Comment:

Depending on who you ask, there are seven or eight different types of human intelligence: Bodily/Kinesthetic, Interpersonal, Intrapersonal, Logical/Mathematical, Musical, Naturalistic, Verbal/Linguistic, and Visual/Spatial. Of course, Forward is set over a century in the future, so Doc referring to this model is pretty outdated, but, heck, people today will still colloquially refer to I.Q. or to the four food groups, so I figure it's fair game.

This may just be my personal programming, but... those kinda look like eight stats for a roleplaying game, don't they? I can easily see assembling them into a character sheet, giving my players a certain number of points to distribute during character creation...

"How would you stat yourself" is a question that is often asked about games like D&D. In this case, perhaps, it's a little more hard-hitting. If you had, say, thirty points to distribute among those eight stats, how would you assess yourself? How would a psychologist assess you? If you could move points from one stat to another, which would you choose?

What's your Myers-Briggs type? What's your I.Q.? What grades did you get in school? How many fifths of a vote do you deserve?

Quantification of human intelligence, regardless of its intentions, can always be used to exclude, marginalize, or disempower people. Conveniently enough, of course, the people creating and administering the tests always seem to do well on them themselves, in much the same way that arbiters of beauty standards always seem to conveniently fall within those standards, and religious types who uncover the One True Faith happen to be members of that faith. Perhaps that's why I like creating roleplaying systems... it's nice to be able to organize the world in a way that makes sense, that includes and validates everything I like and doesn't have to deal with things that I don't like.

(For the record: Bod/Kin 2, Inter 3, Intra 4, Log/Math 7, Music 3, Natur 1, Verb/Ling 6, Vis/Spa 4)

Transcript:

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0248 - 2167/07/06/18:50 - Lee Caldavera's apartment, living room
LC: Wait, am I.... Caleb, am I stupid?
CP: Whoa, I... Lee, I n-n-n-never s-s-said...
LC: Zoa, you don't think I'm stupid, do you?
Doc: Once again, by all means, let's fucking ignore the AI that's actually qualified to assess your fucking mental faculties...
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Zoa: Lee, we both know that I don't think you're stupid.
Zoa: And, to be fair, I do actually believe that you aren't stupid.
Zoa: But, of course, we also both know that my "no" doesn't mean anything, because I can't say "yes".
Zoa: So... y'know.
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LC: Oh, fuck, okay, if a friskergibblin or whatever said and did the things that I say and do, would you call it "stupid"?
Zoa: Well, yes, but only as an insult. As we've established, I'm quite antagonistic towards friskergibblins.
Doc: Words such as "stupid" really only serve as insults, Lee, and are not actual diagnoses of a person's cognitive abilities. All my assessments of your logical, linguistic, emotional, and even musical intelligence indicate that you are quite capable... even well above average in some cases.
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CP: Wh-what about "intrapersonal" intelligence? Ziggy says th-that in the... in the journey for s-self-actualization and m-mental health, that intrapersonal intelligence is th-the most important.
Doc: ...I am unable to disclose Lee's assessments to a third party, Caleb, so I will decline to answer that question at this time.
LC: Ah, of course, neither confirming nor denying. Great.
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