The rest of my life

Intelligence is something of a scourge to neuroscientists and the rest of human kind alike. Its definition and understanding has flipped, swayed, and morphed over the last 100 years so much that the confusion around it is more than beguiling.

I am a believer of the multiple intelligences idea- that there are different types of brain specializations that cannot qualitatively be compared against each other to show how smart one person is over another, as we often try to do today. E.g., a pianist vs. an athlete or an accountant. I also am a believer that these different types of intelligence may possibly use the same exact methods- hierarchical temporal memory systems interacting with lower-level brain structures (emotional, etc.) and motor generator circuits.

However, today I just want to talk about that area of intelligence that we typically use in our daily life(without care) to describe how smart somebody is. What I mean is that quality of some person that we describe as that broad result of their genes, their grades in school, and their breadth of knowledge that we perceive when we interact with them.

I believe that this understanding of intelligence can be separated into two semi-distinct areas. One, is that amount of knowledge- or Memory. This is a common judgement of someone's intelligence. We see it in game shows like jeopardy, Who wants to be a millionaire, and in most tests that we are given in the school system. This area of intelligence is simply due to (first, of course the underlying allowing structure and ability provided by the genome) the amount of stimuli and the ability to retain the stimuli representations. If I never learn anything intelligent or retain anything I've learned, I won't appear to be so smart.

I think the second area- which may even be more important- is the ORGANIZATION of this knowledge. It is how somebody's thoughts are structured. It is what pops out to somebody when they process some stimulus because of how their output is structured in accordance with that input.

For instance, If I remember everything from the book "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance", that would be very impressive. I would probably do very well on a comprehension test. However, if I don't organize my thoughts and beliefs in accordance to what I've read, I won't get much good out of it. If I don't associate some of the meanings from the book with other meanings in life that can be equated with some of the situations in the book, then I won't be able to apply the book to anything in my life, and I will not have gotten much good from it.

I believe that this organization quality of intelligence is what makes somebody creative, or intuitive. I believe it is also what makes somebody "level-headed" or have great "common-sense". Further, I feel that if I want to be very sharp, wise, smart, agile, etc. (indeed, intelligent in all of it's forms) I need to master this essence of having an organized mind model. I think it takes both areas- amount of knowledge, and organization of it- to be truly intelligent in the sense that we use in our daily language.

I'll leave this post with a question- How can I purposefully make my organization better? Is this something that I can modify by learning a lot and consciously making connections and metaphors with other parts of my knowledge? Or is it handled by my genes exclusively, meaning that all I can do is learn and lot and read a lot, hoping that my brain will organize it well due to its ability to structure my neuronal connections in accordance with my DNA?

...Maybe both?