The Pros And Cons Of Intelligence

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Intelligence Redefined It’s a bright, beautiful day outside. Birds are cawing, dogs are barking, and children are yelling as they chase each other around. My friend KC, however, is not outside enjoying this weather, but instead is inside playing video games. Why is this? Is he lazy? Maybe it’s too hot for him. Maybe the bugs eat him up when he goes outside. When asked about his choice of staying inside and playing video games versus going outside, he wryly replied, “This is what I’m good at and I enjoy it.” Therein lies the essence of intelligence: recognizing what you are proficient at and using these proficiencies in a way that benefits you in some way. Not everyone is able to paint or create music. Some enjoy rock-climbing or running long …show more content…

Everyone is different, with varying levels and types of intelligence. In general, intelligence isn’t merely a measure of one’s proficiency with a certain skill; it also includes being able to apply knowledge towards real-life situations in such a way as to be helpful for the person involved. IQ tests measure certain forms of intelligence, but they can’t paint a full picture of a person with just a number. Jason Garver also mentions how IQs can change over time in his article “Intelligence: Moving Beyond IQ.” Someone with a low IQ score could easily be one of the best musicians of our generation, or vice-versa. KC possesses general intelligence because he uses his prior knowledge and experiences, along with his various abilities in an effort to further his understanding of the world. The focus of this paper, however, will be to break down general intelligence into Howard Gardner’s Theory of Multiple Intelligences and use KC’s experiences and abilities to relate each type of intelligence back …show more content…

Being able to differentiate between what sorts of intelligence people have is a step towards acceptance on a large scale for any and all people. There are many scales among these categories, ranging from having a great deal of said intelligence to having very little. Intelligence is not black and white as some believe, but rather a large, interlocking mechanism of our abilities and skills, applied to real world scenarios. All people are born with a certain level of base intelligence, but what they do with that intelligence and how hard they work on their skills or abilities determines how much of a certain intelligence type that person possesses. Some people are more inclined towards certain intelligence types than others. Again, this is something they are born with, but that doesn’t mean that they can’t improve their other intelligence types through hard work and accumulation of knowledge. The intelligences listed above are not comprehensive, though they provide a solid framework with which we should look at intelligence in the

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