Chris (and anyone following this), the difference is that "general intelligence", often represented by an italicized lower case g, is a well researched term of art in psychometrics, not just a random justaposition of words.
Look up "g factor" in psychology. Wikipedia has a good short summary of the history, the supporting evidence accumu…
Chris (and anyone following this), the difference is that "general intelligence", often represented by an italicized lower case g, is a well researched term of art in psychometrics, not just a random justaposition of words.
Look up "g factor" in psychology. Wikipedia has a good short summary of the history, the supporting evidence accumulated over the past century, the critics, and the response to the critics. I'm serious - read it first and we can talk meaningfully. Until then it's like trying to discuss a "balanced binary tree" with somebody who is reasoning from just knowing what the individual words mean in common English usage, and knows zero about the terms of art in computer science.
Your talk of multiple skills is sensible and you are right that more can be captured with a multiple scale description - and that has been taken into account longer than I've been alive and I'm not young. Lumpers and splitters have had at it for a very long time, as with many other sciences. However, it was noticed a long time ago that there is a substantial positive correlation between tests of cognitive functioning - most are far from orthogonal measures. If you know how well somebody does on a few of them, you can substantially predict how they will do on others (as you say) - obviously not perfectly, but substantially as measured by statistics. The basic theory is that there is a more general component of cognitive ability underlying many of these tests, which can be measured (to useful degree, never perfectly). Modern IQ tests are therefore composed of several sub units.
Think of it like a suite of compiler or processor benchmarks. If you measure a few of them, you can get a pretty good idea of how fast a computer or compiler is in general, tho of course it may do better in one than in another. There is always a fuzziness, but it can be bracketed with error bars like other science.
NOBODY has ever said that g, or IQ tests, measure the only thing worthwhile. EVERY treatise I have read on intelligences makes this point, yet laymen tend to assume that professionals think IQ is the end all and be all - but zero professionals think like that. Nevertheless, what it does measure has been extraordinarily widely shown by science to correlate with many things which do matter. That is, it measures something in the psych with more validity than any other psychometric tests measures anything else, it's reasonably stable for most of life, and that something has substantial predictive value in terms of many other areas of life. People who score high in IQ tend to be people whom upon knowing them well, we consider quite smart - so g is a scientific abstraction, which corresponds to something real and salient in human behavior, which we intuitively recognize as relating to "being smart".
And no, it's not entirely logic based, or even language based - some IQ tests use no language at all (or any language). Properly administering a text involves adapting it such that it can be comprehended in the culture involved, so that not understanding the test is not inhibiting native intelligence from being measured. But that's about comprehension of the test itself; the test is not a test of knowledge, but of the ability to abstractly manipulate the knowledge that one has.
Basically, cross culturally, some people are observably better at figuring out real life scenarios, eg: involving hunting game. Others notice that. Pretty much every innovation in pottery or archery, everywhere in the world regardless of language, likely came from somebody with a high g factor. There will be rare anomalies which very high ability in a particular area and perhaps even sub-average cognitive ability in another - but they ARE anomalies, statistically. They are why there are error bars - IQ or g does not assert that it is all encompassing, there will always be fringe cases. But when tested scientifically and statistically, it's quite robust among all measures.
Again, your perspective might have been cutting edge a few generations ago, but the reasonable concerns you have, have indeed been thoroughly considered and debated over the decades.
Again, just read the Wikipedia summary of the g factor. If you distrust Wikipedia, follow some of the references, or pick up a modern psychometric textbook.
And just to head off misunderstandings (from anybody), I will say again that g (or it's best known approximate measurement, IQ) is just one characteristic in humans. It doesn't tell you who is a good storyteller or musician or friend. I very definitely do not choose mates or friends primarily much less exclusively on that basis; there are more important attributes. And it doesn't tell you everything even about cognition. But a massive amount of evidence shows that it does capture an important (not the only important) factor in human behavior.
And again - I realize that your message already noted some of the elements I am discussing, and elaborating upon.
Chris (and anyone following this), the difference is that "general intelligence", often represented by an italicized lower case g, is a well researched term of art in psychometrics, not just a random justaposition of words.
Look up "g factor" in psychology. Wikipedia has a good short summary of the history, the supporting evidence accumulated over the past century, the critics, and the response to the critics. I'm serious - read it first and we can talk meaningfully. Until then it's like trying to discuss a "balanced binary tree" with somebody who is reasoning from just knowing what the individual words mean in common English usage, and knows zero about the terms of art in computer science.
Your talk of multiple skills is sensible and you are right that more can be captured with a multiple scale description - and that has been taken into account longer than I've been alive and I'm not young. Lumpers and splitters have had at it for a very long time, as with many other sciences. However, it was noticed a long time ago that there is a substantial positive correlation between tests of cognitive functioning - most are far from orthogonal measures. If you know how well somebody does on a few of them, you can substantially predict how they will do on others (as you say) - obviously not perfectly, but substantially as measured by statistics. The basic theory is that there is a more general component of cognitive ability underlying many of these tests, which can be measured (to useful degree, never perfectly). Modern IQ tests are therefore composed of several sub units.
Think of it like a suite of compiler or processor benchmarks. If you measure a few of them, you can get a pretty good idea of how fast a computer or compiler is in general, tho of course it may do better in one than in another. There is always a fuzziness, but it can be bracketed with error bars like other science.
NOBODY has ever said that g, or IQ tests, measure the only thing worthwhile. EVERY treatise I have read on intelligences makes this point, yet laymen tend to assume that professionals think IQ is the end all and be all - but zero professionals think like that. Nevertheless, what it does measure has been extraordinarily widely shown by science to correlate with many things which do matter. That is, it measures something in the psych with more validity than any other psychometric tests measures anything else, it's reasonably stable for most of life, and that something has substantial predictive value in terms of many other areas of life. People who score high in IQ tend to be people whom upon knowing them well, we consider quite smart - so g is a scientific abstraction, which corresponds to something real and salient in human behavior, which we intuitively recognize as relating to "being smart".
And no, it's not entirely logic based, or even language based - some IQ tests use no language at all (or any language). Properly administering a text involves adapting it such that it can be comprehended in the culture involved, so that not understanding the test is not inhibiting native intelligence from being measured. But that's about comprehension of the test itself; the test is not a test of knowledge, but of the ability to abstractly manipulate the knowledge that one has.
Basically, cross culturally, some people are observably better at figuring out real life scenarios, eg: involving hunting game. Others notice that. Pretty much every innovation in pottery or archery, everywhere in the world regardless of language, likely came from somebody with a high g factor. There will be rare anomalies which very high ability in a particular area and perhaps even sub-average cognitive ability in another - but they ARE anomalies, statistically. They are why there are error bars - IQ or g does not assert that it is all encompassing, there will always be fringe cases. But when tested scientifically and statistically, it's quite robust among all measures.
Again, your perspective might have been cutting edge a few generations ago, but the reasonable concerns you have, have indeed been thoroughly considered and debated over the decades.
Again, just read the Wikipedia summary of the g factor. If you distrust Wikipedia, follow some of the references, or pick up a modern psychometric textbook.
And just to head off misunderstandings (from anybody), I will say again that g (or it's best known approximate measurement, IQ) is just one characteristic in humans. It doesn't tell you who is a good storyteller or musician or friend. I very definitely do not choose mates or friends primarily much less exclusively on that basis; there are more important attributes. And it doesn't tell you everything even about cognition. But a massive amount of evidence shows that it does capture an important (not the only important) factor in human behavior.
And again - I realize that your message already noted some of the elements I am discussing, and elaborating upon.