> Intelligence is whatever we consider ourselves capable of

Then, what is what we are incapable of? Magic? ;-)

> Maybe the only thing we can do is advanced pattern matching

Pattern matching as a way to support the excellent heuristic "correlation is likely causation", yes. This is what allows us to analyze systems, what brings us from "something thrown away will eventually fall to the ground" to the theory to relativity.

Intelligence is understanding, and understanding comes from hacking systems in order to use them to our advantage - or just observe systems being broken or being built.

By doing that, we acquire more knowledge about the relationships and entities within the system, which in turn allows more advanced hacking. We probably started with fire, wolves, wheat, flint; and now we are considering going to Mars.