One of the reasons I don’t really understand how intelligence can mean optimization or goal-seeking is that I too have seen it negatively correlated with happiness. Happiness can mean many things but probably one big chunk of its meaning will be a felt reward for goals achieved so this disassociation does not really go well with it being an optimization or goal-reaching ability.
If people choose goals according to their ability to achieve them, then ability and success in achieving those goals will be uncorrelated. Where a correlation would be expected is between ability and achievements, not between ability and the difference between achievements and goals.
Intelligence is a puzzle-solving, dealing-with-complexity thing, the measure of how complicated a picture can be broken down to elements (understanding, analysis) and reassembled (model, prediction). At least this is how doing the Raven tests feels like. What puzzles me about intelligence-as-goal-achieving-ability is that is this really the bottleneck in so many goals? In my experience very few goals require dealing with complexity, and the most succesful people I personally know are rather simple-minded, their success lied in choosing a goal and then never, ever ever giving up, having a bulldog-like determination. Complexity was usually not a part of the picture.
If people choose goals according to their ability to achieve them, then ability and success in achieving those goals will be uncorrelated. Where a correlation would be expected is between ability and achievements, not between ability and the difference between achievements and goals.
Intelligence is a puzzle-solving, dealing-with-complexity thing, the measure of how complicated a picture can be broken down to elements (understanding, analysis) and reassembled (model, prediction). At least this is how doing the Raven tests feels like. What puzzles me about intelligence-as-goal-achieving-ability is that is this really the bottleneck in so many goals? In my experience very few goals require dealing with complexity, and the most succesful people I personally know are rather simple-minded, their success lied in choosing a goal and then never, ever ever giving up, having a bulldog-like determination. Complexity was usually not a part of the picture.