What is intelligence?
* Stupidity is also an important and surprisingly complex topic, and has far greater prevalence.
Below is a deliberately wide sweep of how intelligence has been defined across disciplines, cultures, and purposes. The definitions past #4 are the more interesting and illuminative, in my opinion.
My personal favorites:
- Intelligence is the ability to understand others, navigate relationships, and coordinate action.
- Intelligence is the capacity to adapt behavior to changing environments.
- Intelligence emerges from the interaction of brain, body, and environment—not the brain alone.
- Intelligence is the ability to learn how to learn.
- Intelligence is how efficiently a system uses limited computational resources.
- Intelligence includes the capacity for ethical reasoning and value-based judgment.
- Intelligence is doing the right thing at the right time with available resources.
- Intelligence is knowing what matters and what doesn't.
- Intelligence is the ability to compress information by discovering underlying structure.
- Intelligence is the ability to monitor and regulate one's own thinking.
- Intelligence is knowing what to ignore.
- Intelligence is curiosity with discipline.
- Intelligence is the speed at which confusion turns into clarity.
- Intelligence is the art of asking better questions.
1. Classical & Philosophical Definitions
Rationality-centered:Intelligence is the capacity to reason correctly and grasp abstract truths.(Rooted in Aristotle, Plato, Enlightenment philosophy.)
Knowledge-based:Intelligence is the possession and proper use of knowledge.(Emphasizes learning and wisdom rather than raw processing.)
Teleological:Intelligence is the ability to choose effective means toward desired ends.(Goal-directed reasoning.)
2. Early Psychological Definitions
Alfred Binet:Intelligence is the ability to judge well, understand well, and reason well.(Practical, education-focused.)
General mental ability (g):Intelligence is a single underlying factor influencing performance across cognitive tasks.(Associated with psychometrics and IQ testing.)
3. Cognitive Science & Neuroscience
Information processing:Intelligence is the capacity to acquire, represent, transform, and apply information.
Predictive brain:Intelligence is the ability to build models of the world and minimize surprise.(Linked to predictive processing and Bayesian brain theories.)
Neural efficiency:Intelligence is how efficiently a system uses limited computational resources.
4. Developmental & Learning-Based Definitions
Learning capacity:Intelligence is the ability to learn from experience.
Adaptation over time:Intelligence is how quickly and flexibly an organism improves performance with feedback.
Meta-learning:Intelligence is the ability to learn how to learn.
5. Adaptive & Evolutionary Definitions
Biological adaptation:Intelligence is the capacity to adapt behavior to changing environments.
Fitness-oriented:Intelligence is whatever increases an organism's chances of survival and reproduction.
Embodied intelligence:Intelligence emerges from the interaction of brain, body, and environment—not the brain alone.
6. Social & Cultural Definitions
Cultural competence:Intelligence is knowing how to function effectively within a given culture.
Social intelligence:Intelligence is the ability to understand others, navigate relationships, and coordinate action.
Moral intelligence:Intelligence includes the capacity for ethical reasoning and value-based judgment.
7. Pluralistic & Non-Unitary Views
Howard Gardner:Intelligence is a set of distinct capacities (linguistic, spatial, musical, interpersonal, etc.).
Profile-based:Intelligence is not a single quantity but a pattern of strengths and weaknesses.
8. Practical & Real-World Definitions
Problem-solving:Intelligence is the ability to solve novel problems.
Task effectiveness:Intelligence is doing the right thing at the right time with available resources.
Common-sense intelligence:Intelligence is knowing what matters and what doesn't.
9. Artificial Intelligence & Systems Theory
OpenAI–style functional view (also common in AI research):Intelligence is the ability of an agent to achieve goals across a wide range of environments.
Algorithmic:Intelligence is efficient search through a space of possible actions or hypotheses.
Compression-based:Intelligence is the ability to compress information by discovering underlying structure.
10. Minimalist & Maximalist Definitions
Minimalist:Intelligence is the ability to make better-than-random choices.
Maximalist:Intelligence is the integrated capacity to understand, learn, reason, adapt, create, and reflect.
11. Reflective & Self-Referential Definitions
Metacognitive:Intelligence is the ability to monitor and regulate one's own thinking.
Self-modeling:Intelligence is the capacity to represent oneself as an agent in the world.
12. Poetic & Provocative Definitions
Intelligence is knowing what to ignore.
Intelligence is curiosity with discipline.
Intelligence is the speed at which confusion turns into clarity.
Intelligence is the art of asking better questions.