Intelligence. Part The First

The Story
I got this rather interesting story on WhatsApp, a story that has been attributed to Isaac Asimov. I have no clue about whether or not this story has been correctly attributed to Isaac Asimov or not, but it is an interesting story nevertheless.
So, fasten your seatbelts, and read on. The story is called “What is Intelligence anyway?”
When I was in the army, I received the kind of aptitude test that all soldiers took, and against a normal of 100, scored 160. No one at the base had ever seen a figure like that, and for two hours they made a big fuss over me.
It didn’t mean anything. The next day I was still a buck private with KP — kitchen police — as my highest duty.
All my life I’ve been registering scores like that so that I have the complacent feeling that I’m highly intelligent, and I expect others to think so.
Actually, though, don’t such scores simply mean that I am very good at answering the type of academic questions that are considered worthy of answers who make up the intelligence tests — people with intellectual bents similar to mine?
For instance, I had an auto-repair man once, who, on these intelligence tests, could not have possibly scored more than 80, by my estimate. I always took it for granted that I was far more intelligent than he was.
Yet, when anything went wrong with my car I hastened to him with it, watched him anxiously as he explored its vitals, and listened to his pronouncements as they were divine oracles — and he always fixed my car.
Well, then, suppose my auto-repair man devised questions for an intelligence test.
Or suppose a carpenter did, or a farmer, or, indeed, almost anyone but an academician. By every one of these tests, I’d prove myself a moron, and I’d be a moron, too.
In a world where I could not use my academic training and verbal talents but had to do something intricate or hard-working, working with my hands, I’d do poorly.
My intelligence, then, is not absolute but is a function of the society I live in and of the fact that a small subsection of that society has managed to foist itself on the rest as an arbiter of such matters.
Consider my auto-repair man, again.
He had a habit of telling me joked whenever he saw me.
One time he raised his head from under the automobile hood to say: “Doc, a deaf and mute guy went into a hardware store to ask for some nails. He put two fingers together on the counter and made hammering motions with the other hand.”
“The clerk brought him a hammer. He shook his head and pointed to the two fingers he was hammering. The clerk brought him nails. He picked out the sizes he wanted and left. Well, doc, the next guy who came in was a blind man. He wanted some scissors. How do you suppose he asked for them?”
Indulgently, I lifted my right hand and made scissoring motions with my first two fingers.
Whereupon my auto-repair man laughed raucously and said, “Why, you dumb jerk, he used his voice and asked for them!”
Then he said smugly, “I’ve been trying that on all my customers today”.
“Did you catch many?” I asked.
“Quite a few,” he said, “but I knew for sure I’d catch you.”
“Why is that?” I asked.
“Because you’re so goddammed educated, Doc, I knew you could not be very smart!”.
And I had an uneasy feeling he had something there.
What is intelligence?
This is a difficult one to define. In India, kids are under a lot of pressure when they have to give their Board Exams. It is stressful, and some of the brightest get almost perfect marks.
A young lady, this year, got 499 marks out of 500.
Is she that intelligent?
A few years back, when I interviewed a kid who had graduated in metallurgical engineering from my alma mater, I discovered that he had forgotten the simplest phase diagram — the copper-nickel one. His excuse was that he had studied the subject 18 months back, so could not be expected to retain it in his memory, even though his grade in that subject was A+
So, is memorizing a subject, and to have the ability to spit out the answers to near perfection, a measure of intelligence? Or, is it a measure of one kind of intelligence?
Is the ability to apply knowledge a better form of intelligence?
Or, is the ability to think a better form of intelligence? You can apply knowledge only you can think. However, the ability to think clearly and calmly also allows you to pause before you react.
It’s often been said that we use less than 20% of our brain’s thinking capability. The question remains — which 20%?
