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[Jackrabbit]

Seems like something interesting to debate, given the amount of clever people here. I have none, and thus shall not take part. I was just wondering what you'd come up with when asked this.

[IndonesiaWarMinister]

Intelligence?

Spies?

[Cthulhu]

If smartness is water, intelligence is the size of your bucket.  That's what I've grown up believing.

[MrWiggles]

Are we using as a intelligence to cover sapient, sentience and self awareness?

[Duke 2.0]

 There are many different configurations of intelligence, smartness, cleverness, IQ, mentality, judgment and wit, but I don't bother with it. To me there is just educated and ignorant, with some little extras like how well one applies said knowledge or how easily somebody can learn specific skills.

 Sure it does not work in all situations, but generally everybody can know whatever they work for.

 And to get rid of this before anybody else makes a post with just this image, thus creating a generally useless post:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

[Vester]

I like to think of "IQ" as a measuring cup, rather than a set amount. IQ by that definition is how intelligent you can become, not necessarily how intelligent you are.

[Heron TSG]

IQ is actually how intelligent you are based on the average for your age. It is not helpful when comparing people of differing ages.

[Vester]

Yeah, so I assume the measuring cup gets bigger over time.

[Kagus]

I've generally considered intelligence to be a measure of how quickly a person can learn (not just memorize) a new concept and then apply it (or, better yet, improve upon it).  I preach this to get away with calling myself intelligent, despite my profound ignorance.

[LegoLord]

That sounds more like what I'm about to describe (I originally typed it up 20 minutes ago - internet issues):
Actual intelligence is only a fraction of what makes a great mind, such as those who are widely considered "the smartest" such as Einstein.

Intelligence is merely a synonym with factual knowledge.  Intelligent people can do rather stupid things or not, depending on the other factors.  Some people intelligent enough to design new, powerful weapons thought that their invention would actually put an end to conflict.  Now everyone might be using this weapon, its predecessors now abandoned.

Wisdom is knowledge of . . . well, it's hard to describe.  A man can be wise without intelligence.  I cannot recall what this is from, but I once read the following:  "Wisdom really seems to be just common sense."  Which, thinking about it, is true.  Common sense is surprisingly uncommon.  Paying attention to a text conversation on your cell phone, while driving?  Some intelligent people do that.  Some unintelligent people do that.  People who don't do that are wise - they have their attention on the road, and can see what's coming and avoid it - but they don't necessarily have to have the highest SAT scores (I know people who have high SAT scores, yet text while driving.  Why can't they just talk about who's dating who when they aren't in a deadly fast mass of metal, and not making everyone else on the road nervous?)  Ability to learn (and not just memorize) probably is somewhat related to wisdom.

Then there is creativity.  There are intelligent physicists out there, but so many of them are narrow-minded and probably won't discover anything significant.  They lack the creativity to come up with an idea, determine how to test it, see how it works, to link different - seemingly unrelated - ideas together.  The people who figured out the "basics" that may eventually lead to faster-than-light travel (couple hundred years off, unfortunately) were probably fairly creative.

That seems to be it.  All in all, it seems unfortunate that we can only reliably test intelligence.

[Winterbrass]

Yeah, so I assume the measuring cup gets bigger over time.

Or changes, at the very minimum.

[Zironic]

The lack of it is defined in this topic. Intelligence is nothing compared to willingness to work for innovation and change.

[Ampersand]

I'd argue that intelligence is the ability to act on that willingness.

[Jackrabbit]

The lack of it is defined in this topic. Intelligence is nothing compared to willingness to work for innovation and change.

Surely you'd need intelligence for that?

[Sordid]

I'm partial to this guy's idea that intelligence is not the ability to make decisions but rather to make predictions. As he says, even as you're sitting there you are being intelligent and making predictions, and so you know what word comes at the end of this sentence.