What is intelligence?

Many thoughts have been made on trying to define intelligence. What is it actually? And does our way of defining intelligence have anything to do with our culture? Some people say it would be defined otherwise if we were Chinese.

I think intelligence has a lot to do with personality. The way you act, think and prioritize has a lot to do with your personality. So if you are the type that does not plan a lot ahead might look unintelligent since you missed to take a certain event into consideration. On the other hand a person that always plans everything might be unable to handle exceptions. So what is then intelligence and what is mental models?

I once read a book by Stefan Engeseth called One (www.detectivemarketing.com) where he claims that 98% of all 2 years children have the potential of reaching above IQ 140. And only 2% of all 18 years old had the same potential. So what is happening between 2 and 18? Are we giving our children such bad conditions so they loose all that potential? Think of what could happen if we can find ways of closing that gap. What a wionderful world it would be, or would it? It might become a terrible place of overly intelligent people.

Gordon Dryden and Jeannette Vos investigates new methods of learning in their book "New learning revolution". It might be one step towards increasing the total intelligence in our society.

Finally I will just cover some thoughts by the Futurologist Ian Pearson (http://www.bt.com/sphere/insights/pearson/index.htm). He means that by the end of the 21st century machines will be smarter that humans and we can only hope that they will like to talk to us. As I'm also interested in AI and machine intelligence this would be fantastic if he is right. Perhaps I should switch career and start developing AI systems instead.

Brain dump

Imagine what you can do with 1.3kg of grey jelly? Some consider it a delicates and eat it under the most enjoying circumstances. Think of a monkey head with the skull cut open like a can.

I am very fascinated of what one can do with the brain and how it works. It is said that people who do "The knowledge" and becomes a taxi driver in London gets a bigger brain. All cells required to store all map data about all places in London makes the brain grow (see: http://sydsvenskan.se/varlden/article215336.ece). It is also said that both Beethoven and Einstein had marks inside their skulls from where the brain had grown in those particular parts used for imagining music and the theory of special and general relativity respectively. If this is true it is a quite exciting example of what the human body is capable of.

The brain can also make a fool of itself. In an HBR article called "Decisions and Desire", Jan 2006, the way we make decisions is discussed. In that article there were several very interested facts, one I will bring up here. A teenager makes decisions on the feeling. Afterwards when you ask why they did a certain thing, they don't know. The reason for this is that the decision centre in the forehead is not ready yet to make any decisions. It is confused with all other signals flowing in from other parts of the brain and body. In the wake of any clear decision making power it gives in for the strongest signal for the moment, usually the thing that you regret the day after. When a person reaches 20s the brain is usually ready for life. Isn't it strange that we require our youth to make such important decisions even if the brian in many cases is not able to make the best choice?