You don't need an exact definition in order to be able to measure something approximately. In fact, one could taboo the word "intelligence" entirely and merely

You don't need an exact definition in order to be able to measure something approximately. In fact, one could taboo the word "intelligence" entirely and merely say "that thing we observe where people who do better at these tests seem to also do better at these jobs and are more likely to win board games[1].". While the tails do come apart eventually, the correlation is observable up to at least 130 (there was a strong correlation at my previous work place between those who did well at board games and those who got a lot of good technical work done, these people also tended to have +2sd test scores compared to the +1sd average). Btw: I've read Taleb's charged essay before and found it rather unconvincing. Very much "given these particular papers it's possible high IQ scores correlate with nothing other than high test scores". [1] I'm not just basing this off my own observations, good chess players seem to have 130 level IQs: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0160289613001165 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S01602...