the.com/intelligence
the gift of noticing how little you actually know, and surviving it anyway
means The capacity to learn, reason, and apply knowledge — to grasp problems, adapt to new situations, and make sense of the world.
from From Latin intelligentia, 'understanding,' built from intelligere, 'to perceive, comprehend' — itself a fusion of inter ('between') and legere ('to choose, gather, read'). So at its root, intelligence is the act of reading between things, of gathering and choosing meaning from the scattered. The word slipped into English through Old French in the medieval period, and the sense of 'secret information' (as in military intelligence) is a later branch — knowledge gathered, then weaponized.
- slime mold
- Brainless slime molds solve mazes and design rail networks
- IQ creep
- Average IQ scores rose steadily across the 20th century
- crow tools
- Crows craft hooked tools and remember faces for years
- octopus minds
- Two-thirds of an octopus's neurons live in its arms
- slow burn
- The prefrontal cortex isn't fully wired until age 25
cia — united states foreign intelligence agency, established 1947, headquartered in langley, virginia
mossad — israeli intelligence agency, founded 1949, conducted operation eichmann 1960
mi6 — british secret intelligence service, established 1909, featured in james bond films
kgb — soviet security agency 1954-1991, employed 91,000 officers at peak