This is a wonderful thread. I normally spend time on the engineering forums. I’m glad I wondered over here, where I find this thread on a topic that I’ve studied since childhood, more than five decades ago. Intelligence encompasses many concepts and ideas, many of which have already been mentioned in a piecemeal way in the notes posted above. So now I’ll add my two cents worth.
As a very small child, I was identified as being extremely intelligent and creative. They were looking for kids like us in the post Sputnik era, because we were the ones who were going to save the USA from the Great Red Menace. The fear was that Russia was already ahead of us in science and engineering, and that we had better start educating the next generation to fix that problem. The Space Race evolved out of this sort of thinking. So they set me aside and made sure that I had the most excellent education. The kids who got left out really got left out. Nobody really cared about them. One mantra I heard from my parents and teachers many times when I would ask about the other kids was, “Well, someone has to dig our ditches, but you and your peers are going to save this country.”
They told me that my IQ was at least 145, which is three standard deviations above the mean. They said that IQ measurements above that were unreliable because the sample size was to small to standardize a reliable test in that range. So if anyone talks about an IQ of 170 or 190, they are blowing smoke up your tail pipe. An IQ score can be one of many useful measurements for anyone in the normal range, but it means nothing for those who are truly brilliant. All I knew was that most of the kids in these special classes were a whole lot more intelligent than me, so I grew up thinking that I was less than average. Some were awarded degrees in math and physics simply by passing all the finals without taking any classes, so they started their post graduate work at 17 or 18.
I have always believed that it is possible to train your brain to be more intelligent and more creative by certain techniques, but it has only been recently when some of the cognitive researchers have begun to believe the same thing and figure out how. What they are finding is what I’ve always known, because I learned it by experience. We can thank the Dali Lama for this new research. He chided them for always spending time studying minds that don’t work well. He said they should instead be finding minds that work extremely well and study those. With his endorsement, much of this new research has found funding. Money always seems to follow him around. Every time he suggests that something is a good idea, the funds become available.
Since I was a small child, I have been taught to believe that I would always be successful and that I will accomplish anything I set my mind to do. I believe it much more today than then after all these decades, because I’ve never had an example where it failed me, and I have thousands of examples where it worked exactly like that. This is where the passion comes in that has already been mentioned. The higher the level of passion I can maintain for what I’m doing, the more creative and successful my behavior. After maintaining a fleet of heavy equipment for many years, I got laid off very late in my career. I saw it as a wonderful opportunity to become a jet engine design engineer. That is like an old animal doctor becoming a human brain surgeon. I had not been any sort of design engineer since 1984, I had not kept up with any of the modern design tools, and I knew nothing at all about jet engines. I told this to the first jet engine company that interviewed me, and they hired me with the comment: “You will pick it up in six weeks.” My reputation had preceded me and I’m now designing gas turbines, having fun, and doing well. This is pretty much how my whole life has transpired.
High intelligence has nothing to do with learning stuff, retaining it, and spitting it back out on request. It has to do with finding new and creative applications for what we already know, and with expanding our collective knowledge base by learning things that nobody had known previously. Kelly Johnson studied buzzard wings, which were the basis for his ground breaking and new technology that he put into the U-2 spy plane, and now you will find it on every jet liner. That is true genius. Truly intelligent people have little respect for rules, except those that continue to prove themselves to be useful. They question all rules and everything else we think we know, and from that mental process they will find better ways of living. No paradigm or tradition is scared. I introduced a concept from the Boiler Code to fix a long standing concern in gas turbine design that nobody had as of yet figured out. But the solution was clear, simple, and obvious to me the first time someone showed me the concern. I work with some very brilliant people. They understood and appreciated the solution immediately. I was told by management to document it and teach it to the other engineers.
I’ve never been able to explain to anyone how to train the mind to be more intelligent. We simply don’t have the words or concepts in our English language. But in recent years I’ve become a student of the Christian Kabbalah, because they do have the words and teaching methods to transmit this understanding. All the wisdom traditions teach the same thing, with slight variations in the language they use. Modern psychology is mostly plagiarized from ancient mystics. This is a language filled with esoteric figures of speech—metaphors, parables, similes, and the like. These are the myths and legends of old that are not truly understood, except by those who have studied the language. A story might talk about a river or a mustard seed, for example; but those are just stand-ins for much more sophisticated concepts. Another tradition might substitue an almond or a grain of rice for the mustard seed, but they all seem to speak of rivers in the same way.
The long and the short of it is this: We only use a very small part of our brain for conscious thought, some say only ten percent. The rest is for unconscious thought. It has often been postulated that we could be much more intelligent if we could use more of the brain for conscious thought. Every once in a while, everyone gets a sudden and unexpected download of unconscious thought into the conscious part of the brain. These are those sudden flashes of inspiration or insight that surprise and delight us. Intelligent people get them more often, but the truly brilliant understand how to go into the unconscious mind and draw out what is needed. This explains people like the great masters of old, and some of the ones still living. The things we draw out of our unconscious mind will relate to whatever we are most passionate about.
Another thing the truly brilliant do is to refuse to file data in the mind under a rigid rule of classification. Much better to let it float around and find a new home. I’ve used things I learned studying ancient Philistine architecture in aerospace design. Other engineers said that was an excellent idea, but how did I ever think of it or make the connection? It just came naturally to me, because of the loose structure in my mind. Everything that I’ve ever learned is in my subconscious mind, but I will download it to conscious thought if and when I need it.
I’ve seen it mentioned that what is done by instinct, like some of our best sports stars, is not really intelligence. What is done by instinct is coming from the subconscious mind. I’d prefer to say that they have learned to be very intelligent concerning they things about which they are most passionate.
I am not in the least bit religious. But consider this: The words “spiritual,” “philosophy,” and “psychological” all come from the same ancient root concept. It was an endeavor to better understand how our minds work. Those that have failed to understand this are the ones who have invented all these religions that depend on faith rather than rational thought. I have faith, which is literally to say that I believe. But what I believe most strongly is that which I’ve experienced, and that which I can duplicate in similar circumstances.
