Author: Curt Doolittle

INTELLIGENCE

Practicable Intelligence is comprised of four different factors:

1) General intelligence. Which we usually aggregate under the measurement of IQ. This is the ability to identify and make use of abstractions in real time. Given enough time, random trial and error can solve any problem. Intelligence reduces the time necessary to identify a causal relation.

2) Short Term Memory. As a rule of thumb, a concept of any complexity can be ‘experienced’ and therefore understood, if it can be constructed from a combination of memories and stimuli within a two to three second window. Short term memory. Short term memory facilitates this process so that the association engine (intuition) can be steered toward desired ends, until enough of a construct can be created to facilitate the formation of a new idea. Einstein was being serious when he said that he had just thought about the problem longer than anyone else. (this is my particular weakness)

3) General knowledge. The more you have, the more likely it is that a pattern that you encounter will exist in your memory rather than require pure association from your brain. General knowledge must be separated into explicit versus tacit forms, and into true (correspondence with reality) and false (failure to correspond to reality) categories. Long term memory, and the ability to access it, is necessary for the accumulation of general knowledge, and the ability to retain that knowledge by forming associations that give access to that knowledge from multiple avenues.

4) Desires and Beliefs. If you believe or desire something that does not or cannot correspond to reality, then this In my experience intelligence comes from wanting to know the answer to a problem, rather than wanting an outcome and seeking an answer suit it.

While intelligence can be limited by any one of these factors, most correctable human intellectual failure comes not from general intelligence, a lack of short term memory, or an absence of general knowledge. But from beliefs and desires, usually instinctual, or sentimental, that do not correspond with the reality of life in a division of knowledge and labor, whose information system is the abstraction of prices, where social cues are often contrary to price information.

The human senses are available to almost all of us. They are easily access without rational criticism. But they tell us very little about which actions we should take. That information comes from the purely abstract information of prices. And we cannot access the content of prices without rational criticism, the institution of property which allows us to plan using prices, and a significant effort expended in planning, forgoing sensory experiences, and expending effort on the promise of reward in the future.

In our homes, pubs, coffee houses, churches, and jobs we can rely on our senses. In the market we cannot. We can only hope that by submersion in a culture within the market that our senses adapt to the patterns that emerge from the market, expressed in the behavior of others who do understand that market, and by doing so, obtain by imitation and empathy that which we cannot obtain by abstract reason and the information supplied by prices.

For this reason, one need not be possessed of extraordinary cognitive power, short term memory, general knowledge, or even rational wants and beliefs. One only need experience and imitate the patterns of behavior of others within that market who are successful within it.

In simple terms, this means, that traditions, morals, ethics, and habits in a homogenous society can compensate for an unequal distribution of intelligence and impulsivity.