> General intelligence was discovered empirically, not hypothesized and then searched-for.
General intelligence has been hypothesized - and assumed to exist - by almost all peoples since prehistory. The g factor is what you are referring to, and that was discovered "empirically." What was not at all empirical was the decision to call the g factor a measure of general intelligence. That is a hypothesis which seems flatly wrong, and I have yet to see an argument for its validity that isn't circular or specious. My point is that written cognitive tests don't measure intelligence, they measure something much more shallow. The fact that written cognitive tests have a correlating g factor does not mean that the g factor itself is any less shallow.