To you, what is intelligence?

Sensitive information gleaned by covert methods, like in spy movies & shit!

The speed of learning a new task.

There are two types crystallized and fluid, fluid intelligence declines at around age 16, crystallized or learning takes over. There are different types too creative thinkers, logical thinkers, etc.,

Intelligence is the ability to learn.

Curiosity, imagination, divergent thinking and innovative problem solving, a quick mind, a great sense of humor, strong verbal and linguistic skill, a desire to know, learn and grow. Creativity and a balance between rational/logical and abstract thinking skills.

Intelligence and knowledge are two very different things in my mind.

Knowledge is facts. Intelligence is the ability to learn and work with those facts.

The ability to not believe your own bullshit.

The ability to store and make use of the information that flows into your brain

I have never heard a good definition of intelligence, and I don’t know what it is. That doesn’t stop me from using the word, but I still don’t really know how I am using it.

I do know I hate the idea. Or I hate the idea that people try to measure it. Maybe I think it is way more complicated that tests can measure.

I know it has nothing to do with ability to learn, because I have no idea how to tell if someone has an ability to learn that is any different from anyone else’s. I think everyone is able to learn equally well, but that many people have had their love of learning stifled by parents and teachers. How do you measure that?

I also have no idea what storing and using information is. Is it ideas? Is it getting things done?

So I just don’t get it, and I hate it when I don’t get something, so I wish the whole idea would go away.

@wundayatta That sounds like me and the whole idea of fashion. I don’t have a clue and I don’t see any point.

@YARNLADY I feel the same about fashion. I just don’t get it. At least, not on me. Although I do know what I like when I see it on someone else.

The ability to solve problems.

Knowledge: That which is considered true based on sufficient evidence to constitute proof on a given level (of knowledge). (I know on an empirical level of knowledge that there is a laptop sitting before me.)

Reason: The abstract consideration of multiple ideas in relation (e.g. a cause and its effect)

Understanding: A specific application of reason that may or may not yield a conclusion (dry + leaf + brown + brittle = dead leaf) You have placed the observations in relation and gleaned a conclusion; the entire ‘equation’ is an understanding.

Intelligence: The capacity (and often the quantity/quality of that capacity) to reason.

Those are the definitions that I apply.