Scott and Todd. Brilliant discussion. It’s one I will read again from both of you convergence and divergence from two men I admire. And it’s delightful to see your friendship and camaraderie amidst your different views and definitions of intelligence. I’ve given several thousand intelligence tests in my clinical psychology life, and the metaphor that came to mind was runners (gifted or not gifted) at the starting block, ready to run the race. It takes a great deal of motivation courage, self-actualized beliefs and many other personality factors to get to the end of the race. Then there’s the whole concept of winners and losers even a brilliant runner comes in second or third thanks for an extremely important conversation.
Thanks Scott & Todd for this discussion. As a therapist, it makes me think how often we are helping people whose inner mind's coping holds back their "Self-actualizing intelligence" so they can make use of their (g) general intelligence to find more satisfying lives. For that reason, the two measures help project how life could be. And it makes me want to say that "success" in worldly pursuits, as a "downstream outcome," depends a lot on self-actualizing intelligence rather than the g type of intelligence.
Thank you, Todd and Scott, for bringing this important and timely discussion about intelligence into a public conversation on this channel. Because it is so timely, I think we also have to bend the discussion toward what we are all witnessing in today's world.
You and Todd offer two valuable and complementary ways of approaching intelligence. Todd clarifies the importance of general cognitive capacity, the ability to reason, learn, and solve problems, while you broaden the conversation toward how people develop and use their capacities in the pursuit of personally meaningful aims. Together, their perspectives invite a timely further discussion in the age of A(G)I (with a wink to General in AGI).
As artificial systems become increasingly powerful in analytical and optimizing tasks, the human challenge may be to cultivate agency. Agency is not guaranteed by cognitive capacity alone; it is a practiced capacity to choose meaningful ends, hold context and relationships in view, and take responsibility for how intelligence is used. This work is needed at three connected levels: personal agency, so individuals can shape purposeful lives; organizational agency, so schools, public institutions, and companies use AI in ways aligned with human values; and civilizational agency, so societies can collectively determine the directions that powerful technologies should serve.
These questions are central to our forthcoming book, The Great Reorientation: Tech Surfing for Human Agency in the AI Age. “Tech Surfing” is the metaphor for learning to navigate the powerful technological waves arriving in our lives, with AI as a major example. Agency is what enables us to read the conditions, choose a direction, and act with skill and responsibility; it is not simply a capability that can be reduced to optimization or coded into a system. The question is not human intelligence versus artificial intelligence, but how we can navigate technological change in ways that strengthen agency at every level.
I think the discussion about intelligence is increasingly coming to the forefront in the context of AI. How will that affect human intelligence? Shouldn’t our future scientific research focus much more on this? You are touching on this in your latest book, 'Leading for Tomorrow,' and offer hooks to deepen that relationship.
Very interesting scholarly debate. Todd wrote, as his primary critique of Scott's definition what amounts to a reductionistic or mechanistic view of intelligence: "Ability belongs in a theory of intelligence. Engagement probably doesn’t. Engagement is influenced by some combination of motivation, perseverance, openness, opportunity, self-regulation, and a half dozen other psychological constructs. Personal goals drag in values and identity, that often are irrelevant to intelligent thought. Multiply them together and you get an exquisite model of human development but not quite this thing called intelligence." This view appears to assert that intelligence needs to be singularly and mechanically understood as part of personality as if it were a piece of a clock without interdependencies or strong feedback loops. He wants a crystallized THING to point at, clearly. While this would be nice to have a clean equation that's easy to understand, methinks it's devoid of the context needed to really place Intelligence into perspective. The PURPOSE of Intelliegence must situated within any model and I do think Self-Actualization makes the most sense - despite it wreaking havoc with the neat compartments and isolated variables derived for other contructs.
I raised an analytic point with Todd in another forum: definitions can be treated as tools and the value of a definition depends on how well it serves a purpose.
In the case of concepts like intelligence we almost always have more focused operational definitions for instrumenting research and then we have broader ones that deliberately capture more of our range of intuitions about the subject.
There’s a psychometric tradition for defining intelligence specifically and precisely as the positive manifold in cognitive ability tests.
And then there have been all sorts of assumptions brought to bear about what that manifold really represents and why there is a positive manifold in the first place.
A lot of debate keeps rehashing that issue but I don’t think Scott is playing that game at all.
I think he is starting from a broader definition of intelligence that does not have anything to do with Spearman’s tradition, nor does he contradict the essence of that tradition in the manifold of cognitive abilities, he is repurposing the term for intelligence in a different functional way. A way that I think is both novel and potentially very valuable. Scott’s construct is not Sternberg’s, nor Gardner’s, those have their own niches I think but neither of those captures the personal developmental normative focus of Scott’s concept. And none of them is a direct replacement for the psychometric conception at this point.
Scott and I had conversations in the past about using other terms besides intelligence for the kind of ability he is trying to capture and for my part I tend to think it comes down as much to branding as to technical precision.
A new idea usually has to pull in and combine existing meanings in order to help evoke the new thinking. Otherwise the concept ends up sounding like one of those awful new drug names, a random string of syllables with no purchase. Intelligence is in this case I think more like a bootstrap word than some sort of a modifier for Spearman’s g.
Really appreciate this exchange between Scott and Todd.
After reading both, to be honest, I really don't know what to make of it at this stage... are we leading towards a concept creep of intelligence? Or is the more expansive lens needed in our culture right now? What are the implications?
This makes me think about the issue in the field of education regarding the lack of transfer. Transfer of learning simply means learning something in one context and applying it to another. There is a body of evidence suggesting that it rarely happens, especially for far transfer. Robert Haskell has a very impt book called Transfer of Learning about this.
By Naval's definition, he himself is not intelligent because it is clear as a day that he wants more than he has achieved.
Existing definitions follow a natural but misleading path. Too much focus on what humans do, while all life forms are intelligent, even more - tissues are intelligent, gene expression is intelligent, swarms of organisms are intelligent, etc. No, I do not consider atoms, rocks, or planets intelligent. Too much focus on what scientists do, while cooks, designers, musicians, etc. are also intelligent.
So what do problem-solving, adaptation, decision-making, goals-achievement, etc. generalize to? We want a "general" definition for general intelligence, don't we? So here is mine - ability to differentiate. To define stuff if you want. To answer questions like: "Does it make a difference?" "What difference does it make?" "What else makes a difference?"
In my Substack "I Solve Intelligence" I post about different aspects of intelligence. Here is a paper where I connected all the dots (so far) into a coherent theory of intelligence:
Excellent issue, well raised & shrewd comments. Since my first undergrad foray into philosophical psychology, the acronym EASI (embodied active situated intelligence) has been an effective & appropriately broad bridge between psych & philosophy of mind. As I read the comments no significant to that acronym objection occurred to me.
Two possible quibbles: 1) rather than “personal agency” ontological agency captures the becoming, evolving, & actualizing aspects of this phenomenon; and, 2) would “pursuits” not be more accurately juxtaposed with outcomes when labeled as “inputs”?
The pursuit-not-outcome is load-bearing, and saves self-actualizing intelligence from collapsing into Naval's definition. Scoring the striving is also consistent with Binet's "judgment, good sense, the faculty of adapting oneself" which appears to be the most durable definition I've come across because it describes a doing, not a quantity.
But watching you and Todd converge made me notice the shape of the whole conversation. Binet has a definition. Gottfredson has one. Naval has one. Maslow gives you yours. Each is pointing at something real; and each calls that real thing "intelligence." The footnote where your original "Personal Intelligence" turned out to share its name with someone else's simultaneous theory is the tell: the field keeps generating new definitions faster than it can keep them distinct, because they're all crowding under one overloaded noun.
I think the recurring need for a qualifier — personal, self-actualizing, practical, fluid, emotional — is the symptom. We keep prefixing "intelligence" because the bare word was asked to carry too many different capacities from the start. Self-actualizing intelligence is a genuine addition. It's also, I suspect, further evidence that "intelligence" stopped being one thing a long time ago.
I felt slightly more intelligent after reading this first thing on a Monday morning - thanks. (Then slightly less intelligent as I failed to put in the verification code correctly - so I could comment - THREE times.)
Scott and Todd. Brilliant discussion. It’s one I will read again from both of you convergence and divergence from two men I admire. And it’s delightful to see your friendship and camaraderie amidst your different views and definitions of intelligence. I’ve given several thousand intelligence tests in my clinical psychology life, and the metaphor that came to mind was runners (gifted or not gifted) at the starting block, ready to run the race. It takes a great deal of motivation courage, self-actualized beliefs and many other personality factors to get to the end of the race. Then there’s the whole concept of winners and losers even a brilliant runner comes in second or third thanks for an extremely important conversation.
❤️
Thanks Scott & Todd for this discussion. As a therapist, it makes me think how often we are helping people whose inner mind's coping holds back their "Self-actualizing intelligence" so they can make use of their (g) general intelligence to find more satisfying lives. For that reason, the two measures help project how life could be. And it makes me want to say that "success" in worldly pursuits, as a "downstream outcome," depends a lot on self-actualizing intelligence rather than the g type of intelligence.
much appreciated
Thank you, Todd and Scott, for bringing this important and timely discussion about intelligence into a public conversation on this channel. Because it is so timely, I think we also have to bend the discussion toward what we are all witnessing in today's world.
You and Todd offer two valuable and complementary ways of approaching intelligence. Todd clarifies the importance of general cognitive capacity, the ability to reason, learn, and solve problems, while you broaden the conversation toward how people develop and use their capacities in the pursuit of personally meaningful aims. Together, their perspectives invite a timely further discussion in the age of A(G)I (with a wink to General in AGI).
As artificial systems become increasingly powerful in analytical and optimizing tasks, the human challenge may be to cultivate agency. Agency is not guaranteed by cognitive capacity alone; it is a practiced capacity to choose meaningful ends, hold context and relationships in view, and take responsibility for how intelligence is used. This work is needed at three connected levels: personal agency, so individuals can shape purposeful lives; organizational agency, so schools, public institutions, and companies use AI in ways aligned with human values; and civilizational agency, so societies can collectively determine the directions that powerful technologies should serve.
These questions are central to our forthcoming book, The Great Reorientation: Tech Surfing for Human Agency in the AI Age. “Tech Surfing” is the metaphor for learning to navigate the powerful technological waves arriving in our lives, with AI as a major example. Agency is what enables us to read the conditions, choose a direction, and act with skill and responsibility; it is not simply a capability that can be reduced to optimization or coded into a system. The question is not human intelligence versus artificial intelligence, but how we can navigate technological change in ways that strengthen agency at every level.
I think the discussion about intelligence is increasingly coming to the forefront in the context of AI. How will that affect human intelligence? Shouldn’t our future scientific research focus much more on this? You are touching on this in your latest book, 'Leading for Tomorrow,' and offer hooks to deepen that relationship.
Thanks Paul. I feel the same as you.
Otherwise known as street smarts.
My definition of intelligence is the person who recognizes that leaf-blowers may be the greatest assault to our health that we have normalized.
Brilliant discussion! I'm working on a similar problem, I think. Looking forward to sharing it soon 🤔
Very interesting scholarly debate. Todd wrote, as his primary critique of Scott's definition what amounts to a reductionistic or mechanistic view of intelligence: "Ability belongs in a theory of intelligence. Engagement probably doesn’t. Engagement is influenced by some combination of motivation, perseverance, openness, opportunity, self-regulation, and a half dozen other psychological constructs. Personal goals drag in values and identity, that often are irrelevant to intelligent thought. Multiply them together and you get an exquisite model of human development but not quite this thing called intelligence." This view appears to assert that intelligence needs to be singularly and mechanically understood as part of personality as if it were a piece of a clock without interdependencies or strong feedback loops. He wants a crystallized THING to point at, clearly. While this would be nice to have a clean equation that's easy to understand, methinks it's devoid of the context needed to really place Intelligence into perspective. The PURPOSE of Intelliegence must situated within any model and I do think Self-Actualization makes the most sense - despite it wreaking havoc with the neat compartments and isolated variables derived for other contructs.
I raised an analytic point with Todd in another forum: definitions can be treated as tools and the value of a definition depends on how well it serves a purpose.
In the case of concepts like intelligence we almost always have more focused operational definitions for instrumenting research and then we have broader ones that deliberately capture more of our range of intuitions about the subject.
There’s a psychometric tradition for defining intelligence specifically and precisely as the positive manifold in cognitive ability tests.
And then there have been all sorts of assumptions brought to bear about what that manifold really represents and why there is a positive manifold in the first place.
A lot of debate keeps rehashing that issue but I don’t think Scott is playing that game at all.
I think he is starting from a broader definition of intelligence that does not have anything to do with Spearman’s tradition, nor does he contradict the essence of that tradition in the manifold of cognitive abilities, he is repurposing the term for intelligence in a different functional way. A way that I think is both novel and potentially very valuable. Scott’s construct is not Sternberg’s, nor Gardner’s, those have their own niches I think but neither of those captures the personal developmental normative focus of Scott’s concept. And none of them is a direct replacement for the psychometric conception at this point.
Scott and I had conversations in the past about using other terms besides intelligence for the kind of ability he is trying to capture and for my part I tend to think it comes down as much to branding as to technical precision.
A new idea usually has to pull in and combine existing meanings in order to help evoke the new thinking. Otherwise the concept ends up sounding like one of those awful new drug names, a random string of syllables with no purchase. Intelligence is in this case I think more like a bootstrap word than some sort of a modifier for Spearman’s g.
I would love to know what you think of this! I saw you were on Jordan Peterson recently and would love to know your take https://substack.com/@layla92/note/p-213559678?r=8sjsj2&utm_medium=ios&utm_source=notes-share-action
How do we measure common sense, or self-actualization? If you can't measure it, then how do we know it exists.
Really appreciate this exchange between Scott and Todd.
After reading both, to be honest, I really don't know what to make of it at this stage... are we leading towards a concept creep of intelligence? Or is the more expansive lens needed in our culture right now? What are the implications?
This makes me think about the issue in the field of education regarding the lack of transfer. Transfer of learning simply means learning something in one context and applying it to another. There is a body of evidence suggesting that it rarely happens, especially for far transfer. Robert Haskell has a very impt book called Transfer of Learning about this.
By Naval's definition, he himself is not intelligent because it is clear as a day that he wants more than he has achieved.
Existing definitions follow a natural but misleading path. Too much focus on what humans do, while all life forms are intelligent, even more - tissues are intelligent, gene expression is intelligent, swarms of organisms are intelligent, etc. No, I do not consider atoms, rocks, or planets intelligent. Too much focus on what scientists do, while cooks, designers, musicians, etc. are also intelligent.
So what do problem-solving, adaptation, decision-making, goals-achievement, etc. generalize to? We want a "general" definition for general intelligence, don't we? So here is mine - ability to differentiate. To define stuff if you want. To answer questions like: "Does it make a difference?" "What difference does it make?" "What else makes a difference?"
In my Substack "I Solve Intelligence" I post about different aspects of intelligence. Here is a paper where I connected all the dots (so far) into a coherent theory of intelligence:
https://20-questions-about-intelligence.tiiny.site
I would love your comments.
Excellent issue, well raised & shrewd comments. Since my first undergrad foray into philosophical psychology, the acronym EASI (embodied active situated intelligence) has been an effective & appropriately broad bridge between psych & philosophy of mind. As I read the comments no significant to that acronym objection occurred to me.
Two possible quibbles: 1) rather than “personal agency” ontological agency captures the becoming, evolving, & actualizing aspects of this phenomenon; and, 2) would “pursuits” not be more accurately juxtaposed with outcomes when labeled as “inputs”?
Thank you all, lovely way to begin a new week. 👍
The pursuit-not-outcome is load-bearing, and saves self-actualizing intelligence from collapsing into Naval's definition. Scoring the striving is also consistent with Binet's "judgment, good sense, the faculty of adapting oneself" which appears to be the most durable definition I've come across because it describes a doing, not a quantity.
But watching you and Todd converge made me notice the shape of the whole conversation. Binet has a definition. Gottfredson has one. Naval has one. Maslow gives you yours. Each is pointing at something real; and each calls that real thing "intelligence." The footnote where your original "Personal Intelligence" turned out to share its name with someone else's simultaneous theory is the tell: the field keeps generating new definitions faster than it can keep them distinct, because they're all crowding under one overloaded noun.
I think the recurring need for a qualifier — personal, self-actualizing, practical, fluid, emotional — is the symptom. We keep prefixing "intelligence" because the bare word was asked to carry too many different capacities from the start. Self-actualizing intelligence is a genuine addition. It's also, I suspect, further evidence that "intelligence" stopped being one thing a long time ago.
I wrote about this proliferation a while back [https://rajeshachanta.substack.com/p/limited-intelligence]: the umbrella problem, and why the adjectives keep multiplying.
I felt slightly more intelligent after reading this first thing on a Monday morning - thanks. (Then slightly less intelligent as I failed to put in the verification code correctly - so I could comment - THREE times.)