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> intelligence [is] the ability to tell what is true from what is false. This is a poor definition. There are very intelligent Christians and very intelligent
by umanwizard 8y ago
> intelligence [is] the ability to tell what is true from what is false.
This is a poor definition. There are very intelligent Christians and very intelligent atheists. They can't both be right. Isaac Newton, one of the most intelligent people in history, believed in all sorts of weird astrological stuff. Etc.
My view is that intelligence is a number that's correlated with a wide variety of different measures of cognitive performance. So it's not really possible to give a glib, one-sentence description of it.
- placebo 8y ago>It's not really possible to give a glib, one-sentence description of it. And yet, you just did. My definition is poor if you turn it into something simplistic and not realise the vast number of ways and levels of abstraction in which truth can be distinguished from falsehood, which gives rise to various forms of intelligence. It boils down to having a less limiting understanding of the concept of truth. Intelligent atheists and intelligent Christians can't both be right about what? They can both be right about some things and wrong about other things, but that is true of any two different people, not only any two different groups.