What is "intelligence"?

[All Along The Watchtower]

And can it actually be objectively measured?

I tend to think that IQ tests are reactionary garbage, used by the worst sort of wannabe Social Darwinists to measure "intelligence" (ie: how to do well on an IQ test-congratulations, you are more "capable" than 90% of the population!).  There are and have been real issues with controlling for class, race, sex, and educational level biases re: IQ tests.

The more that I think about it, the more that I suspect that the whole concept of "intelligence" is a self-serving way to affirm and transmit the values of the dominant culture (call it "White middle-class/bourgeois culture", or whatever) and furthermore, reinforce the ideology that the social hierarchies/balances of power within and between societies are innate and unchangeable.

So much for "objectivity."

[FEMA Camp Administrator]

You spend so much time thinking about this stuff when you could be designing bird houses or something. I'd recommend you dedicate yourself to a craft of some sort. Maybe metal-working.

[Antonio the Sixth]

IQ is a joke.

[Tetro Kornbluth]

http://neuroanthropology.net/2008/12/16/the-flynn-effect-troubles-with-intelligence-2/

http://vserver1.cscs.lsa.umich.edu/~crshalizi/reviews/flynn-beyond/

[bedstuy]

And can it actually be objectively measured?

I tend to think that IQ tests are reactionary garbage, used by the worst sort of wannabe Social Darwinists to measure "intelligence" (ie: how to do well on an IQ test-congratulations, you are more "capable" than 90% of the population!).  There are and have been real issues with controlling for class, race, sex, and educational level biases re: IQ tests.

The more that I think about it, the more that I suspect that the whole concept of "intelligence" is a self-serving way to affirm and transmit the values of the dominant culture (call it "White middle-class/bourgeois culture", or whatever) and furthermore, reinforce the ideology that the social hierarchies/balances of power within and between societies are innate and unchangeable.

So much for "objectivity."

I think everyone agrees that there is no perfectly objective measurement for intelligence.  So, I agree with that point.

But, I think words mostly exist to describe things that people observe in reality, not as a conspiracy by evil white middle class people.  So, I have to disagree with you there.  I guess most people would agree that their life experience affirms that there are some people who are by effort, experience or innate ability more intelligent than other people.  If you want to tell me that everyone is exactly as "intelligent" as everyone else, you're being ridiculous.

The better answer to me is to say that we focus on the measurement of "innate" ability too much and in our educational system especially.  Intelligence can be overrated itself too, because it doesn't translate to success without hard work, social skills and character. 

[angus]

A fence is 100 feet long.  We need a fence post every ten feet.  How many fence posts are needed?

(a)  11
(b)  10
(c)   9
(d) 100

Smart guy says (a).  He gets it right.  Not-so-smart guy says (b).  He gets it wrong.  Really super-smart country boys says (c).  He knows that a corner post is different than a fence post.  He also gets it wrong.  The smartest of them all, an Asian kid, doesn't really speak enough English to understand the question, and he chooses (d) noting that the digits 1 0 0 appear in the problem.  He also gets it wrong. 

No, of course there's no objective way to measure this quality.  A word is the skin of a living thought.  Until we evolve the ability to communicate telepathically, we will have many problems, including the ability to objectively measure another sentient being's intelligence.  Even when we do evolve that ability, millions of years from now, we'll still have problems.

All of which brings us to Cathcon's very important point:  get a life.

[Peter the Lefty]

IQ is a joke.

In full agreement.

[Foucaulf]

The more that I think about it, the more that I suspect that the whole concept of "intelligence" is a self-serving way to affirm and transmit the values of the dominant culture (call it "White middle-class/bourgeois culture", or whatever) and furthermore, reinforce the ideology that the social hierarchies/balances of power within and between societies are innate and unchangeable.

So much for "objectivity."

There are plenty of concepts that are possibly affirmations of a dominant culture. Intelligence is a big one, but it's not unique. If you want to see an attempt at redeeming the idea, I was taught as a kid Howard Gardner's "multiple intelligences." You could say intelligence is only the measuring stick for the phenomenon we really want to learn - "genius," and the ability of individuals to push thought in radical directions.

If we want to be more practical: a metalworker can be considered a genius, but soon as she brags about it one is free to kick her off her high horse. Genius could also only be a proxy for something else: the state of intellectual discourse in a society.

[Associate Justice PiT]

IQ is a joke.

     I tend to agree. The idea that an abstract concept like intelligence can be quantified strikes me as being intensely dubious. Incidentally, I feel similarly about many Atlas topics like "rank all of the Presidents." My answers would form a clear general hierarchy and it's clear that I'd place, say, Coolidge over GWB, but there are a lot of fine details there that just cannot be worked out in a meaningful fashion. Do I prefer Millard Fillmore or Franklin Pierce? I have no strong opinion there and I doubt I could give a meaningful answer. I don't think it is useful for most people to attempt such a feat. It would probably be useful if you found yourself in a class on American politics in the 1850s, but that is a place where most of us will likely never be.

     Angus also makes a cogent point, that being that tests of intelligence are naturally flawed by different modes of understanding anyway. This has been an issue with the SAT, though not the same thing as an IQ test. Some time back, the SAT received flak for using analogies with words like "bateau". I know that a bateau is just a boat, but that's because I took French in high school. Most people in the United States won't know that and they are no less intelligent for it; really, I didn't even know that it was a word in English at all. Apparently it's something that the extremely affluent know about, but it's hardly fair to predicate an allegedly objective measure on that. Considering that we only perceive the world through our own mode of understanding, I strongly doubt that it is possible to write a test that can measure intelligence without bias, supposing intelligence is something we should claim that we can measure in the first place.