Article 2 commonly overlooked signs of intelligence

[C C]

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/...telligence

EXCERPTS: There is a long-standing cultural assumption that people who talk to themselves are, at best, eccentric and, at worst, showing signs of something more concerning. It’s the kind of behavior that invites sideways glances in supermarket aisles and prompts well-meaning family members to ask if you are OK. The research, however, tells a different story.

[...] Consistently, the researchers found that those who spoke the target name out loud found it significantly faster. Speaking, it turned out, made the visual system a more efficient detector.

[...] In other words, people who use language to think appear to have a cognitive advantage on tasks that require holding information in mind. A 2023 review published in Frontiers in Psychology further mapped the range of functions served by self-talk: problem solving, self-regulation, working memory, task-switching, rehearsal, and what researchers describe as the management of higher-order cognitive processes.

[...] The assumption here is so embedded that it has become a kind of folk wisdom: People who swear frequently do so because they lack the vocabulary to express themselves any other way. It is, in this view, portrayed as a sign of laziness: a linguistic shortcut taken by people who cannot be bothered to find the right word. But this is almost precisely backwards.

The most cited challenge to this assumption comes from a series of studies ... published in 2015. [...] The researchers found a clear positive correlation: participants who scored highest on the verbal fluency test also generated the most swear words. Those with the weakest general vocabulary produced the fewest. This suggests that the same cognitive resource that gives someone access to a rich general lexicon also gives them access to a rich taboo lexicon. The vocabulary is simply larger on both ends.

[...] Research published in 2018 in the Journal of Language and Social Psychology notes that people, even those who are not personally offended by profanity, still rate swearers as less intelligent and less trustworthy than non-swearers. ... This means that the cognitive signal embedded in swearing is frequently overridden by social noise. What the research reveals is not that you should swear more, but that the habit itself—the fluency with taboo language, the ease of access to it—correlates with verbal intelligence in ways that the lay assumption completely inverts. Knowing when not to swear is, arguably, its own form of intelligence, too... (MORE - details)
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Meh. Profanity or "teen speak" is ubiquitous in the contemporary world, for all classes and slots of the so-called sapient spectrum. It's only highly formal and professional settings where the classic expectations of educated adult behavior still hold. The "shock value" purpose of defiling propriety and sacred items (both for venting stress and gratuitous hipster signaling) has shifted over from Victorian taboos to violating Woke sensitivies (the latter exerts consequences, involves the adrenaline spike of actually still flirting with danger). And acumen itself is relative. In an apocalyptic scenario, you'd want to be with the skills of rural folk and Rick Grimes' bunch rather than city-sheltered, second- or third-generation humanities scholars. The new environment would demote various sectors of intellectual elites to hapless bands of idiots.

[Magical Realist]

I don't believe intelligence is some innate trait that persons' possess. And likewise, neither is stupidity. People tend to blossom into their true potential when they are in their element, which is what ever situation or subject or skill set optimizes their sapience and navigability as an agent and problem solver. Moms for example are frickin geniuses in children-dominated situations. Mechanics and technicians are prodigies in the environment of machines and technologies. A chef is the mastermind of his kitchen. And then there are some who are expertly fluent in language and in describing, shedding light on situations that may be confusing or problematic. Nobody is intelligent in everything, and everybody is stupid in something.

[Syne]

Only the intellectually mediocre make excuses about what is or isn't innate.
True intelligence usually isn't manifest in a single subject (unless is it a world-changing contribution), which is driven more by interest than intelligence. Perseverance or natural instinct can appear like intelligence in single situations. But true intelligence spans more than one subject or interest.

[Magical Realist]

There's no such thing as intelligence without being intelligent in something. It's the same myth that consciousness can exist without there being anything to be conscious of. Intelligence arises out of intelligibility, which is always context-dependent and situational.

[Syne]

Of course there is general intelligence. That's why AGI is a thing. It's intelligence that can apply to a wide variety of things, instead of only specific cases.
True intelligence can be widely applied, while aptitude or interest only applies to specific things.

[Magical Realist]

There is no general intelligence free-floating around non-relative to some specific field or situation. That's like saying because there are lots of kinds of fruits, there is one generic thing called the fruit. Intelligence is just an abstraction we use to refer to optimization of sapience and know-how in a particular field or situation. It is not an absolute and in-itself property. It is dynamic, relational and action-based.

[Syne]

Yes, that's what I'd expect a mediocre intellect to say.

The g factor (short for "general intelligence factor") is a foundational concept in psychology and psychometrics that represents an underlying mental capacity influencing performance across a wide variety of cognitive tasks. First proposed by Charles Spearman in 1904, it accounts for the observation that people who score highly on one type of cognitive test (such as verbal reasoning) generally tend to score well on others (like spatial or mathematical tasks).
- Gemini

It's funny how people claim to have answers when they haven't bothered to play devil's advocate with what they think they know.

[Magical Realist]

Oh look! I can post texts from the internet without thinking too!

"Research on the G-factor, as well as other psychometric values, has been widely criticized for not properly taking into account the eugenicist background of its research practices.[137] The reductionism of the G-factor has been attributed to having evolved from pseudoscientific theories about race and intelligence.[138] Spearman's g and the concept of inherited, immutable intelligence were a boon for eugenicists and pseudoscientists alike.[139]

Joseph L. Graves Jr. and Amanda Johnson have argued that g "...is to the psychometricians what Huygens' ether was to early physicists: a nonentity taken as an article of faith instead of one in need of verification by real data."[140]

Some scientists have described the g factor, and psychometrics, as forms of pseudoscience.[141]

Conceptual critiques

Paleontologist and biologist Stephen Jay Gould presented a critique in his 1981 book The Mismeasure of Man. He argued that psychometricians fallaciously reified the g factor into an ineluctable "thing" that provided a convenient explanation for human intelligence, grounded only in mathematical theory rather than the rigorous application of mathematical theory to biological knowledge.[24] An example is provided in the work of Cyril Burt, published posthumously in 1972: "The two main conclusions we have reached seem clear and beyond all question. The hypothesis of a general factor entering into every type of cognitive process, tentatively suggested by speculations derived from neurology and biology, is fully borne out by the statistical evidence; and the contention that differences in this general factor depend largely on the individual's genetic constitution appears incontestable.The concept of an innate, general cognitive ability, which follows from these two assumptions, though admittedly sheerly an abstraction, is thus wholly consistent with the empirical facts."[142]

Several researchers have criticized Gould's arguments. For example, they have rejected the accusation of reification, maintaining that the use of extracted factors such as g as potential causal variables whose reality can be supported or rejected by further investigations constitutes a normal scientific practice that in no way distinguishes psychometrics from other sciences. Critics have also suggested that Gould did not understand the purpose of factor analysis, and that he was ignorant of relevant methodological advances in the field. While different factor solutions may be mathematically equivalent in their ability to account for intercorrelations among tests, solutions that yield a g factor are psychologically preferable for several reasons extrinsic to factor analysis, including the phenomenon of the positive manifold, the fact that the same g can emerge from quite different test batteries, the widespread practical validity of g, and the linkage of g to many biological variables.[46][47][page needed]

There is also debate over whether g is consistent with evolutionary psychology, since the body of research in evolutionary psychology has instead established that the evolution of human intelligence shows clearer evidence for massive modularity of mind rather than a single psychological trait that facilitates content-independent domain-general learning and general-purpose reasoning.[143] John Tooby and Leda Cosmides have consistently noted that the frame problem and combinatorial explosion in artificial intelligence would preclude a psychological trait for general-purpose problem solving and domain-general learning from being computationally capable of performing cognitive tasks necessary for survival and reproduction in an environment of evolutionary adaptedness, and that such a trait would be unlikely to evolve since adaptations require selection pressure from recurrent problems (which lead instead to a suite of cognitive modules that serve domain-specific functions and enable domain-specific learning).[144][145][146][147] While acknowledging the consensus within psychometrics and differential psychology about the g factor,[148][149] Steven Pinker has also argued against the construct validity of general intelligence and in favor of modularity of mind as proposed by Tooby and Cosmides and reiterated skepticism about the theoretical coherence of g when discussing artificial general intelligence.[150][151][152]

Other critiques of g
John Horn and John McArdle have argued that the modern g theory, as espoused by, for example, Arthur Jensen, is unfalsifiable, because the existence of a common factor like g follows tautologically from positive correlations among tests. They contrasted the modern hierarchical theory of g with Spearman's original two-factor theory which was readily falsifiable (and indeed was falsified)."----- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G_factor_(psychometrics)

[Syne]

Yes, we know you're not doing any thinking.

The "eugenicist background of its research practices" is an obvious genetic fallacy.

Evolutionary biologists and geneticists are generally not trained to judge or measure human intelligence. These fields focus on how traits are inherited and adapted. The actual measurement and clinical evaluation of human intelligence fall under the distinct disciplines of psychology and neuroscience.
- Gemini

So Joseph L. Graves Jr. is an ultracrepidarian speaking outside of his field. Same for Paleontologist and biologist Stephen Jay Gould. Maybe you didn't read were you copied/pasted the critique of Gould's arguments:

Several researchers have criticized Gould's arguments. For example, they have rejected the accusation of reification, maintaining that the use of extracted factors such as g as potential causal variables whose reality can be supported or rejected by further investigations constitutes a normal scientific practice that in no way distinguishes psychometrics from other sciences. Critics have also suggested that Gould did not understand the purpose of factor analysis, and that he was ignorant of relevant methodological advances in the field. While different factor solutions may be mathematically equivalent in their ability to account for intercorrelations among tests, solutions that yield a g factor are psychologically preferable for several reasons extrinsic to factor analysis, including the phenomenon of the positive manifold, the fact that the same g can emerge from quite different test batteries, the widespread practical validity of g, and the linkage of g to many biological variables.[46][47][page needed]

Same goes for evolutionary psychologists:

Evolutionary psychology does not directly measure individual human intelligence in the way an IQ test does. Instead, it seeks to understand why the human brain evolved specific cognitive abilities—such as spatial reasoning, memory, and social problem-solving—as adaptations for survival and reproduction in ancestral environments.
- gemini

See, you could only copy/paste from the link I gave you. You don't seem capable of even posing questions to AI that support your claims. You have to have some idea of what's true to know what to ask.

In the context of a polymath (a person with broad knowledge and expertise across diverse fields), the g factor refers to the general intelligence factor commonly studied in psychometrics. It is the statistical core that accounts for why an individual's performance tends to be consistent across different types of cognitive task.
- Gemini

[Magical Realist]

See, you could only copy/paste from the link I gave you. You don't seem capable of even posing questions to AI that support your claims.

I didn't post anything from the link you posted. I quoted it from Wikipedia. Or didn't you read it? And anybody who relies on an LLM search engine to argue for them obviously has no ability to argue their point themselves. You clearly demonstrate the non-existence of anything like a contentless non-specific superpower called "intelligence."