The "Opposite" of "Intelligence"

Everyone talks about intelligence. An intelligent persons, intelligent decisions, intelligent behaviour. A lot of stuff has been written about Intelligence, Intellect and recently Artificial Intelligence. Intelligence today, has many other connotations. Military intelligence for example. The word smart is being increasingly used in lieu of intelligence. Clever has other implications of the word intelligence.

Let us also consider the dictionary meaning(s) of intelligence …

Definition of intelligence. 

(1) : the ability to learn or understand or to deal with new or trying situations : reason also : the skilled use of reason. 

(2) : the ability to apply knowledge to manipulate one’s environment or to think abstractly as measured by objective criteria (such as tests)

Intelligence has been defined in many ways: the capacity for logic, understanding, self-awareness, learning, emotional knowledge, judgement, discretion, insight, acumen, reasoning, pattern recognition, anticipation, planning, creativity, critical thinking, systems thinking, design thinking and problem-solving. … Intelligence is most often studied in humans but has also been observed in both non-human animals and in plants.

Machine intelligence, Deep Learning, Artificial Intelligence for now is just that. It’s artificial, it’s a human tool for a human problem and does it brilliantly, cleverly, smartly, quicker, faster, cheaper, wider, safer … however ONLY as intelligent as the original intelligence — a lower order intelligence, as you will read later in this article.

A group metric of intelligence is the famous bell-curve. Any population, any study, any numbers, any method would place every person on such a curve. Keeping it simple yet numeric we can agree on 6 blocks which divide the population as the bottom (or top) 5%, then next 15% above or below it, and the in between 30% on the opposite of intelligent and intelligent mid-line.

Apart from the “theory” and “belief” that humans are more intelligent than any in the animal kingdom, some other “supposed” higher-order intelligence is supposed to include …

1. Ability to ask qualitatively incisive questions.

2. Define a problem and state this correctly.

3. Rationally review several possible options and courses of action to correct a problem and choose the optimal one.

4. Use LESS emotion and use raw intelligence in making a decision.

5. Survive and evolve, thrive from the natural selection of the current environment that you find yourself in.

My take is to look at intelligence, and really understand intelligence from the perspective of what is “The opposite of intelligence”. Or even the absence of intelligence or no-intelligence, a middle-ground, steady state, zero or mensch, something between “intelligence” and the “opposite” of intelligence.

A first level of questions therefore include, but not limited to …

1. Are insects, bugs and so called low-life intelligent?

2. Ants and termites, bees, and bird colonies show collective intelligence. Is the sum smarter than the individual?

3. Plants grow, attract insects, multiply, scale, evolve. Is that not intelligence?

4. Military strategy, winning a war, being one up on the enemy, defense and countering an attack, a terrorist threat is founded on knowing about it before hand. Inside information, leaks, spies and spying.

5. The counter-intelligence comes from your enemy, or the opposition or the other side doing what you do, with or without different intent and different values. The world according to misinformation, fake news, photoshop, deep fakes and alternate facts comes to mind.

6. Is information or being informed, intelligence? Yes it is, if you are in the military or defense services. Spies and counter-spies do just that, and probably nothing more — nothing less.

7. Inability to survive? Intelligence an ability to be innovative and creative and when the chips are down or in difficult situations you are able to extricate yourself — and others — from that situation. If you don’t you will succumb and we may never hear of you again.

8. Survival of the fittest — The opposite being the non-survival of the not-so-fit. They die? Lose their job? Eat less? Smaller home? Materialistically LESS well off? They have less? They have more problems? They get lower quantity of something? Lower quality? What they have is of less value? 

9. If you have figured out the trajectory to land a robot on Mars, it is rocket science, you having studied, researched and reviewed all the math, geometry, geo-physics, experiences and collective knowledge of everyone on the planet … are you intelligent? It is an act of intelligence and brilliant. Would the person who gets this done, not say, anyone could have done that?

10. You do NOT call every sportsman or musician, and many other professionals, as intelligent. However we do refer to the smart sportsman or the thinking musician because of their ability to innovate, be creative, intuition, anticipation something more than the opposite of whatever.

11. Is anything that follows the laws of physics, math, chemistry, biology intelligent? Innate? Inherent? As biological chemicals that we (and our brain is), are we intelligent? Many actions, habits and behaviours are not intelligent in any sense of the word.

12. You can’t find a lot of stuff on Google (or any other search engine). There is a lot of stuff, but if you do not frame your question correctly, follow-up on it, use your discretion on what is brought up, the intelligence of the people of the world and millennia is not available to you.

If one man’s meat is another man’s poison — it is especially so, in news and fake-news, information and mis-information, real and the un-real, darkness and lightness, facts and alternate facts, morality and immortality.

Trust, trying to be a 21st century brand,, can go awry very quickly. Anti-Trust can be a legal law-suit. Law courts are filled with persons who trust one thing and others who mis-trust, were mis-led, too stupid or too clever.

Let us list some of the “opposites” of the word “intelligence”, from a colloquial, written, anecdotal or any other perspective …

1. Dumb. Stupid. Idiot. Imbecile. Goof-ball. Foolish. Baykoof (Indian Hindi word). Makku (Indian Tamil word).
2. Not being informed, not having the knowledge. Does not have the skill-sets. Does not understand the language to read, write nor speak.
3. Lack of cognitive functions. Unable to hear, listen, see, watch, observe, understand, comprehend, inability to follow-up on a checklist, workflow or set of detailed instructions.
4. Not having thought it through.
5. Unable to use logic or reason to arrive at the same conclusion.
6. Not based on science.
7. Based on belief. Perhaps faith and religion NOT supported by evidence. 

NOTE : If you believe, then it’s true is a weak defense in this argument and must be considered an opposite of intelligence.

While considering the “opposite” of “intelligence” I also think there is a definite “hierarchy” of intelligence. A higher order intelligence will and should recognize lower forms of intelligence and perhaps recognize a higher order intelligence. A lower order intelligence may be just that, and not recognize any other intelligence whether lower or higher.