Intelligence

Someone has suggested that intelligence is what you use when you don't know what you do.
That's a relief to know because I was brought up to believe that intelligence was the major ingredient in everything I was not good at: Latin, physics algebra and others.
Intelligence has been given a fixed value so it is easier to grasp, in consequence we treat it as something specific rather than a convenient label.
It's fallacy to think people can be neatly ranked from ape to Einstein.
Those who compose intelligence tests can only measure skills similar to their own.
Conventional IQ tests would be useless in assessing the spatial intelligence of a Rudolf Nureyev, the musical intelligence of a Philip Glass, or the visual intelligence of an Alexander Calder.
Originally the designing of artificial intelligence programmes was based on logical deduction and rational response.
In consequence it was easier to mimic the thought process of a chess master concerned with determined patterns, than a child who imagines randomly and makes improbable analogies.
To be comparable to the real thing artificial intelligence has to accommodate subjective as well as objective processes.
And that's about the unpredictable and irrational, in other words behaving like humans.

We are overly impressed by the ability to calculate and rationalize, and inadequately impressed by the ability to see possibilities and make connections.
And connections, as Adam and Eve discovered, are what life is about.