(Prompted by a passing comment today):
I was startled to be unable to think of anyone I know who I would acknowledge is greatly more intelligent than I. In fact, I was further startled to realize I can't even imagine such a person. It can't just be a matter of definition, for I can think of people who I would say are definitely less intelligent than I. What gives? This curious revelation requires more thought.
11 April 1976
The solution to my "intelligence" quandary: It's simply that I view as the keystone of intelligence thinking for oneself and intellectual curiosity (not just about issues but about any everyday question). There is a continuous gradient here, but I really see only two classes: those whom I deem significantly below me and the vast majority of humanity I would term intelligent. Those beneath me — call them stupid — are characterized by closed-mindedness: they cannot or will not objectively analyze an issue; they won't see things from another point of view; they won't accept that the other side has some good points. And not just on a few issues, but on nearly all. And, crucially, not just out of conviction, but out of a real fear that they would be confused. What this boils down to is that I consider relatively less intelligent those who (through their willful, fearful closed-mindedness show that they) consider themselves less intelligent. I also think most of them could open their minds if they tried, but their fearful refusal, their implicit insistence of their stupidity forces me to agree with them. (Degree of) intelligence (as with so much else) is a matter of self-concept, is a self-fulfilling concept.
So thinking for oneself is the keystone of intelligence. Oh, some do it more often or quicker or better in certain fields than others [the continuous gradient], but that neither makes them geniuses nor labels them stupid. To my way of thinking, anyone who consistently thinks things out for himself, who shows some intellectual curiosity about things, is intelligent. Ther's a certain dividing line — you've either fot it or you don't. Having it and never using it is equivalent to not having it. It's very few people whom I deem unintelligent. By the same token, it is no intelligent person (by this definition) that I would ever call either less or more intelligent than myself. [That which is measured on an IQ test is, as I've said before, test-taking ability, quickness, and facility for formal abstract games. Granted that these talents are useful, granted that they correlate well with grades, jobs, etc., and granted that I excel at them — still they do not characterize intelligence for me.]
The fact that I can't imagine anyone greatly smarter than myself is a reflection of the fact that I can't imagine myself being so awed by another's thinking as to accept his ideas without questioning them, for that's what would have to happen before I could mark a second qualitative dividing line in the continuous spectrum. I've never met or heard about or been able to imagine anyone doing anything intellectual that I felt was utterly beyond my own capabilities. Physical, certainly. Artistic, probably. But purely intellectual, no.
Curiosity + intellectual independence = "intelligence"
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