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let me paraphrase Douglas R. Hofstadter in his intricate thesis on Godel, Escher, Bach Eternal Golden Braid; a book which encompasses the complexity of Godel's number theory, self-reference, strange loops, entangled hierarchies, and how mathematics and art can be linked by the use of symbols; how the unanimated can become animated; how artificial intelligence works, and there is so much that can be said about this book, but it would take me longer than a post 
However, there is a very interesting paragraph on intelligence, which I'll freely copy from the book,
"In our century the time was ripe for computers-computers beyond the wildest dreams of Pascal, Leibniz, Babbage, or Lady Lovelace. In the 1930's and 1940's, the first "giant electronic brains" were designed and built. They catalyzed the convergence of three previously disparate areas: the theory of axiomatic reasoning, the study of mechanical computation, and the psychology of intelligence.
These same years saw the theory of computers developed by leaps and bounds. This theory was tightly linked to metamathematics. In fact, Godel's theorem has a counterpart in the theory of computation, discovered by Alan Turing, which reveals the existence of ineluctable "holes" in even the most powerful computer imaginable. Ironically, just as these somewhat eerie limits were being mapped out, real computers were being built whose power seemed to grow and grow beyond their makers power of prophecy.
Babbage, who once declared he would gladly give up the rest of his life if he could come back in five hundred years and have a three-day guided scientific tour of the new age, would probably have been thrilled speechless a mere century after his death - both by the new machines, and by their unexpected limitations.
By the early 1950s, mechanized intelligence seemed a mere stone's throw away; and yet, for each barrier crossed, there always cropped up some new barrier to the actual creation of genuine thinking machines. Was there some deep reason for his goal's mysterious recession?
No one knows where the borderline between non-intelligent behavior and intelligent behavior lies; in fact, to suggest that a sharp borderline exists is probably silly. But essential abilities for intelligence are certainly.
1. To respond to situations very flexibly
2. To take advantage of fortuitous circumstances
3. To make sense out of ambiguous or contradictory messages
4. To recognize the relative importance of different elements of a situation
5. To find similiarities between situations despite differences which may separate them
6. To draw distinctions between situations despite similarities which may link them
7. To synthesize new concepts by taking old concepts and putting them togheter in new ways
8. To come up with ideas that are novel
THAT TOOK A WHILE!!! 
p.s: typos have been fixed
Last edited by winston on Aug-23-2009 at 20:12
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) if you don't keep people with lesser intelligence around you.
