While we do have methods for measuring people's intelligence in the form of IQ tests, those tests are only design to measure very specific features of intelligence; pattern recognition and problem solving. This is not a measurement of our intelligence's other components; creative thinking and intuition. So with IQ tests, we are only getting a part of the picture. The part that our society finds most useful and relatively easily measured.
However, measuring the creative half is not viable for two reasons. First, what is useful on the creative side of our intelligence is not always useful in all cases and to everyone. A brilliant painter is highly intelligent in a place where painting is valued, but less intelligent in a place where no one paints. In such a place, a good plumber is more intelligent than your best portrait painter. Alternatively, since math is important everywhere, no matter how small your village, being good at math has value no matter where you go. Even if you are the only person in the village good at math.
The second reason that measuring the creative half is not viable is because there is no one standard known by which we can say how creative a person is. Is the writer Stephen King more creative than Fyodor Dostoyevsky? Dostoyevsky was brilliant at character development, but his writing never scared the crap out of anyone. At least, intentionally. In the world of horror, King is considered a genius. Dostoyevsky? Not so much. And yet, Dostoyevsky is often on the list the greatest writers to ever live. King is not that high on the list.
If King and Dostoyevsky were writing math books, it would be easy to see who was the more intelligent. The one whose math theory worked out the best. But whose fiction stories worked out the best? It's a matter of taste. Therefore, there is no universal standard for measuring it.
Which means there will never be a unified standard for measuring all of intelligence if half of it can't be measured realistically or objectively. That is, until scientists work out the language and code for the brain's intelligence and we are able to go through it, line by line like a book, and figure out where all the good parts are.
On that day, we will finally be able to objectively and empirically separate the intellectuals from the morons. But until then, we will just have to use social media to do that.
