0. Inspired by several recent twitter threads and some DMs, I thought I'd lay out my personal (not terribly original) view of what is meant by "intelligence" — no one really knows! But it's why I think IQ is garbage, we need a social safety net, and 2+2=5 is important. Thread.

1. We're all born with a common, genetically initialized neural network. That initialization sets up a few (probably unrelated) "dimensions" in the abstract space of potential outputs.

2. As we learn & grow, we develop particular dimensions that map out a subset of the abstract space of the intellectually possible.

3. Lots of pressures push and pull the capabilities in each of these dimensions. We hone skills because they're fun to us or get recognition from our parents and teachers. But stress and society can also hold back our development.

4. As we grow up, we develop a path- and environment-dependent high-dimensional subspace of cognitive abilities. For nearly all humans, aside from hardships, the "volume" of this subspace is about equal.

You might associate the integral with some intelligence g-factor, but ...

5. ... we don't ever really see the full space for any human. Rather we see various projections onto even lower dimensional subspaces dependent on things other people value.

e.g. I found math fun as a kid and that projects onto a "STEM" job valued by the economy.

6. But also, there are often separate projections based on your perceived role in society, your gender, or your race — the same "intelligence" ends up being valued differently based on society.

7. The idea of an IQ test as a measure of intelligence — another projection from what society values onto an even lower (single) dimensional subspace — is so misguided that it boggles the mind that people take it seriously.

8. Don't believe me that IQ tests are measures of what society values and can be gender biased? Take these 2D projections of 3D objects (made for paper even though we now have 3D pdf technology) ... valued because we value engineering (that often socially excludes women).

9. Depending on how our subspace of learned neural network outputs projects onto things society values, the equal volume of that space all humans have is interpreted as "intelligent" or not.

I get called "smart" — mostly because of the way things I found fun as a kid project.

10. Something I often see in the real world are the interactions between people who have very different sets of projections onto each other's concepts of intelligence that define their subspace — they each think the other isn't very smart.

11. My personal view of what constitutes a lack of intelligence is adhering too closely to what others view as "intelligent" or "rational" thinking. It's a general kind of confirmation bias & conformity that runs the gamut from racism to measuring everything by money.

12. In fact, the non-conformity of excelling at something not valued right now by society or the economy is one of the most valuable things for economic growth.

As I've mentioned in other contexts (like my book), this is how we expand the state space.

13. That's because what is valued by society changes over time pushed in part by people who have these novel insights. Who knew that the particular combination of being good (or bad!) at video games and being funny could lead to a job that didn't even exist 10 years ago.

14. People who think differently and more broadly than in the specific ways already laid out as "intelligent" by society are the main source of innovation. That's why 2+2=5 was important. It illustrated how conformity and social biases like racism shape who we view as "smart".

15. But also, because our society requires money for anyone to survive, we lose the contributions of many people who hold the potential to create economic innovation.

Without a social safety net, only rich people or their children can take risks on thinking differently.

16. This is one of the lessons of my first book "A Random Physicist Takes on Economics" — based on people exploring state spaces in uncorrelated ways.

We need people who think differently from what society currently values as "intelligent" in order for society to thrive.

Fin