PPPParallel Paths of Indiscriminate Intelligence (Four P's #194)
Measuring the Linguistic, Musical, Artificial, and the Emotional
Congratulations! Because if you are reading this, you're intelligent! You clearly possess a level of mental acuity that enables you to understand the concepts I espouse here on a bi-weekly basis (which Grammarly says is 99% better than what other people are writing). So, well done!
Since the dawn of time, human beings have treated intelligence as a single, general trait. Tests measure intelligence quantitatively while we also perceive our peers' intelligence qualitatively. But even in varying amounts, is intelligence truly a binary attribute? Aren’t there many competencies a person can have?
Many of us have more than one talent, multiple sets of skills. I am a creative writer AND know how to create masterful excel spreadsheets. I can keep perfect rhythm AND converse in multiple languages. But I will NEVER be able to perform cardiovascular surgery, paint a landscape, nor remember which one is the Tropic of Cancer and which is the Tropic of Capricorn. So... am I intelligent?
SOMETHING PRACTICAL: Intelligence is Plural
Nearly 40 years ago, Dr. Howard Gardner introduced the concept of "multiple intelligences," which states that within the human brain, there is not one, but several different intelligences that operate concurrently with one another.
Consider an 11-year-old boy in ancient Micronesia who learns to be a master sailor based on his intuitive knowledge of tides, stars, and geography.
Next, consider an 11-year-old girl in Cupertino who learned how to use a computer program to compose musical pieces.
And the 11-year-old boy with a passion for baseball who can tell you all of the statistics of all of his favorite players going back to the 1950s.
Three intelligent individuals, each taking on a challenging task and attaining a high degree of achievement. Yet current methods of assessing intelligence have no way of measuring their potential or achievements.
Intelligence has been defined as a tangible, measurable quality. But it’s better used as a convenient shorthand that describes a person’s potential to attain a high degree of competence in particular areas: linguistic, musical, logical-mathematical, spatial, bodily-kinesthetic, intrapersonal, and interpersonal. From a genetic perspective, a stimulating environment can help an individual reach a high level of competence in a particular area.
The study of genetic inheritance is, well, beyond my level of intelligence, but two key principles are helpful when considering human cognitive abilities: canalization and plasticity.
Canalization — the tendency of an organic system to follow a particular developmental path (like... the development of our brain anatomy is predictable... cells start in the neural tube in utero and eventually migrate to the areas where they’ll become parts of the brain and spinal cord).
Plasticity — the potential for a wide range of environmental factors to impact development (whereas our brains are plastic when it comes to language or learning music). Meaning that intelligence is the product of nature and/or nurture.
SOMETHING PERSONAL: Listen to the Words, Hear the Music
For as long as I've been able to communicate, I've found an outlet in writing across a variety of formats and topics. To-do lists, book reports, apology notes, mournful poetry, essays on art, NBA and WNBA player feature columns, and email newsletters to my closest 13,000 friends. Not to brag, but high awareness of language and its properties is a type of linguistic intelligence. It's not always natural, either. If you knew the agony I often experience when choosing words to represent ideas... cramming meaning in limited sentence structures... ooofa, it can be hard.
Neurobiologically, linguistic intelligence is the most thoroughly studied of all the intelligences. Scientists have detailed knowledge of how linguistic skills develop, from a child’s babbling at birth... to the primitive sequences of words she utters at age three... to the advanced composition of ideas at age 44. And this development carries across cultures all over the world. In most individuals, linguistic ability is localized in the brain’s left hemisphere. Everyone can learn to communicate. Most can learn to communicate with words. Many are competent at selecting words to imbue meaning. Even fewer do all of this intelligently. Get it? Maybe? Okay, let's move on...
Musical intelligence, on the other hand, involves sensitivity to the properties of sound. It is tied to a person’s auditory-oral capabilities. Skill in this sphere allows individuals to understand the meaning of rhythmically arranged sets of pitches – and produce those pitches themselves. Like language, music relies heavily on a person’s auditory tract. Yet musical intelligence is distinct from linguistic intelligence because the ways the brain processes and stores pitch are different from the ways it stores other sounds such as language.
Very few people will ever become composers, but almost everyone can at least appreciate the basic structure of music. They can group a piece with a certain rhythm together with other pieces in a similar rhythm. Or, given a piece in a certain key, they can judge which sort of ending is more or less appropriate.
I can identify and repeat notes. I can even read basic music. But layering together tiers and types of musical composition is the culmination of musical intelligence. During the early days of the pandemic, I taught myself how to play several Bruce Springsteen songs on the piano, an instrument I'd never played before. But without practice and repetition, I've since forgotten most of them (at least I posted them on Instagram).
My wife, on the other hand, can still play (from memory) highly technical and advanced piano compositions 30 years since last playing them. She is musically intelligent. As a physician and scientist, Leigh's logical-mathematical intelligence is quite high. The ability to remember the links in a scientific chain is important, but she can follow long chains of reasoning -– to understand the logical links between patient symptoms or statements and grasp their overall meaning. Like painters or poets, mathematicians and scientists are concerned with patterns.
At the highest level of musical intelligence, you've got Beethoven, Mozart... and Lizzo. While most know Lizzo for the bouncy, uplifting chart-topping pop/hip-hop hits, she spent decades studying music and plays many instruments, like James Madison's 200-year-old flute. Throughout the summer, Leigh and I debated who had the song of the summer. Was it Lizzo's "About Damn Time?"…or my vote -- Harry Styles' "As It Was?"
Given that I've already acknowledged her insane musical intelligence, maybe it's not as much of a debate as I thought.
SOMETHING PROFESSIONAL: Artificial Intelligence and the Metaverse
In modern Western society, logical-mathematical intelligence is among the most privileged of intelligences. And it’s often said that this intelligence guides the course of history. But if mathematics and music are abstract, building engaging, immersive experiences in virtual or augmented reality landscapes and metaverses is...? Well, that's a whole new level of beyond-human abstract, "artificial" intelligence changing the future.
And it is enthralling. One such example is an artificial image generation tool called DALL·E 2, which is responsible for ALL of the visuals in this post. AI is taking over the iconic voice of Darth Vader, with the blessing of an aging, recently-retired James Earl Jones. And an ailing Bruce Willis just sold his image rights to an AI Company for future TV & film roles.
In my world, metaverse conversations are now dominating the brand and marketing landscape. If you're new to this, metaverses are virtual worlds or communities where individuals can interact with one another in unique ways - games, habitats, play- and workspaces. They can be built on blockchains, with cryptocurrency and NFTs as in-world currency, but many of them are just AR/VR worlds. There is not yet one connected metaverse, though many individual microverses with increasing budgets are earmarked for development.
Critics of metaverse ecosystems think they look bad, but the bigger risk is that big brands are jumping in while only a few are truly ready to do so. Nothing built so far is full "web3" yet, but AI will push the boundaries of current corporate ownership models, publicly traded companies, legal and operational challenges, and limited consumer adoption. What we need from the next generation of the Internet might be less escape or entertainment in the metaverse and more invention that gives us emotional grounding, expanse, and practical, functional, utility.
New applications, platforms, and games are springing up on the blockchain. So how do you get anyone to use your new Web3 app? The answers are tokenomics and utility. The business model of nearly every proposed Web3 platform entails distributing tokens, thus incentivizing them to use and improve the platform to increase the value of those tokens. Our job as intelligent marketers is to unlock, optimize, and align the incentives. Leading global companies and brands have to find creative, compelling ways to adopt decentralized technology within tried-and-true with a mix of web2 limitations.
Meaning this will be an evolution, not a revolution. The next phase, a "Web 2.5" phase, must first incorporate tokenization into the engagement and marketing mix. The goal should be to bring together the innovative features of web3 -- blockchain openness, smart contracts, digital creative, composability, and direct-to-community engagement -- with the proven web2 applications: search, social, influence, creation, and promotion.
SOMETHING POLITICAL: Investing in Emotional Intelligence
When I was hospitalized with COVID a few weeks ago, I overheard an ER Attending talking with a hospital administrator about the dramatic increase in patient volume over the last few weeks. The non-medical executive was confused. "What was causing this overcrowding, with patients in beds lined up in hallways again for the first time since 2020?" The physician's response: "The massive uptick in enterovirus, rhinovirus, and COVID-19... along with the lack of masking, even by people who work at the hospital." The administrator: "I won't wear a mask anymore. Just stop. We will never normalize mass masking again."
If Twitter is any indication, a large percentage of people are, once again, questioning whether masks even. Or they don't care about the risks to the medically-fragile population. either way, this selfishness is the result of a lack of intelligence. And it's a much larger pandemic, perpetuated by politicians who preach selfishness and personal self-interest over the common good.
Personal intelligences deal with the knowledge of yourself and others. Intrapersonal intelligence is all about knowing yourself: being able to get in touch with your thoughts, feelings, and emotions. Interpersonal intelligence is all about knowing others -- specifically, their moods, temperaments, motivations, and intentions. In the example above, the hospital administrator knew how wearing a mask made him feel, but isn't able to extend the impact of unmasking more broadly. Our current political and educational systems do not account for these different types of intelligences.
The first step in applying the theory of multiple intelligences is developing a more accurate intelligence test (or set of tests). The intelligences should be assessed at different ages and in developmentally appropriate ways. Testing children’s intelligence early on will enable them to progress rapidly in the areas where they’re particularly skilled – and receive support where they’re weak.
The next step is to review their goals and realize that social awareness and emotional intelligence are intertwined. If a new program states that its goal is to “educate individuals to help them achieve their potential,” that’s not very helpful. By contrast, “achieving sufficient literacy to read a newspaper or discuss a current political program” is much more specific. And the more specific the goal, the easier it is to analyze the intellectual skills necessary for teaching and learning it.
Then, educators should determine ways of employing the intelligences as both a means and an end. In other words, they should explore how intelligence could be used to both teach a skill and itself be part of a skill. Most of all, educators and policymakers should make an effort to understand how the intelligences intersect with a given cultural context.
I always feel more intelligent after reading The Four P's !!! Thank you.