Me More Dumber

human intelligence, mental quality that consists of the abilities to learn from experience, adapt to new situations, understand and handle abstract concepts, and use knowledge to manipulate one’s environment.

There is actually a thing, called G by psychologists, that has consistently been shown by statistical analysis to underlie the qualities outlined in the definition above.  There are certainly differences at a level above that which are more specific, mathematicians are better at abstract thought than verbal communication, but the chances are that an intelligent mathematician will be better than the average person at verbal skills.

I have been tested for intelligence by a number of tests and I have scored somewhere in the top 1% of the population.  However, all of those tests were conducted at a minimum of fifteen years ago.  I have previously always felt like I was a very clever person, although my "g" is higher than my functional intelligence, largely due to a lack of effort in many areas.  I am much better than average at most problems, but much worse than most experts in that area. I think a lot of people think they are very clever, and most of them aren't.  I tend to be concerned that my own abilities or opinions are incorrect (until I examine them) and so the objective tests are nice in that they confirm my opinion of myself.

However, recently I have felt substantially less intelligent.  There have been a number of situations in which I have had disagreements/arguments/debates with people and found myself not only wrong, but embarrassingly wrong.  I used to make bets with my wife and would usually win.  Now I usually lose. My confidence in my own intelligence has decreased, it feels like I am getting dumber.

Now, research has shown that over time g decreases, as one would expect.  The body deteriorates over time and there is no reason to think the brain operates under different rules.  However, research has shown that functional intelligence, the ability to solve problems and change the environment, remains the same.  In our day-to-day lives our ability to solve usual problems remains about the same.  the general explanation for this is that the longer you live the greater the number of skills you learn to solve problems.  A teenager faced with a real-world problem will have to guess to a certain extent, an older person may well have a method of solving such problems already.  Given an entirely novel problem young people do better.  This is why young people make lots of mistakes in their personal lives but can operate new technology.

I have generally been interested in debate, argument, to an extent challenging myself against intellectual problems (until I feel I have a basic understanding of the situation.)  It may be that over time I seek at more and more difficult problems, and the internet makes seeking out arguments about these problems easier.  People tend to argue about what they know, and perhaps this is why I have been wrong more recently.  It may be simply random chance, which looks very different to how people think of it (if there aren't clumps of similar events, it probably isn't random.)  it may be that the reduction in conversation I have with people has reduced my skills.  It may be simply that I am getting dumber (drinking alcohol regularly is bad for your brain)  it may be that I am wrong about becoming dumber.

I think intelligence is often unrelated.  Some of the happiest people I have met have been people with very low intelligence.  Most people muddle through life just fine.  Intelligence does matter in that it helps you to make better decisions, but as with all abilities decline feels like a loss.  One of the great problems for people with traumatic brain injuries (anecdotally the most miserable group of people I have met) is that they know that they used to be able to do things, even if they don't know or understand what that thing was.

Perhaps I need to be surrounded by more idiocy in my life to bolster my ego.  Perhaps I need to take more IQ tests to confirm or deny my feelings. Perhaps I should stop examining my own feelings and beliefs and just yell at everyone else for being wrong, like 95% of the internet.