thoughts on intelligence

[arethinn]

I don't generally think of myself as particularly intelligent.. oh, smater than the average bear, to be sure; but not the kind of intelligent that easily solves adventure games or logic puzzles. The steps or actions to be taken completely elude me; I'm not good at picking up on clues to figure them out. For learning to do a complex task or figuring out a new computer program (using an app, that is, not writing them), though, I find that the apparent actions to take are generally quite obvious, or I only have to be told once to remember (usually it helps to put it immediately into practice). Helping people with (to me) simple computer questions at work, however, puts this into perspective: clearly actions which are obvious to me are not necessarily obvious to all. Does this mean (circularly enough) that I am perfectly bright, just that I'm not as intelligent as the people as whom I'm not as intelligent? (whoa thar, English! whoa!)

How come they can still solve the adventure games, then? hmm....

Comments

[digitalsidhe.livejournal.com]

I gave up on adventure games a long time ago (back when Infocom text-based games were the big thing) because they didn’t really exercise your intelligence; they just exercised you problem-solving ability. And the two are very different.

Problem-solving is all about whether you can figure out what the problem-poser was thinking. The Infocom game for The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy was a perfect example of that. How do you get the Babel fish into your ear? Why, of course, you bounce the fish off the wall, or something stupid like that. (I don’t remember the details; they weren’t worth the brain cells.) excuse me, but would this ever work in real life? No, of course not.

Being able to solve a “problem” like that is not a mark of intelligence; it’s simply a mark of tenacity (and lots of free time). Given a situation like that, the real intelligent response is to go “this is idiotic; I’m not wasting my time with it” and go on to something more interesting. Which is what I always used to do (hence why I always washed out on those games), and I suspect what you tend to do as well.

This is only a bad thing when someone’s actually scoring your performance, like on an IQ test.

Of course, the people who were addicted to games like that are all about to scream at me for slamming on one of their favorite pastimes. So what? I don’t care. I honestly do think it’s more of a mark of intelligence to go “Hey, this is stupid” than to keep on banging away at something that obviously has no logic or real-world applicability to it — unless you’re actually getting enjoyment out of it. That’s an entirely different criterion, of course. Personally, I never got any enjoyment out of those things. But seeking enjoyment in useless entertainment is a mark of intelligence. (Of course, what one intelligence enjoys may be anathema to another...)

I’ve noticed that I’m much more apt to solve a problem if it isn’t one whose answer can be looked up at the back of the book, or isn’t encoded in the source code to the program, or whatever. If I actually get something for solving it (aside from the happy warm glow of having done it — reproducing someone else’s work isn’t that much of an attraction for me). Something like the joy of seeing my program run, or knowing that I’ve built a new tool. Making new stuff turns me on; solving old problems doesn’t do squat for me.

And adventure games? Those are all instances of solving old problems. Someone borrowed a logic problem from 200 years ago (or even invented a new one; so what?) and encoded it into C or assembler in their commercial program. Yay, it’s a solved problem. Why should I care about it? I could be spending my time working on new problems, dammit!

Does that make sense?

[starlightforest.livejournal.com]

Eh, sort of. To me, problem solving is problem solving... I don't know how to do something, I need to figure out how to do it. The relative worth of the "what" only affects how long I will plug away at it before giving up. You're right that I would always give up on games after just a short while, but it wasn't a sense that there were better things I could be applying myself to... I just gave up in desperation, and felt stupid for doing so, because I knew that there were so many other people who had solved this, why couldn't I? (I actually did a lot better at a "cold reading" of Hitchhiker's than any of the other Infocom games, because I'd read the books. I knew in advance that I was supposed to enjoy the Vogon poetry, for example, so there was nothing to solve about that particular problem.)

Nowadays I never attack a game without having extensive hints or a walkthrough to go by. I get my enjoyment not out of solving the puzzles - because I know I can't - but out of 1) just seeing the game, and 2) working out my own walkthrough which I feel best combines an efficient path with in-game jokes or other such diversions.

In any case, I've always included problem-solving ability as one of the components of intelligence. Someone with less intelligence will have a lesser ability to figure out (good) solutions to problems, thus it seems to me that an inability to solve problems is a possible indicator of a lower intelligence. *shrugs* It doesn't seem like a separate skill to me.. just something that should be possible with sheer perception and insight.

And the Babel fish comes from a dispenser machine... you have to block a panel with Ford's satchel, set a pile of junk mail on that so that its flying into the air confuses the cleanup robot who otherwise takes the fish, cover the grate in the floor with your towel, and hang your dressing gown on the machine so that the fish slides down the sleeve into your ear. :)