<p>Spartan, I didn't see Kevin's assertion that the SAT was merely "stupid". Trust me, I find this kind of attitude disturbing as well. I did read statements like this:</p>
<p>"Why is it then, Kevin, that you fail to achieve high scores? Can you give me a reason for this? If you can't do simple Math - can't even find grammatical errors in sentences, what can you do? What do you have to build an educative base off of?"</p>
<p>This is simply condescending, with no real purpose.</p>
<p>General Rak, I don't entirely discount the idea of "general intelligence". What struck me about Spartan was that his ideas about intelligence (sorry if I'm wrong) seemed to be based more upon arrogant intuition than upon a thoughtful evaluation of the nature of aptitude and the tests that measure it. This is an impulse that I, personally, have strugged to resist in the past, and I feel that it should be restrained.</p>
<p>That said, the article you cite presents a very fact-oriented defense of intelligence theory. However, I found the "sample IQ items" (<a href="http://www.psych.utoronto.ca/%7Ereingold/courses/intelligence/cache/1198gottfredbox1.html%5B/url%5D">http://www.psych.utoronto.ca/~reingold/courses/intelligence/cache/1198gottfredbox1.html</a>) to be <em>very</em> revealing. Take a look at these questions - to me, they don't seem to be measuring natural intelligence at all, but rather a set of skills and knowledge that happens to be stressed in many affluent suburban classrooms. In a way, they're much like the SAT.</p>
<p>Forgive me if I'm venturing too far into the territory of irrational progressives, many of who seek to deny the existence of any innate differences in ability (in order to justify social welfare programs, since the imbalances of capitalism then couldn't have a natural basis). However, for instance, identifying that a sequence of numbers consists of n, n^2, n+1, (n+1)^2, etc... (as in the sample "IQ" questions) is more an acquired skill than a natural one. I wonder if many of the socioeconomic "effects" of intelligence so enthusiastically cited by proponents of g-theory merely reflect the general perpetuation of the existing economic order.</p>
<p>I always keep in mind that, in much the same way that liberals tend to deemphasize the existence of general intelligence, conservatives often enthusiastically affirm it, and both these tendencies color the commentary we receive on this issue. For instance, the Scientific American article cites someone from the American Enterprise Institute, an organization that has shown little reluctance to twist facts to suit its agenda in the past. I'm not saying that this automatically discredits anything that the AEI puts out, but it's certainly something to remember.</p>
<p>"Other forms of intelligence have been proposed; among them, emotional intelligence and practical intelligence are perhaps the best known. They are probably amalgams either of intellect and personality or of intellect and informal experience in specific job or life settings, respectively."</p>
<p>This is a quote from the Scientific American article, and hints at some of the author's rigid conceptions. In a sense, she doesn't get it. She essentially assumes that "intellect" and external influences are separate entities, and that the multiple types of intelligence cited by many researchers differ only in the mixes of inborn aptitude and environmental factors that they reflect. She doesn't accept the idea that there may simply be different kinds of natural aptitude.</p>
<p>Nevertheless, the case put forward for the existence of some general intelligence is quite compelling, and I'm not one to deny its validity. However, I do think that it has been exaggerated and grossly misused.</p>