This post is inspired by moonriver
If you have the time to spare, please take some time to read some of his posts :-)
Intelligence, what's it all about?
My view:
I think measuring a person's intelligence by how smart a person is, is completely wrong, as my title suggests. I don't think any one person is more or less intelligent than another, people just learn at different speeds, the brain able to absorb information at different rates and capacities.
I watched this documentary on tv some years ago.
It explained how people learn a new 'task' or remenber something new, I forget now. The point is, it explained how the brain works very well in layman's terms.
There are pathways in the brain that the electric impulses travel on.
When something new comes along a new pathway between one and another starts to be created.
------------------------------------------------------- <-established pathway
|
|
<- pathway gap
|
| <- new pathway
-------------------------------------------------------
The above diagram isn't perfect but I hope it's understandable.
As a person starts to learn something new, this new path starts to shorten.
Once a person has learned something new fully, the gap will be gone and a new pathway will be created.
Everyone learns at different speeds and are able to pick up different things quicker than other people so some pathways will take longer to create than others as the gap between the two bridges with some people will be shorter than others, meaning they will learn something new faster than someone with a pathway longer.
So, summarising. My opinion is that intelligence shouldn't be put down to measuring how 'smart' a person is, moreso how long it takes a person to learn a particular thing.
No one person is any more or less intelligent than another, it will just take more time on certain things than others to learn something new.
Please feel free to debate this :)
I know it's not a great read, it's 7:43am and I'm in need of more coffee!
I just wanted to get this finished and posted.
Dauntless posted on Apr 22, 2009
| views: 163
Comments
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andora said on Apr 23, 2009....
i agree driftwood
there are many ways to use a mind
one of my favorite teachers is a Hawaiian heart surgeon named Paul Pearsall, he wrote the Heart's Code. from memory i will quote him:
"a mind out of touch with its own heart joins into a lethal agreement with its body"
he beautifully describes what a human heart is capable of...
EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE
sooo much different from fact based knowledge and learned intelligence
emotional intelligence is heart centered and speaks from the center of the being....much easier to relate to heart centered consciousness, rather than the competitive types that try to use IQ as proof of credibility.
I offer new information about the role of human emotions in determining our viability here
aloha driftwood
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fragglesrock said on Apr 23, 2009....
some people are extremely intelligent but lack common sense and that always surprises me, don't know if that's related at all to what you are saying :) -
travelr712 said on Apr 23, 2009....
this subject deals somewhat with definitions of those words. they have different connotations to different people in different circumstances. the way it's always been catagorized to me is that intelligence is how many things you know, smart is how well you are able to apply that knowledge to a situation. so someone can be highly intelligent and not smart, and vice versa. this schema has always worked for me. -
moonriver said on Apr 23, 2009....
hi dauntless.
i'm thrilled to have inspired a post from you.
i understood the diagram (it's perfect, mind you), and i agree with you.
trying to measure intelligence by just one criteria is liable to create misconceptions about its very nature.
take computers for example.
you can quantitatively measure its storage capacity (in Gb, now Tb's), or its cpu speed, or its memory...
but there's that something tying it all together that's often overlooked:
the operating system, the overall efficiency of use, etc.
all the more so in case of the human brain, which is perhaps a thousand times more complex than the best supercomputers so far developed.
it has been said that even now, we are using just a small fraction of our brain capacities, our intelligence potential.
you said, "No one person is any more or less intelligent than another, it will just take more time on certain things than others to learn something new."
you're absolutely right there...
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gingersoul said on Apr 23, 2009....
Dauntless.....its finally common knowledge by quite some time that we have a rational intelligence and an emotional intelligence.
The divider is how a person is aware of these two gifts and how is able to use them.
People learn information in many different ways. One can be only visual while another one can be only helped with the auxilium of graphics and words, others grab the numbers at first explanation while others struggle with them (me!)...:-)
Book wise people are not always more intelligent that street wise ones...both of them just reach the same conclusions using different paths of the learning process.
So yes, we can say that the speedness with which one learn IS actually the intelligence divider ....
Anyway......i loove brains.....lol.... -
moonriver said on Apr 23, 2009....
psst ginger.
actually, there are more than two modes of intelligence in humans.
we all know that there are basic differences in how our right and left brains process info.
then there's the central portions that synthesize or balance the two.
hey, we have another thing in common.
i love brains too... ;-)
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gingersoul said on Apr 23, 2009....
Moon......i know!....and you have a looot of brain....;-) -
GrapeKoolaid said on Apr 23, 2009....
I suppose I have my moments...
There definitely have been times when people around me buried their face in their hands. A squeaky novelty mallet to the head kind of a moment.
But I can most certainly say that I am smarter than some people.
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Dauntless said on Apr 24, 2009....
Sorry it's taken so long to reply to your posts, it's been very busy here of late but i'm getting round the posts!! ;-)
Andora - I like your posts, it expands on my own, simpler post, broadening into other facets of intelligence which shouldn't be left out and are very much part of this post. Thank you!
Fraggles - This runs alongside what I'm saying about learning, and people that are "learned". There are those people who have brains that just work more on academic intelligence, common sense would also be a type of intelligence to me, a more mechanical intelligence. This is another example of how, just 'different' one person's intelligence is over another, not making them any more or less intelligent.
Trav - This brings in a point further to my initial post and explains another point well.
I do agree that there are a those that have acquired learning on cetain levels but don't use that learning, or maybe don't quite know how to use it and they come across as less 'smart'. I think those that know themselves better as they grow as an individual, accept their own limitations. I've seen this in a few people and completely respect it. What really annoys the hell out of me, actually no, it drives me to irritation is those that know full well what they can do but are so bone idle that they refuse to do anything about it, there is no effort there! *Grumble*.
Moon - I'd like to reply to both your messages here as they fit perfectly together.
I enjoyed your analogy of a Computer. Especially as it's my field of enjoyment and expertise. I'd like to expand on your analogy if I may, and include your second post within this one to further expand.
A computer is very much like a brain in a huge way. All components of a PC are connected to a motherboard. This motherboard controls the communication between each component connected to it. Much like a brain is split into certain sections, each section controlling a particular function, the motherboard will control the, for instance, Harddrive, the storage of a pc which could be related to memory, the RAM of a pc which could be related to short-term memory, etc etc.
I think where the operating system would come in would be our consciousness, our thought which control how those components interact to process the data we are presented with.
Keeping with the PC analogy, every PC is different, maybe one will have a better VGC, maybe another will have a bigger HDD, etc etc. This is where the individualism comes out in each of us and where intelligence doesn't necessarily play a part in how well we do things, just that, for example, I would excel in a different area to another person, who would excel in something I'd have no clue about. It's all very relative. Great post!
Ginger - This post is excellent and compliments a lot of what has been, and is being related on these posts. People do, very much, come to the same answers in life following different paths, each path a person takes will make them who they are and will, eventually lead them to a realisation of what makes them different to the next person but, no better or worse, just that, different. I'm exactly one of those people where numbers just work for me, or, for instance, I'm a web developer so, instead of the design of a web page, I'm more interested in how this piece of code enables a page to display and change this piece of visual data on-screen.
In this way, it makes your post that much more significant. We, including moon here, are interested in the same thing, I'm fascinated about how the brain works but in a more technical way but the conclusions would give the same answers to most questions or curiosities. This shows the individualism of what this thread is about.
I don't consider myself any better or worse than the next person, just different in the way my thoughts work and how I process those thoughts.
Grape - I can completely agree with you here, and can totally see the jovial side of your post! It reminds me of a child watching Timmy Mallet on TV! I used to love watching that show! lol!
Thank you for your replies and your own opinions, it's refreshing to read!
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Voltaire said on Apr 27, 2009....
I just finished a post that could be of interest for you, I would copy it or so however I am tired and shall go to sleep in a min.
Good night,
Voltaire
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Dauntless said on Apr 28, 2009....
lol, ok then Voltaire! Nighty night! lol -
Voltaire said on May 05, 2009....
Here is the post. in case you missed it.
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Voltaire said on May 05, 2009....
Here is the post. in case you missed it.