Anachronix

Bingo. Or at least that explains some cases. Sometimes there are intelligent people who really are just snobs...

Otherwise known as "Tall Poppy Syndrome", which seems to be a cultural icon in Australia.

Cheers mate, thanks!

IoftheBholder

Jagged further to your point, Howard Gardner suggets there are seven intelligences and one of them is "Interpersonal". As such, you are not alone in your objection to the dichotomy suggested here. In fact, I would assert that you are not that intelligent if you can't get along with "common folk".

At best, what this thread proves is that society, as a whole, does not understand intelligence.

I personally view intelligence negatively and I am fairly certain that I am intelligent. There are precious few people I can have a discussion with where I am not concious of my own intelligence. In a very H.P. Lovecraft sort of way, I feel worse for knowing certain things and dismay at my inability to "unknow" them. Intelligence has burdened me with expectations that I do not desire to live up to. My intelligence has not been paired with the necessary ambition.

Naturally, this is not why society as a whole would feel negatively about intelligence so forgive me for wandering off topic a bit.

i!

Feather

That's an interesting take on the subject. I would view social skills as not being closely coupled to raw intellectual ability, though. That is, I would not view the ability to think rationally and critically or creatively as a necessary component to being socially adept. The vast majority of the socially adept people I know could not actually think very well.

I don't mean to sound disparaging, but it's the simple truth of the matter. And this touches on another point--I think often when a person has a flaw pointed out, he typically seems to feel as though somehow the person pointing out the flaw has cast doubt on his own worth and importance to society. A person who is incapable of writing a good poem or solving a complex mathematical problem is no more or less important than his counterparts that can do these things. But often I think this very critical point is looked over--by both groups.

Also, I wonder how legitimate it is to define new categories of intelligence in the way you've described. "Interpersonal" skills is not something one can simply read about in a book and understand or derive from axioms--a large component of it is based on one's instincts (however precious few humans have) and more importantly what others think of him, which is surely quite beyond the control of any given person. Social norms--and therefor any scale measuring "Interpersonal Intelligence"-- are set by society as an aggregate, whereas raw intellectual ability is very often independent of this.

As with many other things in life, causing a word to be used ever expansively will eventually result in a meaningless word. If every skill has an associated "intelligence quotient," then the word "intelligence" becomes synonymous with "skill," for example, and therefore redundant (and ultimately meaningless and very likely confusing).


And why do you suppose that is? Are you concious of your intelligence because just maybe you've been conditioned to view it as bad? Because being intelligent is certainly abnormal, and humans in general shun that which doesn't conform.

Athius

Well from your original post I got the impression that you were saying choosing this path is wrong. I tried to say that I don't think it's wrong as long as you know how to use it and control it.

IoftheBholder

In fact, the idea of 7 intelligences captures this decoupling quite well. There is plenty of information available on the web about this framework so I will not go into detail here. Rather, suffice it to say that each is quite separate from the other so one can have high interpersonal intelligence and not any of the others. Within the framework of 7 intelligences that is the end of the analysis.

When forced to make a single, overall assessment of intelligence, I tend to think of it as the "sum" of all 7. Consider the "idiot savant" who can calculate high prime numbers very quickly. Although very good at math, there is no other intelligence. My overall assessment is not very high.

The idea of seven intelligences is not mine (hence the earlier attribution). I cannot vouch for it's "legitimacy" but I am aware that it has fairly wide acceptance in educational circles. Of course, you should not accept the idea on the grounds of popularity.

Still, it is misleading to judge intelligence based on book learning or axioms. Furthermore, I am skeptical of the explanation of interpersonal skill as a function of "instinct". Just as with spatial, logical/mathematical, linguistic, or musical talent, there is a high degree of learning associated with interpersonal ability. Roughly, intelligence is the capacity for learning and few definitions require that this be for learning a particular type of knowledge. As illustrated within this very thread, there are intelligent people who decided to "learn" to be social although often at the expense of learning something else.

I can see how my post would lead you to believe that I was blurring the line between the concepts. I switched quickly from an assertion about "interpersonal intelligence" to an assertion about how that translated into "skill".

To clarify my position, I let me make an analogy:
Skill is to intelligence as product is to productivity.

With that in mind, I think it is clear that one cannot get a lot of skill without being intelligent -- just as one will not get much product if one is not productive. Hence, my connection between a high level of interpersonal skill with a high level of interpersonal intelligence. To be sure, I think it is not possible to separate the measure of intelligence from skill itself. As you point out, the measure of skill is judged by society, so where is the measure of intelligence that is independent from society?

In contrast, you have made parallels between intelligence and rational/critical/creative thinking and "raw intellectual ability". Are these not skills themselves?

i!

IoftheBholder

No, I was not conditioned to view intelligence as bad -- just different. I consider myself more similar to "average people" than different from them. But that's just my philosophical point of view.

I am concious of my intelligence because it becomes part of how the other person sees me. Despite the comments from this thread, many people think it must be great to be intelligent and they start to have expectations about how your life must be. What they don't understand is that the intelligent can be just as lazy and unambitious as everyone else. We are just as fallible.

When people view you as intelligent they think you have all the answers. Well, we do not have all the answers. You should no more believe me than anyone else. Even if I had all the answers, it would not be useful to simply explain them -- real learning requires much more. Which brings me back to the general misunderstanding of intelligence.

i!

Breaditor

Because intelligence is like money - everyone wants it but few have it.

Knowledge is power, and so is money.

Breaditor

There is no such thing.

ADD really stands for Absence of Dignified Discipline.

Nikolai

But unlike money, inteligence, as well as knowledge, can be increased with little effort. All a person needs is an interest in a subject and a little bit of time every day.

Breaditor

You make a valid point, however, some people simply do not possess the hardware.