Oh, these IQ discussions are so frustrating. At the root of it all is the definition of intelligence. The traditional meaning is something like this: “capacity for learning, reasoning, understanding, and similar forms of mental activity; aptitude in grasping truths, relationships, facts, meanings, etc.” This is what IQ is trying to measure.
It’s now being challenged by the multiple intelligences view. And it’s true, IQ does not measure intelligence in the multiple intelligences sense. That is what people really criticize about IQ, but IQ was never meant to measure this sense of what intelligence is, and you can’t criticize it for not doing so.
Why don’t we call the traditional sense of intelligence intelligence-1 and the new sense intelligence-2? Then we wouldn’t have all this bloody mess. No way of seeing intelligence is better than the other, they are just different, and it gives no meaning to compare them. They are two different concepts, describing two different things. The two ways of using the word intelligence are just two different reference level (physics analogy), and there are no right or wrong reference levels ...