> Having had the extreme privilege of actually working with some really exceptionally smart people I can assure you that intelligence is a general trait without any significant extradimensionality.
This claim is not persuasive. It also may contain various logical and statistical fallacies, depending on your word meanings. If you want to persuade, I suggest that you'll need to give more context.
A. How do you define "exceptionally high intelligence"?
B. Where and in what capacity have you worked with these people?
C. How do you assess this trait?
D. What do you mean by 'crab bucket ideology'?
E. You are aware that there is considerable scientific writing arguing in support of many kinds of intelligence, no?
F. What parts of (E) do you dispute?
G. What do you mean by 'general trait'?
H. What do you mean by 'extradimensionality'?
I. What do you mean when you say your definition of intelligence "is a general trait that does not have any significant extradimensionality"?
J. WRT (I) are you saying that your definition of intelligence is not correlated nor caused by other traits?
K. Do you have a physiological or biological basis for your claim?
L. Please share sources (writing such as studies) that you find persuasive.
M. What are the chances that we are talking past each other? Do you have questions for me?
There's certainly considerable social demand for this to be true, and Howard Gardner is tirelessly promoting it, but the current expert consensus seems to be against it. Both Stuart Ritchie's _Intelligence: All That Matters_ (ch. 2) and Russell Warne's _In The Know_ (ch. 5) consider the multiple intelligences hypothesis false and have further citations.
Intelligence has many forms, athletically gifted, musical, emotional, the list goes on.
Your classical & narrow definition of intelligence is outdated.
To be a true polymath - as is hinted throughout this entire discussion, there's a need to nurture more than ones intellectual prowess.
How would you respond to the following criticism? Isn't this just semantics?
What are some benefits of shifting the labels of various skills and traits such that they get included under the umbrella of "intelligence"?
Ok, I'll stop my satanic advocacy now... :)
Let's take athletic skill in particular. Can you help me understand why it makes sense to call it a form of intelligence?
I think it is fair to set aside certain physiological traits that provide athletic advantages such as cardiovascular fitness and muscle composition and body structure (since certain sports/activities often tend to favor certain body types).
Once we have set aside those things, what traits remain that that are 'intelligence like'? (How are we defining intelligence?) Off the top of my head I would suggest spatial reasoning, causal reasoning, planning under uncertainty. Of course someone such as yourself would likely include emotional intelligence especially for e.g. team sports. Am I getting the right drift here?
I'm slowly coming around to the idea that intelligence doesn't have dimensions or types per se, but something skin to modes that are skill-like, and while there are aptitudes (largely biophysical) that may either preclude or predispose one to enjoy certain activities, what really determines ability in particular modes is how much you invest into practicing that mode (often unconsciously), simply because that's what you find comfortable or pleasant.
You get high EQ if you enjoy figuring people out so you spend more time doing that, but other factors like introversion may affect how often you afford yourself the opportunity to even try. You'll have a low EQ if you find it hard to meet people's gaze directly. In general, high EQ is correlated with empathy (so you enjoy anticipating other's needs). However, psychopaths lack empathy, but if they are highly intelligent (ie. high g) they are often extremely observant master manipulators of others' emotions.
Someone who is tone deaf is unlikely to be particularly interested in music (possible exception: percussion). Manual dexterity (but not necessarily hand-eye coordination) figures in pretty strongly for mastering an instrument. Perfect pitch is definitely a nice-to-have, but some people don't have a voice with a particularly broad range. So who is more "musical" , the popular and theatrical singer-songwriter (that doesn't actually write any of their own songs), or the Pop songwriter that can't sing and gets stage fright? Perhaps the renowned violin or classical guitar player?
Ability in higher (or "pure") mathematics is somewhat associated with musicality (though not the reverse), but neither is particularly correlated with arithmetic (which is what most people mean when they say they aren't good at math). I suspect that what's actually going on is that high g individuals who enjoy constructing deconstructing and recombining particular kinds of abstractions that often can be aesthetically represented as mathematics or as music. Nudge that aptitude in one direction and you get a mathematician. Nudge it a different way and you get a musician.
Athletic giftedness is most dependent on things like physical build[0], genes that code for building extra muscle, other genes that code for more efficient oxygen transport, higher pain tolerance, and so on. Fast reflexes can help, and a lack of any number of contraindicators like poor eyesight or vestibular problems. The closest we have to an innate "athletic intelligence" is proprioception, and I think the jury is out as to whether that's an attribute of the central nervous system or not.
Basically, if you can get into a state of flow such that what you're doing is just challenging enough to keep you engaged and there isn't anything that derails you, you're going to get better at that thing. If you enjoy doing the thing you're going to enjoy getting better at it. Your aptitudes (including fairly abstract ones like right or left brain dominance, or Big Five personality factors), can push you in particular directions at the outset and keep giving you nudges in that direction, as can your environment, but most people start out with a broader array of these than they end up leaning into. We all know people who stopped drawing because of unkind feedback or comparisons with others in their age group, for example. We've also seen a huge explosion of computer-mediated visual art made by people who never really learned how to draw well with pencil and paper and that use a mouse but not a stylus, that in an earlier age would not have been labelled "artisticly inclined".
In short, these so called different intelligences or ways of thinking are more like skills that are encouraged or not by the environment you're situated in (including your body); you get better at them the more you use them at the edge of your ability especially if you think you can get better at them.
[0] https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2502477/amp/Can-gue...
This is a fair definition I think:
> midwit: A person of middling intellect.
You recognize this is an insult, yes?
If so, why did you call me a midwit? Does it help you in some way? Does it make your comments more persuasive?
Why did you include 'actually'?
Are you suggesting that I have not?