Human intelligence

Computers, or computer/human hybrids, will surpass humans in every area, from art to mathematics to music to sheer intellect. I do not know when this will happen, but I think it very likely that it will happen in this century. Of course, computers already exceed human intelligence when it comes to winning chess or solving certain mathematical problems. I see no reason this basic skill won t gradually metastasize into other areas like painting, music, and literature. 

Mackintosh, N. J. (1998) IQ and Human Intelligence, Oxford Univ. Press, Oxford... 

Finally, the artificial neural network methods try to imitate human intelligence with the power of statistic. 

Human intelligence has proven skilled at examining organized structures and deducing the principles of self-organization that lead to their formation from less complex matter. This kind of deductive reasoning is one of the cornerstones of science, allowing for future predictions to be made based upon the principles uncovered. 

The progress of science is, like all other creative activities of human intelligence, a groping toward pattern—toward the accumulation of assigned pattern for the coordination of observed details and toward the uncovering of novel pattern and the consequent introduction of novel details. 

An ocryphal story is told of a math major showing a psychology major the formula for the infamous bell-shaped curve or gaussian, which purports to represent the distribution of human intelligence and such. The formula for a normalized gaussian looks like this ... 

Jensen AR 1994 Phlogiston, animal magnetism, and intelligence. In Detterman DK (ed) Current topics in human intelligence, vol 4 Theories of intelligence. Ablex, Norwood, NJ, p257-284... 

Deary IJ, Caryl PG 1997 Neuroscience and human intelligence differences. Trends Neurosci 20 365-371... 

Jensen AR, Sinha SN 1993 Physical correlates of human intelligence. In Vernon PA (ed) Biological approaches to the study of human intelligence. Ablex, Norwood, NJ, p 139-242... 

Animal behaviours meet the commonly accepted characteristics of human intelligence . Do they possess other characteristics of human intelligence A consistent finding in human intelligence research has been the g factor, a general factor observable in the correlation matrices of multiple cognitive tests (Jensen 1998). If intelligent animal behaviour relies on brain operations similar to humans, we would predict the presence of consistent individual differences. 

The reviewed data demonstrate that animals show consistent inter-individual variability and engage in behaviours that, in people, would be characterized as intelligent. In one study, this general factor correlated to brain weight, as has been repeatedly reported for IQ and brain size in humans (Flashman et al 1997). How can we use these facts to advance our understanding of human intelligence ... 

Genetic influences are an area of significant interest in the human intelligence literature. Examinations for quantitative trait loci in humans are slow due to the poorer characterization of the human genome and the lack of genetically homogeneous populations reared in common environmental conditions. Animals bypass many of these limitations. 

Mackintosh Your line of research raises in a particularly acute form the question whether the g factor extracted from one battery of tests in one population has any resemblance at all to the factor extracted from a quite different battery of tests, in this case in a quite different population. You may find intercorrelations between your rats performance on different tests, so you ve got a general factor, but how do we know this has anything to do with a general factor of human intelligence ... 

Variation is most likely to be maintained by mutation when a trait is affected by genes at many different loci. Miller (2000, this volume) points out that because the human brain is so complex, any mutation is likely to affect intelligence. He also offers the hypothesis that some aspects of human intelligence are sexually selected. 

Guilford JP 1967 The nature of human intelligence. McGraw-Hill, New York... 

Flynn JR 1994 IQ gains over time. In Sternberg RJ (ed) The encyclopedia of human intelligence. Macmillan, New York, p 617-623... 

---