> Across every known measurement, human (and animal) intelligence is convergent. Being better at one thing correlates with being better at another thing.
LOL. Human (and animal!) intelligence is notoriously jagged. We're all basically idiots except for very narrow areas where we focus.
This is simply untrue. I tried to think of an animal example so I could give a concession, and there just...aren't any.
Smarter just means smarter.
As anyone who's needed to provide IT support to a doctor, lawyer, lauded academic or host of otherwise "smart professionals", can assert, you can be very very smart in one area and very stupid in another.
See for example Paul Framton https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/mar/30/physicist-mode...
Ah I see.
This is the classic error in mixing up knowledge / experience and intelligence.
Intelligence is the ability to quickly process, understand, learn, and use information. It does not imply having already been exposed to any given information.
A smart doctor may have terrible computer skills. But this is from lack of experience and interest, not lack of ability to learn how to use computers.
But take that smart doctor, and a relatively dumb person who is equally inexperienced with computers. Now give them a month and incentive to learn computers. The doctor will learn much more; that's intelligence.
There is IQ, EQ, and even purely intellectual aspects have a million facets. So you're wrong even on that front.
Someone can be really good at physics and suck completely at biology, due to factors we don't even understand (motivation probably being the main one we do understand).
We even see this in practice with super bright tech people, especially programmers, failing at launching businesses or at adapting in other lines of work such as management, finance, etc.
> There is IQ, EQ, and even purely intellectual aspects have a million facets. So you're wrong even on that front.
This is simply not true. EQ is not a real construct supported by research. There are not 'intellectual aspects' that diverge from g.
Do yourself a favor and familiarize yourself with the psychological literature. I don't mean this in a condescending way! The gap between popular reporting and actual psych research is enormous and not at all your fault. I only know this myself because I did a PhD in research psychology.
Cats famously have more brainpower than dogs. But dogs understand us humans far better than any cat.
Someone who actually works with real animals (farmers? Ranchers??) would come up with better examples. But I'm just city boy over here who only meets cats and dogs on a regular basis.
I was about to respond 'great counterexample' but I looked it up and apparently dogs actually have quite a bit more brainpower than cats:
https://www.britannica.com/story/are-dogs-smarter-than-cats
Hmm, I can believe that it depends on the breed of a dog.
But in any case, Britannica is a good source so I stand corrected on this subject.