Defining Intelligence 155
one must be able to explain one’s reasoning clearly to those who ask. And, one must have a knowledge base of relevant information to draw upon. But our education system, in concentrating only on the knowl- edge base and not on independent reasoning from that knowledge base, has ensured that the knowledge base remains incomprehensible to most people and therefore is immediately forgotten after school is over.
It would be a good idea to eliminate IQ tests as a measure of intel- ligence and begin to teach people to do diagnosis, to plan well, to be able to determine causality, and to clearly explain their reasoning to others.
Those that cannot learn to do this would rightly be called stupid, but those who can would rightly be called intelligent.
Degrees of intelligence would be about one’s ability to do this for more and more complex issues in complex domains.
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