Intelligence is a term that must be positive since it is believed intelligence is helping mankind..?

Question

.. by bringing about better lives and futures for all. If not all people are enjoying/ reaping the fruits of intelligence then why should the definition be universal? And then, if supposed intelligence is creating too many negative side effects in the lives of most people (at least indirectly), then the meaning of the word must be redefined. So, in this day and age, what does one mean when one speaks of intelligence and sets apart oneself as intelligent as opposed to another? And doesn't it take intelligence to survive in any given enviroment?

Mike10613, thanks but you still haven't given answers to the question.

That was a long article. Thank you for your response. You say "Intelligence is the ability to take the mental powers that you have and make the best of them". I believe when you say "make the best of them" you still mean finding ways of making life easier. When people use intelligence negatively and wage chemical or biological warfare I believe that they are thinking life/it would be better/easier if so and so was removed. Isn't that why the question is often asked whether economic and material "developement" has brought true hapiness or not. It is assumed that since life has been made much easier people will respond to that with greater hapiness. So people want to relieve themselves of hunger, pain, toil and its wear and tear, disease, cold etc. Needs are not the same in every enviroment nor the solutions. What may be perceived as problematic and needing solutions in one enviroment may be looked upon as OK in another. People will use & build on what works for them in an enviroment.

Answer 1

We started being intelligent as a baby.

Answer 2

I read this week about a guy who hurt his leg - and at the hospital they noticed as a child he has fluid on his brain and so did an MRI scan - he had virtually no brain left! All his skull was full of fluid. An IQ test tested him below average IQ - but he held down a job and had a wife and two children. Thank god he was a civil servant or someone may have noticed earlier! Unless of course he had gone in to politics . . .

Answer 3

Intelligence is the ability to take the mental powers that you have and make the best of them. Allowing you to make the best use of what is in your environment. The IQ or intelligent quota is an attempt to measure this.

You have a sunny view of intelligence.

You forgot the intelligence behind the Nazi Death Camps that found the most efficient method of genocide, and a way to profit off the mass killing of others. The gold was harvested from the teeth, their belongings confiscated and even lamp shades made out of Jewish Skin.

You forgot the intelligence behind the horror of the Anthrax Attacks or the genius that turned four planes into flying bombs on 9/11 2000.

Intelligence is like a gun it is neither good nor evil its power lies in the user. It can make vaccines and save millions or create a nuclear weapon that can kill them. It can make communication easier and faster with email communication, or it can clog those lines with viruses turning computers into zombies to churn out spam.

Intelligence is the ability to make use of knowledge and skills that lie in your brain. Einstein worked with the same basic knowledge of thousands of others yet only his work created so many important theories and started a revolution that changed the modern world. Hitler’s name is synonymous with horror, the planning and the execution was brilliant.

Intelligence is required in any endeavor; it makes the difference between failure and success. It doesn’t have to be great, because determination can make up the difference. Even those of lesser intelligence succeed; it’s just easier for those who are smarter. The absent minded professor is a stereotype of a person that is so skilled in a specific area, but so unskilled in the simple area of life. The true story behind the absent minded professor is that she hasn’t turned her mighty intelligence toward those simple issues.

No one considers a cave man to be a genius, but they survived when life was its hardest, and they used their intelligence to give us the foundations for all of our society. They became the most successful mammal on the planet and the only one that changes the environment to suit our own tastes. A monkey can be smart and capable of amazing things, yet the most complex tool they use is a simple straw. The ability to make a fire-hardened spear that can multiply a man’s strength and killing ability became the difference between our success and death as a race.

Intelligence can be simple or complex. From simple sliced bread to the core of a computer. We take both for granted but, the first idea to make them was an act of genius. We can’t metabolize raw wheat very well, yet simple bread has feed billions of people. The inventor’s name is lost to history but in their way they were every bit as intelligent as some of our best scientists. Wheat had been there since before man, it was a nutritious weed, but it took a genus to turn it into a crop that could feed so many. Everyone saw it and knew about it, but it took one person or a small group to transform it into bread.

The ancient Egyptians and Romans had a counting system and math helped them build an empire. Simple accounting gave them control over their inventory and allowed them to forecast surplus and need. Responding to each before it became a problem. We have taken that same math and sent men to the moon. Yet without the concept of zero we would never have gotten there. The zero gave us a much simpler math, just try to read the date in Roman numerals and you will see what I mean. Romans never did math in there head they needed to do it all on paper.

Intelligence is the ability to take what is there and to mentally come up with a way to use it. The best intelligence uses the material in the best way, and the geniuses find a way to create something new and valuable. We all have had the same raw material, but those with the most intelligence, or those that make the best use of what they have are able to make new and revolutionary ideas.

Edison was uneducated, poor and a drop out he never did well in school. But, he had the determination to succeed, the will to experiment and the intelligence to see a need and to find a new way to fill it. The light bulb was a roaring success, but it was all done with trial and error. Edison didn’t invent the light bulb so much as design hundreds of bulbs that didn’t work. He didn’t understand the basic physics that would tell him that cotton would never work, so he tried it. He did have the intelligence to see that he could create an electric light and he took what was lying around and worked until he created one that stayed lit. His employees refined it, used tungsten, and pulled the oxygen out of the glass bulb. They frosted it to soften the light and continued to make it better, but without HIS idea they all would have been lost.

Answer 4

Good question however I believe that choices make the person not intelligence. I mean there could be a very intelligent person who goes evil then there could be a dummer person who could be very nice !