• Question: What is intelligence?

    Asked by mazzie10 to Damien, Rachael, Simon, Suzi, Tim on 20 Jun 2011. This question was also asked by alexanderhocking.
    • Photo: Damien Hall

      Damien Hall answered on 20 Jun 2011:

      What an excellent question, @mazzie10! I have to say, though, that it’s the kind of thing that you could write whole series of books about and still not have a proper answer. It’s certainly bigger than this box. Which is maybe why none of the others have tried to answer it!

      I think 😛 that what intelligence is can be summed up as ‘the ability to think or understand’. Then, within that, there are lots of different types of intelligence, depending on what’s being thought about or understood. Here’s the initial list from Wikipedia: ‘abstract thought [being able to think about things that aren’t right in front of you], understanding, communication, reasoning [using different factors to arrive at a decision], learning, planning, emotional intelligence and problem solving’.

      For (a lot) more, you could look at that same article:

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligence

      Hope that’s a good start!

    • Photo: Suzi Gage

      Suzi Gage answered on 20 Jun 2011:

      Hi @mazzie10
      Damien – give us a chance, we’ve only been sent it today!!!

      Intelligence is a strange concept. Some would say it’s an ability to do an IQ test, but I don’t think this is right. (someone else asked me about IQ tests, have a look at my answer http://ias.im/58.2248).

      As Damien’s said there are a number of different types of intelligence, and some people can have high scores in one, and be rubbish at others!

      Check out the wiki page that Damien has linked to, but if you have more questions let us know 🙂

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