Tuesday, February 2, 2016
Intelligence
As I was listening to our talk about intelligence, a question was raised. Is intelligence fixed? Other people said that it is not fixed because if you practice a skill, you will get better at that skill. They compared intelligence with SAT scores. But the actual definition of intelligence is the ability to learn. So the faster that you learn something, the more "intelligent" you are. So SAT scores are not at all related to your intelligence, but rather your knowledge of material. So someone that is less intelligent may get a better score than someone that is more intelligent if they work harder and study more. But at the end of the day, I believe that there is no way to change how you learn, and that there will always be people that understand things right away, while others will have to work harder to get places. Thoughts?
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I agree with you but there is also the thought that the SAT doesn't test anything about intelligence. A lot of the time, people say you have to learn how to take the test, not so much the context.
ReplyDeleteI disagree with some of the things you mentioned. The definition of intelligence is actually the ability to learn and adapt. I think that the word "adapt" is extremely important in the definition of intelligence because you need to take into account street smarts. While some people are really good at taking the SAT, they might be really bad about adapting to different situations quickly, and do not have good street smarts. So in order to be very intelligent, you must be good at learning and adapting. With that said, I think it is difficult to change your intelligence level, but it is definitely possible if you work hard enough.
ReplyDeleteWhile I agree with Rachel and Bailey that the SAT is not a full measure of intelligence, it is important to take into account that the SAT is designed such that many of the problems require the ability to use multiple techniques to solve and adapt to a difficult problem. It is also important that the Webster dictionary definition of intelligence is "the ability to learn or understand things or to deal with new or difficult situations", which the SAT addresses by creating new and difficult situations, such as the word problems.
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