Fair enough. Let's just settle on the fact that he was intelligent, but not a genius.

I'd say this is a tad bit more than your average casual topic, moved to discussion.

Thank you moonshake ily<3
Anyway on with the discussion.

I feel like Hitler demonstrates how there are a multitude of intelegence a which don't necessarily (but often do) overlap. For example his book, 'My Struggle' had very little structure and was repetitive and poorly written (from what I have heard). This makes it very difficult to read. This indicates below average intellegence. However, his ability to manipulate those around him has been rivalled by few other historical figures implying huge social intellegence (which, from the little I have read is usually the limiting factor for ability to manipulate).

Are there any extracts you can show us that demonstrate his bad writing skills

Depends on what you consider to be intelligent.
Look at all kind of social groups. There is always an individual that is manipulating the rest. It's a skill some people have naturally.
I've seen manipulative people. They weren't very book smart but could easly manipulate an average person. Look at salesmen or other people like that. There are many books about manipulation.

There is no such thing as intelligence generally speaking. You can be very versatile and effective in one thing and dumb in another.
Not everyone is made to be capable of social interaction but can still be very good at chess. What would you call that person stupid?
When someone is bad at chess but very good at social interaction, would you call that person stupid?
Good intelligence tests test a multitude of abilities. Some of those abilities require you to invest time in order to enhance them while others are pretty much what you are given by nature. You can still score pretty good results when you are bad in some areas but good in others (even though I think that IQ is a poor indicator for intelligence).

It boils down to none of you knowing what you are talking about.
Also see my post here


As for Hitler: It is very clear to me that he was a genius of manipulation. Manipulating people requires a lot of skills which he clearly possessed. He was a superb speaker, a master of polemics, very capable of assessing a person's character and using it to his advantage etc.
He does not need to be a genius in every field, such as writing, to be considered intelligent. Writing is a skill that you need to practice in order to be good at it. Even the most intelligent person would be a shitty writer if he'd never taken the time to learn the basics (note the difference between fluid and crystallized intelligence I explained in the post I linked to).


Incorrect. The skills required to manipulate people are skills you have to learn. Sure, there are people who are more naturally gifted to learn those skills. We talked about Hitler so I'll use him as example. He spent a lot of time to learn how to speak, use body language, defeat arguments etc.
Winston Churchill, who was famous for being very efficient at countering arguments, spent a lot of time thinking about all potential scenarios that could come up for any kind of situation to learn the right responses.

Intelligence is a matter of investment and practice for a huge part.

Hey, c'mon now. Just because the information some of these people are providing isn't conclusive or particularly relevant to the question doesn't mean they don't know what they are talking about. Social intellegence can be lacking in individuals depending on brain developent in the womb. Not everyone is on a completely even playing field from birth. These neurophysiological (yay, I used a long word and now feel smart!) features are usually made redundant (ba dum tish) by the massive effect that lifestyle has on such attributes and therefore propensity to improve certain types of intellegence becomes the larger determinant (obviously not as big as lifestyle though).

I imagine that while you see propensity to improve intelligence as different to level of intellegence itself some of the people you have insulted might not have made this definition.

We know that social intellegence tends to be the main determinant of ability to manipulate others so this discussion can go in a couple of directions: We could look more closely at what intellegence means or we could look at nature vs nurture. So feel free to go do that people.
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There are also factors which determine how motivated someone is to develop these skills. Hitler probably realised how powerful social intelegence was, this shows a certain degree of intellegence of another kind. I feel like it is too easy to oversimplify this idea.

Actually, being wrong means that you don't know what you are talking about.
It's not about definitions, it is about scientific facts.
IQ tests are based on the model of crystallized and fluid intelligence that I explained.
None of you people did any research before posting in this thread. I have some knowledge and experience on this particular subject so I thought it'd be nice to let you people know that you are all dead wrong.

If you cannot take the criticism, I'm sorry. I was in no way insulting or unfriendly.

I know, that the first post says “do you guys believe there is a correlation, or link, between intelligence and manipulation”, but this is no opinion based thread. I provided the answer to that question.
The ability to manipulate people requires many skills. Those skills enhance your social intelligence.

I did not provide an oversimplified explanation. I provided an explanation that is actually quite interesting and very complicated.
pls

All I could add is sources for my claims if you wish.
Though I probably won't do that because I am lazy and done for now.

I agree that I was wrong to call your explanation oversimplified. I thought it was trying to explain something much more complex than it actually was.

Interest depends on the reader. Although you might personally find it interesting, I'm not sure you can claim it is universally so. A simplified model can be very complicated as long as the actually process is more complicated. The working of the human mind is an enormously complex thing to understand. I personally don't think naming obvious things is particularly interesting. Savants make it obvious that there are many types of intelligence. Someone who can learn any instrument to a professional level but can't look after themselves or understand abstract concepts clearly has great musical/mechanical intelligence while still being profoundly retarded. Just calling knowledge "crystallised intelligence" and aptitude to puzzle things out "fluid intelligence" doesn't make it any less obvious to anyone who has thought about it much. Perhaps I have misinterpreted what you have told us.

I objected to you claiming that nobody knew what they were talking about because some people weren't talking about intelligence at all. at least half of these posts where made back then this thread was off-topic so people could say unrelated stuff. Even excluding these posts there are certainly true sentences, there are things people have said about this which I am pretty sure you would agree with.

If you had said "I don't feel like the people posting here know enough about the subject we are talking about to contribute to it" then I wouldn't have had any problem. If you had said "We need to know more about this topic to properly discuss it." this would've been fine. But you said "Knowing what you are talking about" rather than "knowing enough about what you are talking about". I know that you didn't mean that they had no idea that they were typing, but I don't know exactly what you mean by it and that is a problem in communication. I can't see any reason to mention it other than to big yourself up. You can't prove that there are no correct observations in this thread.

And what is not about definitions? Definitions of things and the cause of them are very different. If you define intelligence as ability to memorise sequences then the scientific facts on the correlation between intelligence and manipulation will be very different than those for another definition. You have provided a definition (ability to solve problems), this can be discussed as separate from scientific fact.

And yeah, there was some research done (depending on what you mean by research) before posting in this thread, it was about Hitler but it was still research.

Sorry for the disorganised nature of this post.