I don't agree that there's more than one kind of intelligence. People have various abilities, skills, and gifts, but being good at something isn't a type of in

I don't agree that there's more than one kind of intelligence. People have various abilities, skills, and gifts, but being good at something isn't a type of intelligence. I know that psychological professionals may disagree, but I think that applying intelligence to anything but "general intelligence" is something we've invented to keep people from feeling bad about themselves. So in a way, I agree with what you're saying, but I'm not sure if it's in the way that you were thinking. My position on intelligence is that it's largely overrated. It's good for predicting outcomes, and it's effective for determining whether someone is mentally challenged, but greater intelligence has drawbacks for the individual. What makes many people successful, regardless, of IQ, is having a framework by which they make smart decisions. Contrast the 90 IQ person who makes smart decisions to avoid pitfalls and be likable to others with the 145 IQ gifted person who can't get anyone to like them, can't relate to others, and struggles to function in a general domain. If you want others to believe in you and to like you, it mostly comes down to making decisions that create that perception. The simplest one is merely showing up to your job on time. People who show up on time are far more likely to keep their jobs. Knowing history and having good conversational skills creates likability and intellectual respect, yet those areas don't require an above average IQ at all. Intelligent people might know a lot about history, but can have poor conversational skills and not know when to shut up about the Roman Empire. Intelligence is positively correlated with various mental illnesses which can subject them to addiction and poor decision making, whereas the 90 IQ person who doesn't impulse buy and pays off their debts is capable of being in a better state in life than the 145 IQ person who lives in a shoebox apartment because they can't hold down a tedious job that pays, they have no friends or family of their own, and they keep spending their earnings on weed and other nonsense. This doesn't mean that intelligence is worthless, but properly trained "dumb" people can beat many "gifted" people without even given them smart drugs.