Intelligence

It is widely believed that the level of intelligence is measured by IQ tests. That’s not true. The IQ test speaks more about the ability to pass these tests (just as the USE (*United State Exam – the Russian  testing system for graduating from high school) test does not speak about real knowledge). 

Intelligence, in my opinion, is the ability to construct new complex cognitive constructs from simpler ones. If you can find a solution to a problem that takes into account a large number of variables, and your solution is more adaptive and efficient than others, you can be considered smarter than someone who can not find such a solution.

The evolutionary task of the brain is to adapt to the environment and dominate other species in order to continue the genus and preserve the genome. Since we are pack creatures, an integral part of the functioning of the brain and psyche is the analysis of what is happening in the pack. 

More recently, by scientific standards, fundamental discoveries in neuroscience have been made, thanks to which we have come to understand that the brain works by functional systems (and not by fields, convolutions and individual neurons). Now there are more than 50 of them, but some of the most important ones related to intelligence are the passive work network (Default mode network or DMN), the target activity network (Task-positive network or TPN) and the significance detection network (salience network, or SN). 

Default-the brain system works in a “calm” state, when you do not need to do something right now. It is very simple to” feel “the work of this system: when we are not busy with anything, there is a constant “mental gum” in our head: endless streams of thoughts about everything and nothing. The default system analyzes the actual cognitive objects present in our head and models the variants of interactions between them. It is believed that it plays an important role in the processes of spontaneous thinking, fantasizing and “brainstorming”. 

The evolutionary purpose of the default system is social behavior. It is communication with other people and building social connections that develops this system. When children interact with other children in the process of playing, they are forced to negotiate and take into account the opinions of others and create new cognitive objects.

With the development of the child, these objects become more complex and their number increases. There is a certain metric called the Dunbar number. It

shows the maximum number of cognitive objects that a person can operate with. For today’s person, this number is 120-230.

Thus, the extent to which we have trained the default system of the brain on the number and depth of study of cognitive objects, and reflects our ability to create new designs from old ones. The intellect trains on social models, which later allows us to reconstruct both inanimate and abstract objects.