Human intelligence is often sold to us as being an Intelligence Quotient score, and our society laps this up as a measure of people’s worth, such that having a high score or belonging to an organisation such as MENSA is an elite achievement.

However this is a societal goal for its citizens and aligns more with a country’s economic aspirations than it does a well-rounded people. IQ is not a measure of general intelligence in a human being. We have been lied to. As a result we are streamed, and segregated into different classes of people.

High IQ yields a strong skill in one branch of intelligence only. I know a man who is a member of MENSA and yet he is an idiot. He cannot manage money or change the wheel on his car, he has no social skills and is not self-aware, yet he is considered intelligent and respected for it. This ability to score high in IQ is not what it is sold as.

Doctor Wayne Weiten is quoted on the wikipedia page for IQ, as stating in his book on Psychology: Themes and Variations –

“IQ tests are valid measures of the kind of intelligence necessary to do well in academic work. But if the purpose is to assess intelligence in a broader sense, the validity of IQ tests is questionable.”

So if you want to be an expert in a niche field of academia, then IQ is a valid measurement of your ability to do that work. It is in effect a screening for a particular job, and nothing more.

With that said then, what is general intelligence, and can it be measured?

I subscribe to the idea of intelligence being a broad spectrum of abilities, and not a single spike in one narrow field of brainpower. Howard Gardner’s theory of multiple intelligences seems to fit very nicely with my own observations and I would argue that if you are able to recognise yourself as doing well in each of the following categories, then you are genuinely an intelligent person.

The areas are:

• Linguistic (language/communication)
• Logical/mathematical (Pattern Analysis, complex problem solving)
• Spatial (visual judgement, composition)
• Bodily/kinesthetic (Fine physical control of body for sports or dancing)
• Musical (ability to compose music and play an instrument)
• Interpersonal (Empathy with others and managing relationships)
• Intrapersonal (self reflection and inner work)
• Naturalistic (understanding the relationship between humans and nature)

It’s funny to me that there is a lot of talk of AI achieving Artificial General Intelligence, when most are currently Artificially Narrow. But when we look at humanity it also faces the same problem with many ANI’s and very few AGI humans! We seem to forget that each of us is generally only good at one thing, and we have many failings in areas of our lives outside of say, our jobs.

One striking realisation about intelligence is that there are a lot of people who fake it. It seems that there are a great many number of people become bestowed with the label of intelligent when in actual fact they are simply people with a good memory and all they do is mimic others. This leads to a quirky personality where they are only intelligent in situations where they have seen somebody else do something and they are able to remember how it was done. If you can get them into a new situation then they will not know what to do, and thus most will not step outside of their comfort zones for fear of being exposed.

This mimicry is sadly encouraged in our educational system and it pushes people for to simply recall things that they have been told parrot-like. Critical thinking and understanding of the “why” for a subject are not taught. Someone may become very well educated and gain many qualifications without ever understanding a subject, and instead they get by, by just recalling memories as needed. But it is the understanding which is key to intelligence.

I would say that to be able to give analogies and to break down a complex subject into something more relatable are key abilities of the intelligent. Those with only a good memory will not ask what you already know and not answer questions directly, instead they will give a long monologue answer that may not address the question at all.

I used to think that people like this were answering this way were arrogant and showing off how much they knew, but now I realise that this is part of their retrieval mechanism, sadly it shows that while they can memorise a lot of information, their only mechanism for recall is to reguritate their memories in long form; inevitably boring the listener and making them wish they’d never asked in the first place!

This leads me onto ideas of my own intelligence test. How does one test for general intelligence and how do you spot it, say in leaders that you already have. I would suggest that a good test would be to drop a person onto a desert island and leave them there to survive. Given that the island has all the necessary survival resources, an intelligent person will not have a problem building a shelter, finding water, obtaining food, surviving there for an unlimited amount of time, or maybe even escaping the island altogether. Drop Professor PhD in Astrophysics onto the island and they will likely not survive.

Now this is an extreme example but in a lesser way, take an intelligent friend to an escape room and see if they can get out? Those games typically have a range of skills needed for people to succeed at them and no one skill, no matter how expert a person is, will be enough for them to get out. I mean I went to one with a clever guy, and despite his intelligence he managed to get into the wiring of the building and shut off the power. I told him not to pull on that circuit breaker, but the room went dark and the puzzles stopped working!

I would urge organisations to take their leaders and test them for general intelligence. I remember a Christmas party game I played once at a company. We were all given a bag of crafting resources and told to make a crazy golf hole, and at the end of the allotted time we could each play each other’s courses and work out which was best. Well my boss in that company was completely lost, he would normally lead from the front, and in our daily work that as fine, but here honestly was lost, he didn’t’ know what to do without instruction or training or someone to copy.

It was an eye opener for me, and lead onto other things like, why do companies employ “leaders” that just follow and do as they are told? But that’s a subject for another time!