"Uncontroversial"? In an era of machine learning vs artificial intelligence? When you want to "fix software"? As someone trained in maths, but also as an experienced systems analyst, I always start by clarifying what people mean by the terms we're discussing - it saves a lot of misunderstandings. I do agree about the problems with software development, though - run by salesmen rather than developers, to a large extent. Currently we have "machine learning" that is totally not intelligent because it's entirely determined by the data it's given to learn from. But the philosophical & neuroscientific questions that arise from the question of whether we can develop genuinely intelligent machines are fascinating - and "what do we mean by intelligence?" is part of that, related to the hard question of "what is consciousness?".

That's an interestingly limited description of intelligence that you offer, though. When you talk about "processing information", what do you include/exclude? Are you limiting that to information that can be written down, categorised, counted? Reading body language, for example, is a key human skill but it's a whole new dimension in itself, hard to measure without including a lot of cultural bias. Patterns, ditto - if you talk to someone who's deeply aware of the ecosystem they inhabit, the patterns they perceive will be completely different to anything you could use in an IQ test: subtle, complex and ever-shifting. That habitual depth of perception bleeds through into every aspect of their thought, too. How exactly can you measure people's ability to think in abstractions? Because what's an obvious superficial fact to one person is an abstraction to someone else. This whole discussion is a case in point.

As a mathematician, it annoys me when other would-be scientists (psychologists for example) misuse the tools provided and then claim authority for their crackpot theories. IQ testing is part of the whole eugenics thought-pattern: it assumes the superiority of the Western mindset, and yet it doesn't even respect the rules that mindset imposes, breaking them whenever it suits. Psychologists' use of statistics is famously "the way a drunk uses a lamp post: more for support than illumination". Attempting to apply a measure to an unmeasurable space is a bit special, though, even for them.

I have a friend with "learning difficulties" whose ability to work in 3-D is astonishing: he can look at an object like a car with a rusty inside wheel arch, and cut & weld a replacement with its complex sets of curves, faultlessly. And yet he can't read well enough to do one of your tests. His information processing, pattern perception & even thinking about abstractions are phenomenal in some ways, just not in the ways that suit IQ testing. His way of tracking how much cash he's got left in his bank account is dizzying - but it works. I score highly on IQ tests, as long as I remind myself to give the answer the test compiler expected, rather than the many other possibilities that spring to mind. Offered a chance to discuss the results, as I have been when people were trying to develop new ones, it became clear that the people designing the tests wanted to reward people who think just the way they do, and to reject anyone who thinks differently. That's only human, of course, but it's a big problem if you're claiming universal validity for your test.

I came through college at a time & in a place where the leading mathematicians of the day were developing chaos & complexity theories, and I've carried on following developments in this topic. It's taken me into all sorts of areas of study and made me realise just how limited Western thought has been over the last couple of hundred years. It's achieved some wonderful things but only in limited areas, and if we are to move forward, we need to understand the gaps in our thinking. Assuming that everything that matters can be measured & counted is one of those gaps - some things are just not measurable, in maths or in real life.

ps - steaming piles of ideas manure are a vital part of a healthy ecosystem of ideas. The dead ones have to go somewhere to be broken down ready for reuse!