sure, but what i did say about intelligence was sufficient to prove the point i was trying to make at that moment. anybody who likes to cite drops in intelligence in sample groups as some kind of evidence for a general decline in something like civilization, is blowing smoke. what usually follows is some statement like ‘but those stupid people are sheltered by an artificial environment… a once natural environment that would not tolerate them, one which man has interfered with to make accommodating to them.’ this line of nonsense is even more ambiguous. where does one draw the line between acceptable interference - when man’s control of the environment is good - and unacceptable interference - when man’s control of the environment is bad? in fact, you might find the same people pushing this idiotic argument at the front of the line to get a heart transplant, or not hesitating to accept a sizable loan from a bank to buy a house. shirley these things aren’t ‘natural’, are they? these are things man has designed… much like the things that make stupid people’s lives more easy, no? they must be artificial then. ah but these are ‘good’ instances of ‘artificial’, of man’s interference with what would otherwise be natural; a homeless man who dies because he can’t get a heart transplant. you see what i mean. trying to draw a ‘line’ here is almost as stupid as the argument itself, so you don’t bother mincing such nonsense.
but yes, had i gone on further to expand the definition of ‘intelligence’, i would have included the pattern recognition that you mention. that’s obvious enough. still though, that’s not all that it is, so i’d say your definition was rather incomplete as well. where is the pattern recognition in the foresight that you ought to park on the street instead of the sloped driveway the night before they call for snow? where is the pattern recognition in drawing the inference that groups that acquire a surplus of material goods tend to stay in one place rather than remain hunter-gatherers? where is the pattern recognition in the intuition that your spouse might be moody because their favorite team lost the superbowl? there re all kinds of intelligence that have next to nothing to do with recognizing spacial or causal patterns.
all this aside, the major premise is simple, and simply overlooked; there is no ‘ideal’ intelligence status, because environments change, thereby changing the demands made on the organism to survive. there may arise an environment in which some stroke of genius is perfectly useless (a philosophy classroom comes to mind)… and another in which some sonofabitch dumb as a styrofoam hammer can get along just fine.