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Douglas Hofstadter, “Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid”
Essential abilities for intelligence

— To respond to situations very flexibly.

— To take advantage of fortuitous circumstances.

— To make sense out of ambiguous or contradictory messages.

— To recognize the relative importance of different elements of a situation.

— To find similarities between situations despite differences which may separate them.

—  To draw distinctions between situations despite similarities may link them.

—  To synthesize new concepts by taking old them together in new ways.

—  To come up with ideas which are novel.

list, mind