pattern matching and boolean
shape operations for the most part. Last question was visual arithmetic.
According to Wikipedia this only measures the "reasoning" component of
Spearman's g. I can honestly admit that my reasoning is pretty questionable,
having found myself in numerous questionable situations in my life ;)

------
david927
But Asimov's answer was an indication of intelligence -- not the opposite.
Intelligence often means dealing at a conceptual level as opposed to a more
detailed level. There's a reason that there's the stereotype of the absent-
minded professor. He or she will publish an important paper and then leave
their sweater at work. They've sacrificed one level for the other. Asimov's
mistake answering the question was the same as forgetting a sweater -- he just
didn't spend any effort thinking about it.

And as for his point that there's an educational bias to IQ tests -- that's
just silly. The intellectual requirements of being a nuclear scientist are
more stringent than those of being a car mechanic. The qualities we ascribe to
intelligence map more to the former than to the latter. Next, IQ tests don't
measure intelligence. Intelligence is qualitative, like beauty, not
quantitative, like height. We use it to look for attributes of intelligence.
Knowing a woman has high cheekbones doesn't tell you if she's beautiful, but
it gives an indication that she might be, for what that's worth.

------
chegra84
I think the problem with IQ is the labelling. They give somebody Genius status
without ever having to produce genius status work. In a place like america,
there are suppose to be like 3 million genius(cut off 1%). I really haven't
felt the impact of the many, just only a few.

------
tete
I also reach ridiculously high IQ score on tests (no, not online one ;p), but
I know I am not smart. In fact I am very dumb. This proves that IQ test have a
lot of flaws.

Besides that I don't think intelligence can be measured. I know neuronal
networks are simulated in a very similar way, but it still can be used to
explain the concept of IQ is nonsense.

It's the same nonsense with people claiming brain size related or genomes
relate with what people mean when they talk about intelligence. There are
people who had half or their brain removed (for example because of epilepsy)
which disproved pretty much every claims made. Some of these people were able
to live a pretty much normal live, studied, etc.

------
espeed
_What is intelligence, anyway?_

Many view genius as having a high IQ. I view it as extreme form of insight
rather than a measure of IQ, although a high IQ helps. I like to think of
genius in terms of perspective and thus measure it by how rare and valuable a
perspective is.

Your level of insight/understanding will vary from one domain to another. A
financial genius like Warren Buffet sees how the financial world connects in a
way that few others do, but that insight/understanding doesn't necessarily
mean he'll see the connections that an artist sees and yet you might say that
both are genius.

------
unwind
Someone, please fix the spelling in the title, incredibly grating. It's
"Isaac".

~~~
palish
Who cares, and why? (Honest question.)

He certainly doesn't; he's dead. And everyone knows who we're referring to, so
there's no ambiguity. Everything seems to indicate "it doesn't matter", and
yet apparently it does to some. So why?

A nice example of how people are inherently illogical...

~~~
rootbear
Dr. Asimov never liked it when his name was misspelled. My name is common and
rarely misspelled, but I think I would feel the same. It's just a matter of
respect.

------
collateral
On a bit of a tangent, but since encountering many such people in college,
i've wondered why the intelligent ones tend to be more cynical, shy, closed
up.

------
peterquest
an excellent lesson in humility.

------
neurophos
I read somewhere that I ought to comment on these links, which is a shame
because most of them speak so well for themselves. Does truth need comments,
opinions? I'm sure I'll warm up to all this, but sometimes an unfiltered
observation is a good way to start.

------
RockyMcNuts
It's hard to definitively describe or measure intelligence.

But it seems beyond dispute that for any given task requiring it, different
people will perform measurably better or worse.

And some people will become highly proficient at a wide variety of such tasks
quicker than others.

------
ggwicz
Asimov is fucking brilliant. So are his sideburns. +9,000

