What is Intelligence? Part II The Smart Generalist

As a disclaimer, since I will be talking about intelligence, morality trumps intelligence.  It's not that easy of course to be moral with little intelligence; however, we will all get old and some of our brains will become feeble but that does not make us useless.  One can still be moral.

The writer, me, is not a genius or a sage.  I am a smart generalist.  My IQ was measured at 144 in middle school, more or less around genius level, I however disavow that IQ is a measure of raw intelligence.  I believed in IQ at the time and wanted to do well on the test, so I did.  Back then, I was very quick and sharp, of course that fades with age, but it is made up for with greater content knowledge and wisdom.  It is possible to calculate an intelligence score using these factors; a score that can be tested against the idea of IQ

I am able to continue spending time writing on this topic because there is at least one target of increased value here, if we can figure out what intelligence truly is, we can possibly measure intelligence and increase intelligence.  People with increased intelligence may be healthier, happier, and less violent.  It may be possible to for people to take their power back from totalitarian governments and corporations if they are intelligent.

Intelligence can also be considered information processing ability.  We will look more into this, as calculations can be made of the amount of information someone is processing.  We will also talk about condescension.  Put simply, if one person's intelligence contains your information ability and content and more than that, that person can only condescend as the other person will not have the tools, the information content and thought strategies, to understand your position.

Also, the information processing ability of persons in a population can have dramatic effects for that society.  For example, presently, March 5, 2016, presidential candidate Donald Trump has gained the support of many Americans, despite demonstrating sexism, racism, violent plans and behavior, and lack of understanding of basic issues, and promises plans that would be disastrous if carried out such as deporting all illegal immigrants on day one.  He has the support of people who have never voted before, but who like the celebrity character he portrays on a television show called 'The Apprentice'.  They are unable to research his past statements or understand the dynamics of his 'inheritance to bankruptcy to paid celebrity' pattern and what that means about the claim that he is good with money.  They then become programmed to ignore valid information and thus the memes that cause them to support him also cause them to stop learning, and this become dumber since knowledge decays like any information on physical media.  So, if we could raise people's information processing ability, they can be more informed and make better decisions about who to vote for, or the need to completely fundamentally change our governance, reduce government, and give that power to individuals.

Being intelligent and having an education is not the same.  Particularly, those with an education sometimes do not have the ability to create and perform strategies to mutate and use their content knowledge.  The single algorithm they know is to believe what they are told and to repeat it.  They have content knowledge, and a single algorithm they were given, rather than something they mutated themselves.  Also the algorithm, 'belief', that they are using, causes them to close their minds to other content knowledge and strategies.  Why are people taught this way?  Because dominated societies, civilizations, governments, corporations, need to get many people on the same page, and they can specialize.  They don't need the populace thinking independently because they take on the executive, and decision-making roles.

What we want as a society is a large number of people who are at least at the stage of being a Smart Guy or Smart Generalist (SG), basically someone with common sense and reasonably high ability in all aspects of intelligence listed, has high knowledge of many fields, and may also specialize in something but will not specialize in one thing and be dumb at everything else.  They are simply basically intelligent, creative, able to think independently, and they have basic content of basic social and cultural knowledge, sufficient to effectively navigate their own particular social context.  They are able to argue effectively.  They are likely to be reasonably healthy-looking for their age.  If they don't know something they need to know, they are able to seek out the correct information and incorporate it.  Many people who often make false assertions lack information processing ability to the extent they cannot look up the right answer, locate the right answer, and understand it and due to that are always carrying misconceptions.  The most important aspect is to be creative, meaning having the ability to independently mutate strategies and algorithms to solve a problem.  No one has given him the algorithm to use to solve the problem, he is able to come up with one that produces a desired effect.  The non-content knowledge aspects are most important to producing the Smart Generalist because people who are conscious are actually experiencing lots of information at all times, so everyone whose consciousness is not severely muted is being flooded with and dealing with information.  So people will get content, being smart is about being able to interpret, process, create strategies, and carry them out effectively.  So the smart generalist could be a survivalist living in the woods with a partner in Alaska living completely off the land, no education.  But if you tell him about the political landscape then ask his opinion, he can give as good an opinion as someone who had been following it everyday for years, even though he had not known anything about it before.  He has thinking ability and strategy.  He will hear the names of the political players, their positions and automatically memorize them and process that information to produce very useful views on the situation.  An analogy is a computer programmer, since they deal with information.  There is a problem he wants to solve.  He is able to, without anyone telling him how to do it, produce a program to help solve the problem, all on his own.  There are people, though it seem incredible, who have no ability to mutate and create new information processing strategies and output new content.  They can only believe what they are told and repeat it.  So one way to identify a Smart Generalist versus the simpleton, is that you can give them unfamiliar content that neither have ever been exposed to and a problem, then ask them to discuss it from their own thinking.  The Smart Guy will be able to mutate new information on the spot and speculate intelligently.  The simpleton, or rather in this case, the False Intellectual (FI), no matter how 'educated', will be unable to intelligently discussed it because he hasn't read about it before and no one has told him what to think.  The False Intellectual has only content knowledge and culture, but does not have creativity or the ability to mutate information and produce new strategies and content.  I have even observed FA's assert that it is illegitimate to think for yourself.  He felt scientific thinking an legitimate thought consists only of believing what you have been told by those considered authorities.  That is infantile, so this is a person on a lower level of psychological development, an Intellectual Juvenile (IJ).  One would only have intellectual discussion with such person when there is a possibility you may teach him something or if you are learning things and enjoying the discussion.  You should not put your hopes on convincing the person because they are not able to be instantly bumped up to a higher level of development anymore than they can grow their brain physically larger in order to comprehend you.

The ability to quickly mutate new information and deeply think in real time we will call thought productivity.

I am often arguing online and someone will assert something demonstrably wrong and I will have to look it up for them and show them the answer.  I previously assumed that since we are arguing about things with political implications, they are simply asserting and spreading propaganda that they know is false.  However, I discovered these people often simply could not google the information, read it, understand it, and produce coherent views.  Their social information ability level is the level of gossip.  They can only hear claims, select the ones they like, and believe them, and so are at the mercy of propagandists, PR people, and thinktanks.  By age 40, they are taking at least 4 medications they don't know the name of or what it does.  If you tell them, they will not remember it the next day, nor can they suggest a better medication to their doctor.  Hence, it is found in an interesting study in Europe that people who had higher IQ as children did not make more money than those with lower IQ, but were healthier, even when controlled for confounders.

Now, Let's go back over the aspects that comprise our cognitive theory of intelligence and if they can be improved and possibly how to improve them, We will see how we can use them to calculate intelligence also.  Also, what it may look like physically.

1.  Rote content knowledge (aka CK, knowledge).  10 points

This is the easiest to improve.  Just read and go out and explore the world.  Create a large diversity of experiences.  Content knowledge depends on long-term memory and working memory.  You want a large amount of content memory, then the ability to focus on and apply as much of this information as you can, which is working memory.  Memory is a city of tools, and working memory is like the tools you have at hand to use right now, the amount of tools you can use quicly at once, and how quickly you can retriever other tools.
The Smart Generalist has content knowledge at around 8 points, theoretically.  Someone needing to rise to the level of the smart guy would need to do alot of reading in history, science and technology, philosophy, and the fields that most applies to ones success and desires in life and take the time to try to comprehend and understand the reading.  There then needs to be hands on experience of complex activities like sports, hunting, and of course extensive social contact, which is incredibly important.

2.  Strategy content (Creativity or SC): 10 points

These are algorithms that you apply to information to produce new content or actions.

The Smart Generalist has lots of algorithms in his memory and can create many more easily.  The simpleton only has one, belief.  The False Intellectual only has the ones he has gotten from teachers or reading.

Physically, this is the same as content knowledge; however, since the strategies can be applied to many different types of information, it will have more connections throughout the brain if it is used often for many different purposes.  We will latterly go over things that increase synaptagenesis.

This ability can be demonstrated and measured by having a person produce information-dense discussion of an unfamiliar subject and proposing newly mutated solutions to novel problems.

3.  Strategy choosing (SC):  Creative action

Choosing a strategy and performing it.

This can be demonstrated same as the above, having people choose and apply a newly mutated strategy to an unfamiliar problem, a real problem not an artificial problem with one right answer.

Physically, this is the actions of the neurons, growth, and making connections.  It is movement and metabolism.  It is the use of extensive connections and many different brain areas.

Strategy performance and the content of strategies combined are the most important factor in intelligence, if you had to choose just one aspect to call intelligence.  It is not content knowledge, it is the ability to process content to produce creative solutions.

4.  Performance of operations:  

This is the accuracy and efficiency of carrying out strategies.  This is like being good at math.  It does not require creativity.  The Academician will have content knowledge and ability to perform operations.  This is what is mostly called intelligence and tested for.  It is however very limited and can be done much better by computers, while creativity cannot yet easily be achieved by computers.

This looks physically like the performance of strategies described above.  It is the movement.  Content, theoretically, can be contained on a brain that is frozen, performing no operations, or on a hard-drive.  Performance requires movement or electromagnetic action in the brain.

5.  Philosophical and meta-knowledge:  

This is the second most important aspect of intelligence.  It allows one to perform meta-operations on content knowledge and strategies.  To categorize science from belief.

Physically this looks like hyper-connectivity or hyper-communication across neurons, because a philosophy like science applies to alot of the information in one's memory.

The Smart Generalist has deep philosophical reasoning, even if he has never read philosophy.

6.  Working memory WMP+:  

Working memory is also very important, and it includes both the present environment, and the mental tools available for use quickly.  For example, a person looking at a periodic table of elements has nearly the same ability as someone who has memorized it, because if he can see it and read it, it's in his awareness, his memory, it just goes away, mostly, when he is no longer looking at it.  With our present ability to look up information on computers, it is probably a waste of time to memorize things you can quickly look up.  Instead become better at deciding what needs to be looked up and quickly making effective use of it.

Working memory is probably difficult to change or increase as it is basically the scope of one's awareness of both the environment and one's own mind and body.  Having larger brain regions that are involved in conscious awareness or more efficiency in these regions.  Substances that increase one's awareness can sometimes increase working memory, usually stimulants used to improve intellectual performance, but these are likely to have side effects that eventually destroy intelligence.  There may be more natural choice, such as microdosing natural hallucinogens, not to get a hallucinogenic effect but a slight increase in awareness.

Therefore an enriched learning and technological environment can be a huge part of one's intelligence.  Those with lots of technologies and who are good at using them will easily improve their working memory, but only while they have access to those technologies.  In the future, we will likely become well integrated with such technologies.  Not that we will turn into robots but that we will be able to obtain information even more quickly and easily than a google search.

7.  Total memory (performance)TMP+:  

The Smart Guy has a decent memory.  However, having a photographic memory or perfect autobiographical memory appears not to give a person much of an advantage, though most people believe incorrectly that it does.  However, if one is not able to mutate creative strategies, good memory of content is not as useful.

8.  Physical brain health, healthy metabolism, and brain speed.  

We will go over substances and technologies that may improve brain health and performance.

The Smart Guy reasonably protects his health and will tend to look generally physically healthy.  Not all of them, but as a trend they will be more physically attractive than simpletons or False Intellectuals (sometimes referred to as nerds).

9.  Intellectual habits

Simply put, bad habits like willful ignorance decrease intelligence.  Habits like open-mindedness may improve intelligence.  The person who does lazy thinking, rejects expansive information, literally seeks ignorance is called a Thought Slob (TS).  He is the obnoxious person, often right-wing, but sometimes left-wing, Christian, Nation of Islam, or Zionist. He is proud of his lack of sophistication and ignorance.   

10.  Learning ability

This overlaps with many of the aspects already mentioned but it included again because the brain is such a complex information system we have surely missed some aspects and we will include those here.  The smart guy has a pretty good ability to acquire content knowledge.  He can comprehend the things he reads and hears.  

He has a wide context in which to interpret the information he receives.

That's enough for now friends, please leave comments and especially questions and conundrums we can think about.

We will subsequently talk about the following:
What combinations create what thinking types?
The Dunning-Kruger Effect
Social intelligence, being able to tell when you are being fooled
Calculating how much information someone is processing
Condecision
Effects on society of information processing ability
Does being a Smart Generalist equal riches and success?
What if you meet someone way smarter than you?  What relationship should you have to them?
How different or similar are individuals?

What is Intelligence? How to get the Smartest People, Part I

Here's my views on intelligence

I'm trained as a psychologist which is a branch of the humanities and politics despite what you've been told but I can accept that.  And the adultery between the sciences and humanities is good in my opinion.  Anyway, the point is, I will not sound like a computer programmer or neurobiologist.

Information is any virtual data byte, modeled on any medium, be it on paper or in human brains, or in cells.  By virtual I only mean that it is not tied to a medium, though it has to have a medium.  In addition to content knowledge, you have relationships between information, which are descriptors of information (like metaphor).  And operations to process information and produce an output.  You also have to decide what strategy to use to process the information, and you have your catalogue of strategies.

Here's how that breaks down as a cognitive theory:

1.  Rote content knowledge.  

Like information on a hard-drive, may be text, visual, audio data, etc.  I'll call this rote information.  In 1+1=2, the rote content is 1,1,2.  Kim Peek, autistic savant, had lots of content knowledge from books, but lacked basic abilities.  So basically, he had lots of content knowledge fewer strategies for transforming that content and making it useful.  To be intelligent, you want a larger quantity of rote content knowledge; however, as the example of Kim Peek shows, even having a tremendous amount does not make one intelligent (as Kim Peek could not dress himself, navigate basic social situations, and other things we take for granted)

So, RC+

Another form of content knowledge is strategies:

2.  Strategy content:  

Strategies are the operations that produce an output from a piece of content knowledge input.  It may be an algorithm.  Strategy content is the rote information content of a strategy, rather than the performance of the strategy.  One would want to maximize the quantity of strategies.  So, SC+.  In 1+1=2, the strategy content is addition (other strategies could be multiplication or division).  These are strategies that one can do to numbers and there are of course many in mathematics.

3.  Strategy choice and performance (SCP):  

The performance of a strategy and the ability to pick the right strategy to apply to a problem is another aspect of intelligence.  This is a quality centered in but not limited to the brain.  In the equation 1+1=2, the SCP aspect is that when presented with two separate oranges and someone asks how many ya got, you are able to choose the strategy of addition and to perform the operation to get the correct answer.  The person who is able to do this is called creative and wise, creative when it's applied to novel problems and wise when applied to everyday issues.  This includes the ability to make useful value judgements and do cost-benefit analysis.  And far more importantly and too frequently neglected is the ability to make decisions under uncertainty.

4.  Performance of operations:  

Another aspect is the effective performance of operations.  In the example 1+1=2, the simple performance to get the right answer is what is meant.

5.  Philosophical and meta-knowledge:  

This is the ability to apply philosophical frameworks to knowledge.  For example, taking a scientific approach, or a belief approach (to knowledge).  One would want a greater content of philosophical strategies, and the ability to correctly choose and apply a framework to knowledge.  For example one may have a strategy of privileging a scientific approach over a religious approach.  Science and belief  are only two algorithms for how to frame knowledge, there are many others and the intelligent person has many and applies them creatively.  In the example of 1+1=2, one can frame this as cardinal numbers, ordinal, etc., meaning there are different philosophical frameworks from which to see these numbers and the intelligent person has many.  Essentialism is a philosophical system that denies all other philsophical frames, thus, someone who is only essentialist or absolutist denies this form of intelligence.  Many people are unaware that 1+1=2 is not just absolutely 'right'.  It is an information fragment that requires a philosophical frame and fits in many frames, not just one.  There are also frames where the statement is not correct.

6.  Working memory (performance) WMP+:  

Working memory is a performance variable of the amount of memory available for quick real-time use and ability to retrieve these memories.  It also includes real-time awareness of both past memory, present memory, and present awareness capacity.  Present awareness capacity is one's present awareness of mind, body, and the outside world.  This includes such abilties as walking and swallowing, which do not seem like important intellectual activities but are in fact very important.  In fact, swallowing difficulties can cause health problems and death in infants and others, while falls are a major causes of disability and death for older persons.  These abilities have important intellectual aspects.

Attention difficulties are a well-researched intellectual challenge.  So the most intelligent person has clear and effective attention to his thoughts, his body (can effectively move, swallow, and interpret pains intelligently and modify behavior accordingly for positive health outcomes), his environment (can see danger in his periphery while focused an absorbing task), and has excellent memory retrieval.

Present awareness is memory and hence has a small, unnoticeable delay.

7.  Total memory (performance)TMP+:  

Total memory is content and retrieval of long-term and short-term memories.  The most intelligent person has a great ability to store and retrieve memories.

8.  Physical brain health, healthy metabolism, and brain speed.  

The mind and body must be healthy for greater intelligence.  This includes speed of learning, literal speed of the brain, and effective metabolism.

9.  Intellectual habits

One's habits, emotional and intellectual affect or comprise intelligence.

10.  Learning ability

Some examples:

Kim Peek.  Very high content knowledge, performance of operations, memory, and retrieval.  Low awareness, philosophical understanding, physical health, social performance and creativity.  Though considered a savant, he was also considered mentally challenged.  He was also unable to use creative strategies to apply all of that information in a useful way.

Krishnamurti (philosopher).  The appeared to have very high philosophical understanding, but disavowed academic learning, thus lacking alot of academic content.  He also disavowed 9 to 5 work and intelligence tests.  If you had to choose one of these people to have their ability, you would most likely choose Krishnamurti who was able in all useful ways rather than Kim Peek who had lots of content knowledge and retrieval but was incapacitated by social and mental disability.

People with sky high IQ and photographic or perfect autobiographical memory do not rise to be the most powerful persons or the greatest innovators.  This means that these measures do not indicate the greatest intelligence, or that these intelligences alone will not suffice to produce exceptional outcomes.

What's wrong with intelligence tests?

Intelligence tests basically don't measure independent thinking and creativity which are the strongest indicators of intelligence.  It pretends to measure strategy and performance but the truth is, those who do well have learned by rote the strategies to be used to choose the 'correct' answer.  So it is a demonstration of only content and performance, no creativity or independent thinking.  However, those who score highly can safely be said to have the content knowledge and performance ability, yet they will not necessarily have creativity or independent thinking ability.

Intelligence tests not only fail to measure philosophical and epistemic understanding, it assumes an absolutist, essentialist stance, all answers being right/wrong, rather than requiring extensive thinking.  It therefore gives the advantage to those who lack quantity of philosophical views, although that can be overcome by those who know the mindframe of the test-makers and can choose the answers they would choose, rather than the 'correct' or 'best' answers.

These tests can measure rote content knowledge, and mathematical operations and strategies but again it is done in an essentialist and artificial context and hence the correlations that are sometimes found with success measures are most likely confounded.  High technology employers understand this and many are recently giving less weight to education or even rejecting those with degrees but no demonstration of ability to produce value.  Employers have always rarely used test scores for hiring.

Also, most effective intellectual performance is the result of practice at a specific skill or job, rather than a general intelligence factor.

Intelligence tests are good for identifying low intelligence aspects, like an inability to read, but once ability approaches normal intelligence, differences in scores are less informative.

Specific intelligences and general intelligences:

Most intellectual performance for work and school depends on practice, not a general intelligence factor.  So if one wanted to become good say, at coding, studying math isn't going to do it.  You have to practice coding.

However, all of the factors I have expounded are general intelligence factors except perhaps content knowledge.  It is not likely for one to be 'smarter' than those of normal or great intelligence, except smarter at specific things.

It is however possible for one to be 'smarter' than someone of sufficient intelligence or one's past self if one were to have significantly better functioning of the intelligence factors listed, greater working memory, greater total memory, greater operation performance, greater thinking speed and brain metabolism, greater creativity, more strategies and ability to apply these to problems, and greater philosophical understanding.  The latter are most amenable to change and practice.  One could learn basic decision-making strategies and when to apply them.

How to become generally smarter:

Becoming specifically more intelligent is simply a matter of practice, but can one become generally more intelligent, at many things or all things?

Increase quantity of general decision- making and performance strategies:

One could learn or practice general thinking strategies and heuristics.  One might research the work of Nassim Taleb and the works that he references for greater understanding of heuristics that apply to many areas of life and the understanding of probability and decision-making under uncertainty.  Here are some examples of such heuristics from Nassim Taleb:

1. "If something looks irrational – and has been so for a long time – odds are you have a wrong definition of rationality.
2. Never take investment advice from someone who has to work for a living.
3. Being an entrepreneur is an existential, not just a financial thing.
4. The first one who uses “but”, has lost the argument."

They can be accessed for free here Nassim Taleb Aphorisms and Heuristics.

Creativity:  Unique solutions to novel problems.  It's not clear that one can improve creative ability but it's worth a try.  So one would practice by doing, fixing real problems with creative solutions.

Philosophical and meta-knowledge:  One can increase this by studying philsophy with an open-mind.  Kuhn, Feyerbrand, are good places to start on philosophies of knowledge.

Working memory, total memory, and speed of learning:

It is quite difficult to increase any of these, from what we know.  There are some nootropics such as donezepil may improve memory and supplements like creatine that can provide greater brain energy.  Exercise of course improves brain health and neurogenesis.  It is important to keep healthy to slow the natural decline of brain metabolism.

There are memory champions who mostly claim to have no innate advantages at memorizing things, but who use strategies they have learned so these may be worth learning.

So basically, study philosophy, probability, decison-making under uncertainty, and heuristics.  Also, exercise, sleep, and protect your health.

Intellectual habits.  Good intellectual habits like having integrity, admitting when one has been proven wrong and changing one's mind when one is wrong are necessary.  One can improve one's habits to increase intelligence.  One thing to do is get ready to be wrong and to quickly change your mind to the stronger argument rather than trying to hang on to weak arguments that you have come to identify with.  Stop identifying oneself with any arguments.

In argumentum:

In argumentation, the person of greater intelligence will often run into the Dunning-Kruger effect.  Greater knowledge tends to induce humility and lack of asserting one's position over others, while ignorance engenders a false confidence and assertiveness.  Thus, in arguments, the stupid one thinks he is right because he is stupid.  How do you know if you have over-matched your opponent (and thus will eventually become embarrassed)?  If you know all that your opponent knows and more and also have more thinking strategies and philosophical strategies, you have over-matched your opponent and should not expect a good debate.  You should leave immediately if you do not want to deal with embarrassment.  It is like arguing with a child, you are likely to become embarrassed at having taken a child seriously.  Also, the child will not admit defeat and will be unable to appreciate the points you are making.

Philosophical strategies and heuristics are important because they can trump alot of content knowledge that is irrelevant.  Many mistake quantity of data with truth and relevance of data.  One can be a believer of and genius at a volume of literature or pseudo-science that is fully illusory and wrong, despite the amount of data.

Next, I will examine:
cognitive versus physical explanation of the information processes
How to find the smartest people.

How to find intelligent people for work and school (intelligence is not the only factor in success at work and school, conscientiousness is probably the most important factor).

Stay tuned and please discuss.
This is a work in progress.