No this isn't about artificial intelligence. Nor is it about extra-terrestrials. Or about intelligence of plants and animals. This is about mankind.
We generally attribute certain characteristics to intelligence - good memory, being able to think both logically and laterally and being able to concentrate for periods of time. And while these are good for the education we receive at school and university, is this the only type of intelligence that matters? Are things like intuition not important? And what about inter-people "intelligence" (for want of a better phrase)? Knowing what to say to people, how to make a good impression, put people at ease and things like that? What about adaptability? Is that not an intelligence trait?
We then get into the question of which of these are more important for general life? For work life it is very dependent on the career you plan to take up, and I would have thought that for most people they try to go for a career which is suited to their abilities in these matters. Meeting new people there is one that stands out, but when in conversation with people you've known longer then it matters more that you have similar levels of the earlier traits so you can have a two way conversation and push each other.
Tests never seem to treat these later aspects, and I'm sure there are plenty of others I've overlooked. I think they are as important as the things that we do test for and I would like to see more. I also think it would be interesting to see how different people would score - would people with a conventionally high IQ score well, or whether we would see a convolution of the distributions - and what the relation between them would be.
