I have a question, just how general is general intelligence?

[Jimmy Higgins]

I'd ponder that the what is being measured also runs into a problem of how it is measured. An IQ scale isn't measuring a quantitative value, but rather a qualitative one.

 

[ronburgundy]

Standard IQ tests traditionally measured academic ability,

This is not true. IQ test measure very basic mental processes that play a role in cognition in most areas of professional and personal life, essentially anything involving recognizing patterns of change in visual or auditory stimuli and being able to anticipate how the pattern will appear in the future, comprehending the complex meanings of language, drawing/recognizing valid logic inferences, and being able to hold pieces of information active in awareness while you simultaneously processing incoming streams of info and sort it into relevant and non-relevant for the task at hand (which allows one to integrate that info and build coherent conceptual structures out of it over time as new info comes in). Create a list of all the complex things you do each day that do not rely on at least one of these things and you will have a very short list.
The reason that IQ tests predict academics most strongly is that there is less variance due to amount of training/exposures, which of course is an independent source of influence on performance level. Kids in 7th grade math class in a particular district have had somewhat similar number of math classes and instruction up to that point. There is some variance in parental instruction, but that variance pales in comparison to variance in exposure to things that occur mostly outside of school like music, sports knowledge, other hobbies and profession-specific skills learned on the job. More controlled studies that uses novices and controls exposure shows that general intelligence is still relevant to how easily people learn these various things, but there is so much variance in opportunity and exposure to learning that it dilutes the overall naturally occurring correlation that IQ has with them.

but there are other competencies. Musical, mathematical or social intelligence, for examples, don't necessarily correlate with academic 'IQ'.

Gardner's notions of "multiple intelligences" is largely pop-psych with little empirical support. Of course there are highly specific trained skills, but these are not "intelligences" any more than having big feet means you have a high pedal-intelligence (let that phrase form some unpleasant connotations). To the extent that there are social and musical aptitudes that reflect an ability to process new information and learn (i.e., intelligence) in those domains (rather than task specific performance due to amount of training), then they are in fact correlated with general IQ, that includes "social and emotional intelligence" which relies upon some of the same brain functions as IQ tests.

 

[braces_for_impact]

There was a very good interview on Science for the People podcast on this subject just the other day.

This week we're learning about how scientists and society measure intelligence, and the relationship between smartness and success. We're joined by cognitive psychologist Scott Barry Kaufman, to talk about his book "Ungifted: Intelligence Redefined." And we'll talk to Nathaniel Barr, postdoctoral fellow at the University of Waterloo, about research into the relationship between smartphone use and cognitive skills.

I was intrigued to learn that Scott Kaufmann and I share the same IQ in that we don't have a global IQ number, and that the reasons for that were almost identical.

The podcast is HERE if anyone's interested.

 

[AthenaAwakened]

Examples please.

I found this to be a fairly good definition of what I understood "general intelligence" to be.

The examples that come to my mind are performance of tasks (even fabulously) versus integrating novel information.
An athletic analogue might be the ability to shoot free-throws spectacularly versus the ability to do them when facing 5 opponents who are trying various ways to stop you.
A scientific analogue might be excruciating precision in finding DNA matches or Spectrum matches versus putting together a forensic picture of many clues.
And mechanical example might be testing and swapping parts methodically to make an engine run versus diagnosing it by rapid recognition of the interplay of symptoms.
An engineering example might be designing a thing to do an exact function versus finding a way to make standard and inexpensive parts perform the same function as a system.
A writing example might be expert editing skills that reliably find and correct misuses of language versus authoring a poem that evokes complex and nuanced messages with economy.

I don't know if any of these are official, but it is what I think of when I consider the word "intelligence;" the ability figure things out and make connections that are more useful than the original parts. To create new and novel connections.

Would writing a sonata be an example of general intelligence?

How about creative crafting?

I am the writer in the family. My sister is the artist. My brother is the inventor. All three of us sing quite well and my brother and I both studied musical instruments, he the guitar and I the piano, oboe, and saxophone.

My sister and I were excellent students, my borther not so much but he excelled at strategic and design thinking, I can't draw a straight line and my sister while compotent at writing, will freely tell you her prose and poetry leave much to be deserved if you are looking for a WOW factor.

Do our weaknesses average out with our strengths to come up with a general intelligence?

Our is the idea of a single measure misguided and prone to misuse and perhaps a better stance is multiple intelligences or what the old folks always called talent?

 

[Rhea]

Would writing a sonata be an example of general intelligence?

From what little I understand of music, it is highly mathematical with specific rules and functions that will result in typically pleasing sounds. A person with skill could use those rules and formulae to create something that is essentially pleasing and fits the criteria of "Sonata." A person with higher intelligence will combine those rules in creative ways, crossing boundaries and mixing functions that create surprising or unusual emotions and story components. A "genius" will combine all of those technical details into something that is brain-popping "wow" and will probably do it with much less effort than the "intelligent" and will be far beyond the capability of the technicalist.

How about creative crafting?

Ditto.

I am the writer in the family. My sister is the artist. My brother is the inventor. All three of us sing quite well and my brother and I both studied musical instruments, he the guitar and I the piano, oboe, and saxophone.

My sister and I were excellent students, my brother not so much but he excelled at strategic and design thinking, I can't draw a straight line and my sister while compotent at writing, will freely tell you her prose and poetry leave much to be deserved if you are looking for a WOW factor.

I believe that "intelligence" manifests in many different ways. Some of them are not even academic, but purely social and emotional. And to be intelligent does not mean that one would excel at them all. Some people manifest at many more of them, some fewer, some are intelligent in more narrowly specific ways. But in my use of the word it is about the ability to handle multiple disparate inputs in an integrated and novel fashion, usually with increasing ease or speed as intelligence goes up.

Do our weaknesses average out with our strengths to come up with a general intelligence?

I don't see your weaknesses in one area having any impact on your intelligence in another. The term intelligence, in my understanding, would be re-evaluated for each separate endeavor yielding "intelligences" for each of them that do not dpend on the others. I do not know a single person who exhibits intelligence across all endeavors with equal agility. I don't think they need to in order to be "intelligent."

Or is the idea of a single measure misguided and prone to misuse and perhaps a better stance is multiple intelligences or what the old folks always called talent?

I have always thought of it as multiple intelligences. I am surprised by anyone intelligent who does not. Although I know they exist - typically post-doc theoretical physicists who have an uncanny ability to cleave to the stereotype of thinking everyone who is not a theoretical physicist is stupid. Thereby demonstrating that not all intelligent people can cross boundaries to exhibit broad intelligence.

 

[ronburgundy]

I found this to be a fairly good definition of what I understood "general intelligence" to be.

The examples that come to my mind are performance of tasks (even fabulously) versus integrating novel information.
An athletic analogue might be the ability to shoot free-throws spectacularly versus the ability to do them when facing 5 opponents who are trying various ways to stop you.
A scientific analogue might be excruciating precision in finding DNA matches or Spectrum matches versus putting together a forensic picture of many clues.
And mechanical example might be testing and swapping parts methodically to make an engine run versus diagnosing it by rapid recognition of the interplay of symptoms.
An engineering example might be designing a thing to do an exact function versus finding a way to make standard and inexpensive parts perform the same function as a system.
A writing example might be expert editing skills that reliably find and correct misuses of language versus authoring a poem that evokes complex and nuanced messages with economy.

I don't know if any of these are official, but it is what I think of when I consider the word "intelligence;" the ability figure things out and make connections that are more useful than the original parts. To create new and novel connections.

Would writing a sonata be an example of general intelligence?

How about creative crafting?

You are still getting caught up in conflating the quality of something specific that is produced with the underlying processes that give rise to that act, some of which may be tied to "general intelligence". Let's put aside "creativity" for moment. Building a house by yourself without prior training is not "an example of general intelligence", but it would be heavily aided by greater general intelligence.
There are many problems to be solved and most of them have objectively right or wrong answers as whether the house falls down will attest to. Figuring out both what you need to do and more effective means to do it would be impacted by general intelligence. However, imagine that you had 10 years of training as a furniture maker. Those trained skills and knowledge now come into play and help you make those decisions and execute them, thus somewhat reducing your need to rely upon your general intelligence to do the same things. Also, if you have better hand-eye-coordination, your work will be of higher quality and that influence is separate from the impact of your general intelligence.

I am the writer in the family. My sister is the artist. My brother is the inventor. All three of us sing quite well and my brother and I both studied musical instruments, he the guitar and I the piano, oboe, and saxophone.

My sister and I were excellent students, my borther not so much but he excelled at strategic and design thinking, I can't draw a straight line and my sister while compotent at writing, will freely tell you her prose and poetry leave much to be deserved if you are looking for a WOW factor.

So, "creativity" is a fuzzy and messy concept, in large part because so much of what we call "creative" has no objective criteria as to what is better. There is no end-state to be reached or particular problem to be solved, unlike building a house where there are many objective metrics by which to judge its quality and whether it solves various problems that engineers worry about. IQ has strong association with controlling attention and processing information in relation to some desired outcome or goal. This isn't esoteric to school. We do such things all the time in daily life. However, many things we categorize as "creative" don't have that property. IOW, there is no real utility or functionality to creative works beyond a vague notion of causing an emotional response in others. I'm not devaluing art, just saying its value isn't in its problem-solving utility. If there is no particular goal, then there is no need to control attention and processing towards serving that goal. A meandering, unfocused mind (or drug induced one) can produce as or more creative things than the focused one. Thus, theoretically, IQ shouldn't relate to things like how artistically creative what you produce is, and empirically it is not related to this.

Writing isn't all about "creativity" either. The more that the writing has an a priori goal and restrictions on it, the more it is problem solving and the less simple creative novelty. Prose to convey accurate understanding of evolution is less "creative" and more influenced by general intelligence than poetry. Take a science passage and just cut it in half. One will be objectively better than the other, meaning better meets the goal of accurately describing the phenomena. Take a poem in cut it half, and which is better? Does the question even mean anything? Would people agree which is better? Is cutting a finished poem in half a creative artistic act itself, thus making that one better? As a rule of thumb, if the the thing being produced cannot be rather reliably measured in terms of objectively better at meeting a specified goal, then IQ isn't all that relevant to it.

Music is even more complicated because isn't all about creativity. Creating versus executing music are completely different and likely rely on very different causal influences, with executing music relying more upon things related to general intelligence like memory and being able to divide attention between executing the current bar while thinking about what is coming. Not to mention, music requires physical skills that are unrelated to the information processing that underlies general intelligence. One reason some people are better at instruments than other is as simple as the length and shape of their fingers, or even how their fingernails are attached. My nails are attached at the very tip of my finger. No matter how short I cut them, I cannot press on a surface with my fingertip without my nail hitting and preventing me from getting even pressure over the area of my finger tip. The greatly inhibits my guitar playing. I cannot get good pressure on the string in order to get a clean sound.

Do our weaknesses average out with our strengths to come up with a general intelligence?

No. You are using "general" to be "averaged across all things". That isn't what the general refers to. It refers to the fact that there are some aspects of information processing that are so basic that they have a general influence across tasks that require learning new things.

Our is the idea of a single measure misguided and prone to misuse and perhaps a better stance is multiple intelligences or what the old folks always called talent?

Again, no one says that general intelligence is the single measure of all things important for human performance of all types. Lets use an analogy to physical activities. Lung efficiency is to sustained physical performance what general intelligence is to cognitive performance. It impacts most kinds of relevant performance to some degree (thus is general) but it isn't everything that impacts those performances and differences in it can be made up for by opposing differences in other things. However, since differences in those other things are just as likely to be in the same direction as in the opposite direction of IQ (or lung capacity) differences, most of the time the person with greater IQ (or greater lung capacity) will outperform any randomly compared person.

 

[ApostateAbe]

Does it apply to everything a person does and how well that person will do what s/he does, or is it just about certain things?

General intelligence (Spearman's g) has a relationship (either big or small) with nearly everything we associate with any sort of mental abilities. All written test scores are positively correlated with each other, the common factor of the correlation is Spearman's g by definition, and that is the factor that IQ tests are designed to maximize. Spearman's g differences have about an 80% correlation to educational attainment differences, 50% correlation to earnings differences, 40% correlation to brain size differences, and 60% correlation to genetic differences. But, it is not everything. Each remainder of the correlations speaks to the existence of other independent contributors. Nor should it be assumed that Spearman's g is the CAUSE of all of those correlations in either direction, though it is probable given other arguments.

 

[AthenaAwakened]

Would writing a sonata be an example of general intelligence?

How about creative crafting?

You are still getting caught up in conflating the quality of something specific that is produced with the underlying processes that give rise to that act, some of which may be tied to "general intelligence". Let's put aside "creativity" for moment. Building a house by yourself without prior training is not "an example of general intelligence", but it would be heavily aided by greater general intelligence.
There are many problems to be solved and most of them have objectively right or wrong answers as whether the house falls down will attest to. Figuring out both what you need to do and more effective means to do it would be impacted by general intelligence. However, imagine that you had 10 years of training as a furniture maker. Those trained skills and knowledge now come into play and help you make those decisions and execute them, thus somewhat reducing your need to rely upon your general intelligence to do the same things. Also, if you have better hand-eye-coordination, your work will be of higher quality and that influence is separate from the impact of your general intelligence.

I am the writer in the family. My sister is the artist. My brother is the inventor. All three of us sing quite well and my brother and I both studied musical instruments, he the guitar and I the piano, oboe, and saxophone.

My sister and I were excellent students, my borther not so much but he excelled at strategic and design thinking, I can't draw a straight line and my sister while compotent at writing, will freely tell you her prose and poetry leave much to be deserved if you are looking for a WOW factor.

So, "creativity" is a fuzzy and messy concept, in large part because so much of what we call "creative" has no objective criteria as to what is better. There is no end-state to be reached or particular problem to be solved, unlike building a house where there are many objective metrics by which to judge its quality and whether it solves various problems that engineers worry about. IQ has strong association with controlling attention and processing information in relation to some desired outcome or goal. This isn't esoteric to school. We do such things all the time in daily life. However, many things we categorize as "creative" don't have that property. IOW, there is no real utility or functionality to creative works beyond a vague notion of causing an emotional response in others. I'm not devaluing art, just saying its value isn't in its problem-solving utility. If there is no particular goal, then there is no need to control attention and processing towards serving that goal. A meandering, unfocused mind (or drug induced one) can produce as or more creative things than the focused one. Thus, theoretically, IQ shouldn't relate to things like how artistically creative what you produce is, and empirically it is not related to this.

Writing isn't all about "creativity" either. The more that the writing has an a priori goal and restrictions on it, the more it is problem solving and the less simple creative novelty. Prose to convey accurate understanding of evolution is less "creative" and more influenced by general intelligence than poetry. Take a science passage and just cut it in half. One will be objectively better than the other, meaning better meets the goal of accurately describing the phenomena. Take a poem in cut it half, and which is better? Does the question even mean anything? Would people agree which is better? Is cutting a finished poem in half a creative artistic act itself, thus making that one better? As a rule of thumb, if the the thing being produced cannot be rather reliably measured in terms of objectively better at meeting a specified goal, then IQ isn't all that relevant to it.

Music is even more complicated because isn't all about creativity. Creating versus executing music are completely different and likely rely on very different causal influences, with executing music relying more upon things related to general intelligence like memory and being able to divide attention between executing the current bar while thinking about what is coming. Not to mention, music requires physical skills that are unrelated to the information processing that underlies general intelligence. One reason some people are better at instruments than other is as simple as the length and shape of their fingers, or even how their fingernails are attached. My nails are attached at the very tip of my finger. No matter how short I cut them, I cannot press on a surface with my fingertip without my nail hitting and preventing me from getting even pressure over the area of my finger tip. The greatly inhibits my guitar playing. I cannot get good pressure on the string in order to get a clean sound.

Do our weaknesses average out with our strengths to come up with a general intelligence?

No. You are using "general" to be "averaged across all things". That isn't what the general refers to. It refers to the fact that there are some aspects of information processing that are so basic that they have a general influence across tasks that require learning new things.

Our is the idea of a single measure misguided and prone to misuse and perhaps a better stance is multiple intelligences or what the old folks always called talent?

Again, no one says that general intelligence is the single measure of all things important for human performance of all types. Lets use an analogy to physical activities. Lung efficiency is to sustained physical performance what general intelligence is to cognitive performance. It impacts most kinds of relevant performance to some degree (thus is general) but it isn't everything that impacts those performances and differences in it can be made up for by opposing differences in other things. However, since differences in those other things are just as likely to be in the same direction as in the opposite direction of IQ (or lung capacity) differences, most of the time the person with greater IQ (or greater lung capacity) will outperform any randomly compared person.

How do we know this? outside of IQ tests, how do we know that the person with the greater IQ score is outperforming people in other activities in life? IQ score, like genes, are not apparent to the naked eye. High scoring people can be failing at stuff all the time while lower scoring scoring people are succeeding and we the audience would never know it.

 

[AthenaAwakened]

Does it apply to everything a person does and how well that person will do what s/he does, or is it just about certain things?

General intelligence (Spearman's g) has a relationship (either big or small) with nearly everything we associate with any sort of mental abilities. All written test scores are positively correlated with each other, the common factor of the correlation is Spearman's g by definition, and that is the factor that IQ tests are designed to maximize. Spearman's g differences have about an 80% correlation to educational attainment differences, 50% correlation to earnings differences, 40% correlation to brain size differences, and 60% correlation to genetic differences. But, it is not everything. Each remainder of the correlations speaks to the existence of other independent contributors. Nor should it be assumed that Spearman's g is the CAUSE of all of those correlations in either direction, though it is probable given other arguments.

You do realize at this point that I think this whole g thing is bullshit, right?

And I have centuries of cruelties that say this belief in inherent and inheritable intelligence as defined not by family but by race leads to or contributes to genocide and the brutalizing of oppressed and oppressor alike.

We don't need "smarter" people, we need more empathetic people.

And anyone who doesn't get that, isn't very smart.

 

[Rhea]

You do realize at this point that I think this whole g thing is bullshit, right?

And I have centuries of cruelties that say this belief in inherent and inheritable intelligence as defined not by family but by race leads to or contributes to genocide and the brutalizing of oppressed and oppressor alike.

We don't need "smarter" people, we need more empathetic people.

And anyone who doesn't get that, isn't very smart.

See, I have always thought that empathy is exactly a kind of "intelligence." It is problem solving. It is putting together disparate data and analyzing rapidly for a larger and more useful meaning. To me. I know too many people whose lack of empathy negatively impacts their ability to contribute or to solve problems that I just can't fathom the idea that it is not a form of general intelligence. At all. That is foreign to me.

 

[Rhea]

However, many things we categorize as "creative" don't have that property. IOW, there is no real utility or functionality to creative works beyond a vague notion of causing an emotional response in others. I'm not devaluing art, just saying its value isn't in its problem-solving utility. If there is no particular goal, then there is no need to control attention and processing towards serving that goal. A meandering, unfocused mind (or drug induced one) can produce as or more creative things than the focused one. Thus, theoretically, IQ shouldn't relate to things like how artistically creative what you produce is, and empirically it is not related to this.

I disagree with this. While the output is not empirically measurable, it does solve multiple problems. Not, perhaps, technological or logistical ones, but it solves problems as it goes in conveying information effectively. I find them to be very parallel.

 

[Nexus]

To anyone saying there isn't multiple inteligences and simply g here's something to consider. Eddie Bravo a world class trainer of Brazillian jiu jitsu has discussed training some members of a breakdance crew named Freakshow! These guys do physical contortions while dancing that resemble something you would expect Spider-man to do in a video game. He said these guys in a few months were matching world class fighters that had been training for 7+ years.

While dancing is a subjective art and perhaps not possible to align with any type of objective standard, jiu jitsu is not. The objective is to force your opponents joints into positions that will cause injury. Also there is positioning or wrestling aspects that give clear definable advantages for submissions. Perhaps these dancers have high general intelligence but to me it appears some people might have a mind/body coordination type intelligence and that explains these dancers extremely rapid acquisition of objective submission knowledge.

 

[ApostateAbe]

General intelligence (Spearman's g) has a relationship (either big or small) with nearly everything we associate with any sort of mental abilities. All written test scores are positively correlated with each other, the common factor of the correlation is Spearman's g by definition, and that is the factor that IQ tests are designed to maximize. Spearman's g differences have about an 80% correlation to educational attainment differences, 50% correlation to earnings differences, 40% correlation to brain size differences, and 60% correlation to genetic differences. But, it is not everything. Each remainder of the correlations speaks to the existence of other independent contributors. Nor should it be assumed that Spearman's g is the CAUSE of all of those correlations in either direction, though it is probable given other arguments.

You do realize at this point that I think this whole g thing is bullshit, right?

And I have centuries of cruelties that say this belief in inherent and inheritable intelligence as defined not by family but by race leads to or contributes to genocide and the brutalizing of oppressed and oppressor alike.

We don't need "smarter" people, we need more empathetic people.

And anyone who doesn't get that, isn't very smart.

Seems agreeable. More humanitarianism would make a better world for sure.

 

[fast]

Does it apply to everything a person does and how well that person will do what s/he does, or is it just about certain things?

Some people are a little quicker than others--a little brighter, a little smarter. How do we individually compare to the general population? Figuring that out becomes a little easier once we account for the unfair advantage that having specific knowledge brings. A person that is highly knowledgable about a particular subject is not therefore more intelligent in general. For instance, a bright fifteen year old might have a tendency to display better problem solving skills than a seasoned lawyer. IQ tests that deliberately avoid knowledge-based questions are better suited for such comparison purposes.

If I list all the oceans except one and leave a blank, then knowing the answer requires specific knowledge. If I list a string of numbers with a pattern followed by a blank, then although the answer may require some basic general knowledge, some actual thinking (and not just recalling) is still in order to obtain the answer.

 

[ronburgundy]

You are still getting caught up in conflating the quality of something specific that is produced with the underlying processes that give rise to that act, some of which may be tied to "general intelligence". Let's put aside "creativity" for moment. Building a house by yourself without prior training is not "an example of general intelligence", but it would be heavily aided by greater general intelligence.
There are many problems to be solved and most of them have objectively right or wrong answers as whether the house falls down will attest to. Figuring out both what you need to do and more effective means to do it would be impacted by general intelligence. However, imagine that you had 10 years of training as a furniture maker. Those trained skills and knowledge now come into play and help you make those decisions and execute them, thus somewhat reducing your need to rely upon your general intelligence to do the same things. Also, if you have better hand-eye-coordination, your work will be of higher quality and that influence is separate from the impact of your general intelligence.

I am the writer in the family. My sister is the artist. My brother is the inventor. All three of us sing quite well and my brother and I both studied musical instruments, he the guitar and I the piano, oboe, and saxophone.

My sister and I were excellent students, my borther not so much but he excelled at strategic and design thinking, I can't draw a straight line and my sister while compotent at writing, will freely tell you her prose and poetry leave much to be deserved if you are looking for a WOW factor.

So, "creativity" is a fuzzy and messy concept, in large part because so much of what we call "creative" has no objective criteria as to what is better. There is no end-state to be reached or particular problem to be solved, unlike building a house where there are many objective metrics by which to judge its quality and whether it solves various problems that engineers worry about. IQ has strong association with controlling attention and processing information in relation to some desired outcome or goal. This isn't esoteric to school. We do such things all the time in daily life. However, many things we categorize as "creative" don't have that property. IOW, there is no real utility or functionality to creative works beyond a vague notion of causing an emotional response in others. I'm not devaluing art, just saying its value isn't in its problem-solving utility. If there is no particular goal, then there is no need to control attention and processing towards serving that goal. A meandering, unfocused mind (or drug induced one) can produce as or more creative things than the focused one. Thus, theoretically, IQ shouldn't relate to things like how artistically creative what you produce is, and empirically it is not related to this.

Writing isn't all about "creativity" either. The more that the writing has an a priori goal and restrictions on it, the more it is problem solving and the less simple creative novelty. Prose to convey accurate understanding of evolution is less "creative" and more influenced by general intelligence than poetry. Take a science passage and just cut it in half. One will be objectively better than the other, meaning better meets the goal of accurately describing the phenomena. Take a poem in cut it half, and which is better? Does the question even mean anything? Would people agree which is better? Is cutting a finished poem in half a creative artistic act itself, thus making that one better? As a rule of thumb, if the the thing being produced cannot be rather reliably measured in terms of objectively better at meeting a specified goal, then IQ isn't all that relevant to it.

Music is even more complicated because isn't all about creativity. Creating versus executing music are completely different and likely rely on very different causal influences, with executing music relying more upon things related to general intelligence like memory and being able to divide attention between executing the current bar while thinking about what is coming. Not to mention, music requires physical skills that are unrelated to the information processing that underlies general intelligence. One reason some people are better at instruments than other is as simple as the length and shape of their fingers, or even how their fingernails are attached. My nails are attached at the very tip of my finger. No matter how short I cut them, I cannot press on a surface with my fingertip without my nail hitting and preventing me from getting even pressure over the area of my finger tip. The greatly inhibits my guitar playing. I cannot get good pressure on the string in order to get a clean sound.

Do our weaknesses average out with our strengths to come up with a general intelligence?

No. You are using "general" to be "averaged across all things". That isn't what the general refers to. It refers to the fact that there are some aspects of information processing that are so basic that they have a general influence across tasks that require learning new things.

Our is the idea of a single measure misguided and prone to misuse and perhaps a better stance is multiple intelligences or what the old folks always called talent?

Again, no one says that general intelligence is the single measure of all things important for human performance of all types. Lets use an analogy to physical activities. Lung efficiency is to sustained physical performance what general intelligence is to cognitive performance. It impacts most kinds of relevant performance to some degree (thus is general) but it isn't everything that impacts those performances and differences in it can be made up for by opposing differences in other things. However, since differences in those other things are just as likely to be in the same direction as in the opposite direction of IQ (or lung capacity) differences, most of the time the person with greater IQ (or greater lung capacity) will outperform any randomly compared person.

How do we know this? outside of IQ tests, how do we know that the person with the greater IQ score is outperforming people in other activities in life?

There is no special parts of the brain that only come into play on tests or in the classroom. It is the same brain, same cognitive processes involved in comprehending the causes of of earthquakes in the classroom as comprehending the causal workings of the machines at work, or of economic factors related to one's business. Your question is equivalent to asking how do we know that gravity applies to an island where we haven't directly tested it yet. Its because the kinds of mental processes that contribute to the variance in g are so basic and neccessary for most forms of information processing and anything that could be called reasoning or problem solving that any specific "real world" task involving reasoning and problem solving would be impacted by it. I put "real world" in quotes because the notion that the tests and context of intelligence tests are "artificial" is a bullshit excuse that people use to blindly dismiss research they don't like. Tests happen constantly in the real world, the same things required to do well on school assignments (reading comprehension, reasoning, clear communication) happen constantly in everyday life and impact how well one does at tasks and achieving goals.

IQ score, like genes, are not apparent to the naked eye. High scoring people can be failing at stuff all the time while lower scoring scoring people are succeeding and we the audience would never know it.

As I have said repeatedly, lower IQ people do often out-perform higher IQ people and high IQ people fail on a regular basis. That is because all outcomes are multiply determined by things ranging from random events and random contextual factors to level of motivation and amount of specific training, none of which are correlated with general intelligence. However, they are also NOT negatively correlated with intelligence, thus they will not on average cancel out IQ effects. High IQ people are just as likely to be advantaged even more by these other factors, than to be disadvantaged by them. Thus, on average, higher IQ people will outperform those with lower IQs across the types of tasks where general reasoning, attentional control, and problem solving skills have some level of impact on performance.

Does smoking causally impact cancer in the "real world"? Yes, but some people who don't smoke still wind up getting cancer while some smokers do not. That's because cancer is multiply determined, thus even though any person who smokes is increasing their odds of getting cancer, and smokers will get more cancer than non-smokers, there are still plenty of non-smokers who get it and smokers that don't. It's funny how simple this logic is for people to grasp on something where there ideology doesn't blind them to it.

 

[Togo]

Does it apply to everything a person does and how well that person will do what s/he does, or is it just about certain things?

General intelligence (Spearman's g) has a relationship (either big or small) with nearly everything we associate with any sort of mental abilities. All written test scores are positively correlated with each other, the common factor of the correlation is Spearman's g by definition, and that is the factor that IQ tests are designed to maximize. Spearman's g differences have about an 80% correlation to educational attainment differences, 50% correlation to earnings differences, 40% correlation to brain size differences, and 60% correlation to genetic differences. But, it is not everything. Each remainder of the correlations speaks to the existence of other independent contributors. Nor should it be assumed that Spearman's g is the CAUSE of all of those correlations in either direction, though it is probable given other arguments.

See bold above. Spearman's g is a theoretical value obtained through the correlations described. There's no evidence at all that it is itself a measure of anything in the real world.

 

[ronburgundy]

You do realize at this point that I think this whole g thing is bullshit, right?

And I have centuries of cruelties that say this belief in inherent and inheritable intelligence as defined not by family but by race leads to or contributes to genocide and the brutalizing of oppressed and oppressor alike.

We don't need "smarter" people, we need more empathetic people.

And anyone who doesn't get that, isn't very smart.

And it is clear that these political and moral concerns are the sole basis for you dismissing the scientific issue of general intelligence, just like many religionists dismiss evolution because of their concerns about how belief in evolution undermines God, and thus morality and purpose and meaning in life.
Just because an idea is unpleasant or might be used toward unpleasant ends has no bearing on whether it is true or whether we should believe it.

The existence of general intelligence and its partial heritable does not favor unethical racist policies. Our subjective ethics and goals determine our policies and actions. Accurate understanding of general intelligence and its role in learning in performance merely means we have a tool in our toolbox that can or cannot be made use of to achieve whatever goal our shared ethics moves us to achieve.

Also note that the reality of g does not dictate its genetic determinism. Those are separate questions, though some notable amount of genetic influence ranging between 10% to 60% of the variance is beyond reasonable dispute. Abe ignores factors that inflate the estimated genetic component, but that is a derail for another thread. Abe also ignores that the overall % of genetic contribution to IQ is a separate question with a different answer than the question of the genetic contribution to the mean IQ difference between racial groups. It is fully plausible if not likely that even a 60% genetic contribution to IQ variance overall can still mean a zero genetic contribution to racial differences in IQ averages. Racial difference are small and account for a fraction of the total variance in IQ and the relative weight of the factors that give rise to them can be and likely is completely different than what gives rise to the within race variance in IQ that accounts for most of the total variance.
In sum, even if one is politically committed to denying biological accounts for racial differences in IQ (which you shouldn't be committed to denying any position on a scientific question, but its understandable), one still can and should rationally accept the mountain of evidence for the existence of variance in basic cognitive information processing between individuals that has varying levels of impact on mental tasks, particularly impacting those that depend upon attentional control, reasoning about relationships and patterns across instances or time, and integrating pieces of information into complex conceptual structures. One should also accept that a notable % of this variance between individuals is determined by either genetic or other pre-birth biological factors, and another sizable % is determined by experiences that occurs rather early in childhood. Beyond that, you can form all the personal of ideological beliefs you want and at least you won't be in opposition to the science even if you don't have any evidence for your views.

 

[Togo]

There is no special parts of the brain that only come into play on tests or in the classroom. It is the same brain, same cognitive processes involved in comprehending the causes of of earthquakes in the classroom as comprehending the causal workings of the machines at work, or of economic factors related to one's business.

No, it isn't. It's different processes and different parts of the brain. That's exactly why a well-constructed IQ contains as many different kinds of mental tasks as possible - because the same individual has a different performance on the different tasks. How could that be the case if it was an identical process each time?

Its because the kinds of mental processes that contribute to the variance in g are so basic and neccessary for most forms of information processing and anything that could be called reasoning or problem solving that any specific "real world" task involving reasoning and problem solving would be impacted by it.

That's certainly the assumption. However, in the absence of any kind of test or measure for 'basic' mental processes, IQ tasks have to settle for ordinary task measurement, in as many ways as it can, so it can be assumed that the measure relates to something fundamental. Given the marked absence of any kind of 'basic processing' module in the brain that would correspond to this measure of mental capacity, it's more often seen by the scientists involved as a convenient abstraction.

 

[Togo]

...Beyond that, you can form all the personal of ideological beliefs you want and at least you won't be in opposition to the science even if you don't have any evidence for your views.

Such as a belief in the validity of IQ, 'basic cognitive information processing', or g.

 

[ronburgundy]

General intelligence (Spearman's g) has a relationship (either big or small) with nearly everything we associate with any sort of mental abilities. All written test scores are positively correlated with each other, the common factor of the correlation is Spearman's g by definition, and that is the factor that IQ tests are designed to maximize. Spearman's g differences have about an 80% correlation to educational attainment differences, 50% correlation to earnings differences, 40% correlation to brain size differences, and 60% correlation to genetic differences. But, it is not everything. Each remainder of the correlations speaks to the existence of other independent contributors. Nor should it be assumed that Spearman's g is the CAUSE of all of those correlations in either direction, though it is probable given other arguments.

See bold above. Spearman's g is a theoretical value obtained through the correlations described. There's no evidence at all that it is itself a measure of anything in the real world.

This is complete nonsense that is ignorant of the last half century of cognitive science, and relies upon the faith-based red-herring "not the real world" argument used by anti-science ideologues to dismiss any science they find emotionally unpleasant. See my post toward Athena for why g measures something relevant to cognition in general. Like all empirical data, evidence related to g all comes from the real world. There is no mystical land of fiction in another dimension from which this data arises. It is from real people in real places engaged in actual mental tasks that use their real brains, which are the same brains and brain regions involved in many cognitive tasks that all people engage in.