A satisfactory definition of intelligence has never been found, and as a result it means different things to different people. What it is may remain too complex for a succinct definition, but the theory and practice of information handling have clarified what it does fur us: it enables us to guess better, and the discovery of unexpected orderliness is the chief means of doing this.
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Barlow, H. Intelligence, guesswork, language. Nature 304, 207–209 (1983). https://doi.org/10.1038/304207a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/304207a0