In my opinion, defining intelligence is much like defining beauty, and I don’t mean that it’s in the eye of the beholder. To illustrate, let’s say that you are the only beholder, and your word is final. Would you be able to choose the 1000 most beautiful women in the country? And if that sounds impossible, consider this: Say you’re now looking at your picks. Could you compare them to each other and say which one is more beautiful? For example, who is more beautiful– Katie Holmes or Angelina Jolie? How about Angelina Jolie or Catherine Zeta-Jones? I think intelligence is like this. So many factors are involved that attempts to measure it are useless. Not that IQ tests are useless. Far from it. Good tests work: They measure a variety of mental abilities, and the best tests do it well. But they don’t measure intelligence itself. Marilyn Vos Savant
About This Quote

Intelligence is not something that can be measured, but rather something that can be viewed in many ways. A person who is intelligent may be considered to be smart or wise or intelligent by other people. But what does it mean to be intelligent? It’s definitely not the same as being a good decision-maker or a successful person. The way I see it, intelligence has three different meanings: Being smart means having the ability to learn easily and quickly from your mistakes.

It means being able to make quick decisions, even if they aren’t always the right decisions. Being wise means having a strong grasp of the past and a vision for the future. It means understanding that there’s an order in the universe and using that understanding to guide you in the present.

And being intelligent means being able to see all of these things simultaneously. To take a simple example, imagine you have 100 dollars in your pocket, and you take out one dollar bill at random and fold it. You have just performed a simple action with an outcome, and you have been able to understand both cause and effect.

To me, this is intelligence at work.

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