What Is Intelligence, Anyway? | Hacker News Reader

What Is Intelligence, Anyway?

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64 pointsrick_204761 comments

There is a lot of data on this question, and it flatly contradicts Asimov's claims. IQ scores correlate not only with academic performance but also with job performance as well as others' intuitive impression of how "smart" a person is. That's why the army gives intelligence tests to new recruits: high-IQ soldiers (and mechanics and carpenters) do better, on average, than their low-IQ counterparts. Other types of tests, such as the hypothetical test devised by Asimov's mechanic, either have no predictive power or are predictive only as far as they correlate with g, or general intelligence, which is currently best measured by IQ tests. The physiological basis of g is unknown, but it is highly heritable and correlates with a number of physical variables such as brain volume and myelination.

If you want to learn more about the subject, I suggest this book, which concisely disposes of these and other popular anti-IQ arguments:

http://www.amazon.com/Question-Intelligence-IQ-Debate-Americ...

I read that book when it came out more than a decade ago. There are newer and better books on the same subject,

http://learninfreedom.org/iqbooks.html

indeed newer and better books than shown on the link I have just shared. One I particularly like, from a mainstream psychologist of considerable experience, is What Intelligence Tests Miss by Keith R. Stanovich.

http://yalepress.yale.edu/yupbooks/book.asp?isbn=97803001238...

http://www.amazon.com/What-Intelligence-Tests-Miss-Psycholog...

Stanovich includes a huge number of citations to current scholarly literature in his book, and amply makes the case that many important cognitive functions that make up "rationality" are missed by current IQ tests.

I have not read Stanovich's book but it does not appear to be an appropriate introduction to the subject of intelligence. I suspect you recommend these "newer and better" books because they suit your ideological purposes, not because they are better researched or more informative.

I suspect you recommend these "newer and better" books because they suit your ideological purposes

I suspect that because you haven't read the book yet (as you forthrightly acknowledge), you don't have a basis of knowledge for knowing why I recommend it. But newer can be better in books about intelligence (not necessarily, but older isn't surely better either) simply because human intelligence is a subject of a very vigorous research program involving hundreds of scientists all over the world. If your claim is that the book you have recommended (which I read, back when it was published) is the last word on the subject, you might at least show onlookers a link to a book review saying so.

I meet in person with the researchers who do the primary research on the subject of human intelligence who happen to be in my town

http://www.psych.umn.edu/courses/fall09/mcguem/psy8935/defau...

and I make sure to keep up with the recent literature (from various points of view) in the huge academic library of my alma mater, the research base of several of the leading scientists in the discipline. I invite onlookers in this thread to access the primary research sources themselves and the see which books are better researched or more informative.

The best introduction to IQ testing, because it was so forward-looking and well researched when it was published, continues to be the Mackintosh (1998) book mentioned in the online bibliography I linked to in my previous reply to you. But Alan S. Kaufman's very new IQ Testing 101 (full citation in another comment in this thread) is also very good, and was published just in the last year.

If your claim is that the book you have recommended ... is the last word on the subject

That would be an audacious claim, considering the book is rather old and only 200 pages. I recommend it because it is a model of concise and accessible prose, good for laymen (like me) who want to get the basic facts with minimal fluff. As far as I know, none of its main points has been invalidated by intervening research. But I can see why its blunt statements of fact might be unpalatable to some.

The question is, if you include rationality with an IQ test, which I imagine is relatively easily to do, does this correlate even more strongly with "life success" than IQ alone.

Do you know of any research along these lines?

Stanovich cites many studies in his book. He would like to produce "RQ" tests to be used alongside IQ tests, but so far no test publisher that I am aware of has taken him up on his suggestion. So except for the (sometimes small-n) studies on specific cognitive abilities that Stanovich cites, there has yet to be validation of "rationality" for occupational counseling or the like. What has been shown, very well indeed, is persistent cognitive illusions that result in irrational decisions, even among persons presumptively selected by high IQ score, such as financial professionals. Behavioral economists have of course been very interested in these issues, and Stanovich cites their primary research papers extensively in his book. Some of those experiments have been replicated by dozens of investigators over thousands of subjects.

What were the conclusions of these studies? It's not my area so would appreciate any insight you can give.

Thanks for asking the follow-up question. I'll quote here from a review of the book I wrote for friends on an email list about education of gifted children, and sum up an answer to your question in my last paragraph:

"For many kinds of errors in cognition, as Stanovich points out with multiple citations to peer-reviewed published research, the performance of high-IQ individuals is no better at all than the performance of low-IQ individuals. The default behavior of being a cognitive miser applies to everyone, as it is strongly selected for by evolution. In some cases, an experimenter can prompt a test subject on effective strategies to minimize cognitive errors, and in some of those cases prompted high-IQ individuals perform better than control groups. Stanovich concludes with dismay in a sentence he writes in bold print: 'Intelligent people perform better only when you tell them what to do!'

"Stanovich gives you the reader the chance to put your own cognition to the test. Many famous cognitive tests that have been presented to thousands of subjects in dozens of studies are included in the book. Read along, and try those cognitive tests on yourself. Stanovich comments that if the many cognitive tasks found in cognitive research were included in the item content of IQ tests, we would change the rank-ordering of many test-takers, and some persons now called intelligent would be called average, while some other people who are now called average would be called highly intelligent.

"Stanovich then goes on to discuss the term 'mindware' coined by David Perkins and illustrates two kinds of 'mindware' problems. Some--most--people have little knowledge of correct reasoning processes, which Stanovich calls having 'mindware gaps,' and thus make many errors of reasoning. And most people have quite a lot of 'contaminated mindware,' ideas and beliefs that lead to repeated irrational behavior. High IQ does nothing to protect thinkers from contaminated mindware. Indeed, some forms of contaminated mindware appeal to high-IQ individuals by the complicated structure of the false belief system. He includes information about a survey of a high-IQ society that find widespread belief in false concepts from pseudoscience among the society members."

So Stanovich, based on the studies he cites in his book, concludes that the cognitive strategy of being a cognitive miser (using the minimal amount of information and thinking possible, even if it is too little) is such an inherent part of the human condition that external incentives and societal processes of decision-making are necessary to overcome that weakness. He has a fair amount of optimism about filling mindware gaps through educational processes that would train more thinkers in correct reasoning (as, for example, the kind of statistical training that I recall was part of your higher education). He suggests that actively counteracting contaminated mindware (which is something I have a penchant for doing here on HN) is considerably more difficult, because it is precisely high-IQ individuals who are best able to defend their irrational beliefs.

Do you by any chance know of any good resources about training one's RQ? I've read Stanovich, and the first choice in the bibliography seemed to be Jonathan Baron's Thinking and Deciding - which proved to be both very informative and dry as ash. Anything more practical?

I like Gerd Gigerenzer's book Calculated Risks: How to Know When Numbers Deceive You

http://www.amazon.com/Calculated-Risks-Know-Numbers-Deceive/...

for readable training in rational thinking. Interestingly, Gigerenzer's more recent books have focused more on strategies for using standard human thought processes, which may not be strictly rational, to reach correct decisions. I haven't read those books yet as closely as I have read Calculated Risks.

I've gone through most of "Simple Heuristics That Make Us Smart" - interesting stuff. Had no idea about the earlier books, thanks.

As far as I understood, Stanovich's thesis is that rational thinking skills are more important than raw intelligence, and high-IQ people can have poor rational thinking skills, and a RQ test for rational thinking skills should be used instead.

This is good so far, but the problem is that rational thinking skills are quite teachable, while there still doesn't seem to be much any success in raising IQ with teaching. So it seems that you'd probably still be better off hiring people with high IQ scores, and training them to improve their RQ if necessary rather than just hiring high RQ score people.

Does Stanovich discuss whether IQ scores correlate with how well people learn rationality skills?

Not "instead". Stanovich is pretty clear that IQ tests measure something real and useful - no debate about that. The trap he's talking about is that in most occasions people live on auto-pilot, and fail to engage their higher cognitive skills. The frequency with which they do this is largely independent of the IQ.

Unfortunately I don't think there is much study into teaching rationality skills systematically. Scientists tend to be rather methodical about such things, and they'll probably want a working RQ test before attempting to do serious teaching. And as Stanovich says, a good RQ test is doable right now - given enough time and money.

How can you contradict that the mechanic is better at analyzing car problems and riddles, while being worse at IQ tests?

You are mistaking knowledge and experience for intelligence.

What Is Intelligence, Anyway?

I don't know, but I see it as distinctly different from knowledge/experience. ie. A surgeon would be much more likely to be able to learn to be a mechanic, than vice versa.

A measure of how quickly (and how well) you can gain Knowledge and Experience.

> high-IQ soldiers (and mechanics and carpenters) do better, on average, than their low-IQ counterparts.

Note that 'on average'.

> academic performance

> job performance

Performance involves achieving goals, which obviously takes intelligence. However, I believe that as your intelligence grows you stop seeing what you are doing in a narrow fashion and tend to think more in terms of systems and many goals that are interrelated. When that happens, you will not optimize for one goal but for many. Someone with less intelligence may outperform you on a measure of one specific goal, but you will outperform overall (overall meaning not at your job, but at your life). So performance has its limitations as a measurement for intelligence.

> others' intuitive impression of how "smart" a person is

This only works for those somewhat close to the mean. People who would be many standard deviations above the mean may be so intelligent that their intelligence would be mistaken for foolishness or others may not be well equipped to measure it.

Last time I checked the data supporting the "IQ is good" had some horrendous lack of statistical information, the same applies to the "IQ is bad" people.

Their papers lack to understand where statistical significance fits in inference which they use, abusing the scope of validity, but I did not read much of them (5 from "IQ is good" and 6 from "IQ is bad"), by the way I understand nothing about biology, being not my area of interest I cannot criticize these papers on these grounds, I only think that's very strange that both sides do not construct their arguments using neuroscience.

While this is a fantastic article, I kind of want to disagree with some of the points listed.

IQ tests are standardized in a way that you don't need to be a scholar or academic to know how to solve and/or answer the questions.

Look at it this way, in my opinion, the standard IQ tests of today are moreso a test of how quickly you can learn or adapt and solve, rather than of what knowledge you have.

For example, I bet that a PhD candidate (or just a "genious") would have much less difficulty learning about the insides of a car and how to fix it, than a mechanic would have in getting his PhD or equivalent to that level of knowledge

I find that people with higher than average IQs have more work ethic and learn much more quickly than people who have below average IQs, and I don't think this is a purely coincidental thing.

How are you finding out people's IQs to put them in these "good work ethic, quick learner", "poor work ethic, slow learner" buckets?

I'm mostly being presumptuous about people I know from high school and college.

I suspect you fell into a trap there. Most everyone I knew with a really good work ethic knew quite a lot of stuff, were engaging to talk to, so on and so forth- great people, absolutely not stupid. But, hiding in the background was the fact that it would take them quite a while to pick things up, and they had a hard time applying what they learned outside of the box.

As for me, I've found the easier something comes to me the crappier my work ethic becomes.

I disagree with the work ethic point, but I do think it's interesting and instead of both of us speculating would love to see some actual data.

There are a ton of dumbass people out there chugging away at grinding jobs to stay alive, and a ton of brilliant people sitting at their desks reading hacker news (not to imply that I'm brilliant; it's the rest of you I mean).

How would you objectively measure work ethic?

I disagree with the work ethic point based one a single datum. my work ethic drastically changed at one point in my life - whilst my IQ should have remained constant, and its quite high - 144.5 on the Mensa test I took some 15 years ago.

Similar story here - I had no work ethic at all until I failed my first year at University. (I had excellent school results, five unconditional offers of places at University etc.).

I went back, worked very hard, passed the exam I failed (maths) and after that graduated with a 1st.

I also got a stupidly high mark in an IQ test when I was 16 - largely as we had an educational psychologist in the family who had bombarded me with tests since I was about 4. There is no way that stuff actually makes you smarter but it sure does make you better at passing silly tests.

whilst my IQ should have remained constant

IQ scores can and do change over the course of life.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1158919

in my opinion, the standard IQ tests of today are moreso a test of how quickly you can learn or adapt and solve, rather than of what knowledge you have.

Your opinion is mistaken in part. Most IQ tests include items that are explicitly based on learned knowledge, and all are embedded in a cultural context. See IQ testing 101 by Alan S. Kaufman (the author of several IQ tests)

http://www.springerpub.com/product/9780826106292

http://www.amazon.com/IQ-Testing-101-Psych/dp/0826106293

for more information on item content of IQ tests and corrections of many common misconceptions about IQ testing.

The true sign of intelligence is not knowledge, but imagination.

— Albert Einstein http://quotationsbook.com/quote/21310/

(and Isaac Asimov had a lot of imagination)

No single thing is a "true sign of intelligence", that is to ignore the mutual interdependence of things. You can't have imagination without any knowledge.

Jeff Hawkins has a good general framework for intelligence. X is more intelligent than Y if X can make better predictions given the same information as Y. X is more intelligent than Y if X can make predictions as good as Y's with less information.

That sounds like a good proposal on a definition of intelligence, but it doesn't tell you why someone would be good at predicting something, which is what my point was: that when you try to claim that any one thing is the reason for someone's ability to, in this case, predict something, you're ignoring the multitudes of other reasons that are all interrelated.

All the various forms of intelligence can be seen as a form of predictive capability. For example, coordination of many elements or one's own body parts involves making moves which avoid chaos, collision, or some other dysfunction. Avoidance is a kind of prediction.

I went to the Wikipedia article

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeff_Hawkins#Neuroscience

to make sure you were referring to the author whose book I have perused before. I will note for the record that Hawkins has not won wide acceptance for his view of intelligence among other researchers to date.

http://lesswrong.com/lw/tx/optimization/

http://lesswrong.com/lw/va/measuring_optimization_power/

Eliezer Yudkowsky described this pretty well.

Imagination goes a long way towards realizing the kind of future you want to have, not just solving the immediate problems you've been presented with.

If you can imagine the outcome of your decisions you can avoid the suffering/regret of unfulfilled dreams, failed relationships, and misspent youth.

Not just imagination - but curiosity as well.

It's interesting that that "quotation" from Albert Einstein, a sentiment I would love to attribute to him, because it encapsulates an idea I share about the importance of creativity, seems never to be traced to one of Einstein's actual writings. Has anyone ever checked the latest edition of Quotable Einstein

http://www.amazon.com/New-Quotable-Einstein-Alice-Calaprice/...

(I have checked the preceding edition)

http://www.amazon.com/Quotable-Einstein-Albert/dp/0691026963...

to see if that is a genuine Einstein quotation? In the English-speaking world, Einstein is second only to Mark Twain in having sayings attributed to him that he never said.

http://www.amazon.com/Quote-Sleuth-Manual-Tracer-Quotations/...

Eureka! I have found the quotation, in what must be a verifiable source.

http://www.sciencemusings.com/blog/2006/10/imagination-and-k...

I'll have to find the magazine interview soon, to see it with my own eyes.

If its his point to claim that intelligence tests are bunk, I'd quibble with the declaration that any person, or even any academic, could make an 'intelligence test' pertaining to their particular field: that's not a test of intelligence, but of mastery, though how quickly one can master, and how widely they can apply that mastery may well be a test of intelligence.

Are intelligence tests tests of mastery in a field? I'd claim not, and I'd go on to claim that they're built by people who study intelligence, without the intention of testing a person's knowledge, as Asmiov claims such tests do.

I think it is a good point that there are different kinds of aptitudes, but I also think this point should be kept in perspective. I think it is misguided when people speak dismissively of IQ, SATs and the like, saying things like "well, all that proves is that you're good at taking those kinds of tests." (I'm not saying the article does this, but I do hear this rather frequently - ironically, usually from people with high IQs. Privilege Guilt?) There is no reason to be dismissive of the immense power of the type of intelligence that handles symbol/abstraction manipulation, particularly in technology.

Beyond Privilege Guilt, there's a case that people are a great deal more complicated than just a few character stats. High IQ is often taken as a declaration that an individual will succeed, and indeed, on the average, it is, but the average implies a large group, not a specific person.

I'm trying (and doing it poorly) to express that Intelligence isn't the only thing in a person which defines their lives...but even given the static, it will very likely affect the aggregate.

I believe that the problem alluded to in this essay is not so much with the relationship between IQ tests and the value of abstract thinking, but rather the hegemony of such thinking in the modern world. Technical thinking is lauded in a society where production is the dominant measurement of value. This contributes to bias towards a certain type of cerebral intelligence.

I actually just watched a TED talk on a related note, in which Ken Robinson discusses intelligence bias: http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/ken_robinson_says_schools_...

I'm sure that when hunting and gathering were the only activities that mattered, that many coders alive today would have been considered morons.

Actually, I think that most of us would have become medicine men or shaman.

Probably a preferable outcome to being ridiculed, downtrodden, then killed during armed conflict.

Privilege Guilt?

Probably. Another factor could be that successful high-IQ people want to claim that their success is mainly due to "chosen" traits like perseverance, rather than lucky genes and/or environmental factors.

you can't measure "intelligence" because there is no common definition for it. its a vague term which doesn't map to a single real world phenomenon directly, (e.g. brightness, heaviness, speed etc.) but its a derived value, which maps to a multitude of other derived values (comprehension, reasoning etc.) which are themselves difficult to define and measure. i don't know if a concrete definition would help anyway... i'm sure people would disagree because whatever it would be would conflict with their personal views of intelligence.

Great article.

The fact that a few extra hours of sleep or a big cup of coffee can completely sway the results renders IQ scores almost irrelevant, IMHO.

Great intelligence can be simple. Like caring for others, making informed decisions, asking why, etc.

A lack of food or sleep can also play havoc with 100m sprint results, but even the ideal amount of sleep and pasta wont make me beat Usain Bolt.

Not the best comparison.

Your ability to compete in a 100m sprint isn't going to change drastically from one day to the other. IQ scores, however, do.

IQ score is about as dependable as a lie detector on a sphincter-gifted defendant.

My ability to compete in a 5k changes from one day to the next. I don't run 100m sprints, but would guess that the same situation applies there.

Here's my very specific point: an IQ score changes enough, often and by many externality to be considered a form of intelligence measurement.

To me, IQ is about as accurate as BMI.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IQ_reference_chart

On a good day, you might be an average IQ. Or a low average. Or a High average.

I think the 100m is a cute analogy, but it falls short. An IQ changes with very little effort; qualifying for a 100m sprint takes a lot of effort: http://www.askmehelpdesk.com/track-field/training-qualify-10....

I doubt pasta or a bad nights sleep would be such an incredible difference to your performance that you might be considered an athlete one day and a couch potato the next.

I see you have put links into your comment, but they appear to do nothing to back up your claim. Maybe a paste typo.

sigh So far, you've done little more than compare with a completely different form of measurement. Nice timing on that.

Here you might find a chart that shows the differences between IQ ranges. You might notice how you could be 10+/- and manage to find yourself in a completely different range: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IQ_reference_chart

And finally, to "back up my claim", check out a few other criticisms of IQ: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligence_quotient#Criticism...

A personal favorite: A 2006 paper argues that mainstream contemporary test analysis does not reflect substantial recent developments in the field and "bears an uncanny resemblance to the psychometric state of the art as it existed in the 1950s."

In other words: fooey.

Successful 90 average entrepreneurs invent, evolve and innovate while there are 110+ middle-aged "geniuses" living in parent's basements. Of course, the opposite is also true.

An IQ test doesn't reflect who you'll be, if you'll be successful or if you'll change the world.

"There is often a stark gap between the abilities of the gifted individual and his or her actual accomplishments. Many gifted students will perform extremely well on standardized or reasoning tests, only to fail a class exam."

-- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intellectual_giftedness#Underac...

IQ test is more of a religion than science. Like any religious person, you might allow your belief to overstate purpose.

Congratulations for getting over your initial ennui there.

Intelligence is a desire to learn, plus experience.

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