Intelligence

## What is Intelligence?

**Intelligence** is a word that is incredibly difficult to define, as it has been used to refer to many things, such as one's ability to process information, or their capacity for logic, self-awareness, creativity, reasoning, and/or problem solving, or their knowledge and memory. In its fullest definition, intelligence can be said to encompass all these things, which makes it incredibly difficult to quantify in versus debating terms, as many individuals may have plentiful ability in one area, such as knowledge, and also be lacking entirely in another, such as planning, emotional intelligence, or creativity.

As opposed to attempting to reliably quantify intelligence, pages should reflect that intelligence has many facets and, when describing the intelligence of characters, specifically detail their areas of strength while acknowledging any intellectual shortcomings they may have. Characters can be listed as having average knowledge overall while being geniuses in certain topics - Goku, for example, despite having little knowledge or skill in most other areas, is a martial artist of prodigal skill. This being said, the higher you go on this recommended scale, the less possible this becomes, as categories become broader and broader, with Supergenius itself implying overall brilliance surpassing that of human plausibility.

### Intelligence Quotients

An **Intelligence Quotient**, or **IQ** is a scientific attempt to score the intelligence of individuals in real life through testing. It is a common occurrence in fiction for authors to give their characters IQ scores, often exceptionally high ones, and while some scientists believe IQ has validity in real life, it makes for a very poor measuring stick in fiction. An author can give a character as ridiculously high of an IQ as they want, whether it be over 200, 314, 5,000, or even 10^30, but without feats, these numbers are meaningless, only acting as confirmation that they are much smarter than normal humans.

Even if that was not the case, as different fictions give their characters different ratings, they are completely useless for comparing intelligence between them. It would be like trying to compare the power levels in Nanatsu no Taizai to those in Dragon Ball to determine their power in relation to each other, when both verses use power levels differently and have completely different scales of power. This is without getting into the fact that many scientists find IQ to be a poor judge of intelligence for the same reasons that intelligence is so hard to quantify in versus debating, among others.

Some verses, such as DC Comics, have their own internal intelligence ranking systems. It is the same situation with these as it is with IQ - without feats, these rankings mean little.

One should not automatically assign statements of intelligence within a story itself without looking at if a character's feats and behaviour fits with it according to our standards.

## Suggested Rankings

There is no way to reliably quantify intelligence, and even these rankings are just suggestions and guidelines for pages. It is more important that a page discusses a character's intelligence and gives feats for their varying skills than have a solid ranking, although it may help with quickly summarizing their overall intellects and how they measure up to others.

**Mindless:** Those few beings that have no capacity for intelligence at all. Although some characters without a mind can be considered for this rating, one should assess the actions performed by said characters to see if they truly have no way of thinking. Those with a mind can also be considered for this rating if they can not display any form of thought.

**Instinctive:** Beings that are incapable or virtually incapable of conscious thought, and merely carry out simple pre-programmed behaviour patterns. For example, Snails, jellyfish. microorganisms, fungi, and individual insects.

**Animalistic:** Beings, such as most animals, that only possess very basic reasoning, awareness, and problem-solving skills.

**High Animalistic:** Highly intelligent animals that can use tools or have comparable problem-solving feats. For example, dolphins, chimpanzees, and certain crows and octopi.

**Below Average:** Characters of below average intellects and unremarkable skills.

**Average:** Characters of average intelligence. While they have more developed intelligence in certain subjects, in many cases, their overall intelligence remains average.

**Above Average:** Characters that show greater cognitive ability than the norm, but do not particularly stand out in any intellectual or academic fields.

**Gifted:** Characters who demonstrate high reasoning ability, can master difficult concepts with few repetitions, and display high performance capability or notable mastery in intellectual or specific academic fields, which makes them equivalent to real-world experts in these areas.

**Genius:** Individuals with an exceptional capacity for knowledge and intelligence, usually in one area of varying depth. This level of intellect is the level of real-world geniuses, polymaths, and genuinely extremely prominent intellectuals, and, in the absence of better feats, should be the default intelligence category for fictional characters with exceptional or superhuman intelligence.

* **Examples:** L and Light Yagami (Death Note), Conan Edogawa (Detective Conan), Solid Snake (Metal Gear), Shikamaru Nara and Kakashi Hatake (Naruto), Colress (Pokémon)

**Extraordinary Genius:** Individuals whose knowledge spreads over multiple fields of science and who vastly surpass the real world's upper human limits. At this level, many are capable of creating extremely advanced futuristic technology, executing complex strategies even under high pressure, outperforming supercomputers, and even accurately predicting the future through sheer mental calculations. This is where super scientists of exceptional scientific knowledge begin to appear.

* **Examples:** Kisuke Urahara and Sosuke Aizen (Bleach), Batman (DC Comics), Bulma, Doctor Gero, and Android 21 (Dragon Ball), Stewie Griffin (Family Guy), Spider-Man, Bruce Banner, Iron Man, and Thanos (Marvel Comics), Dust of Osiris (Melty Blood), Accelerator (To Aru Majutsu No Index), Ozymandias (Watchmen)

**Supergenius:** The highest level of non-omniscient intellect, possessed by individuals with unfathomably superhuman intelligence who are capable of creating impossibly advanced physics-defying and reality-warping fantasy technology for extremely diverse purposes.

Take note that for a Supergenius rating to be given based on technological prowess, the character in question should be able to essentially warp reality as they wish on an at least universal (3-A) scale with their inventions, or even use them to overpower tier 1 entities for higher cases. Simply defying the laws of physics with futuristic technology is very common for Extraordinary Geniuses as well.

* **Examples:** Azmuth and Professor Paradox (Ben 10), Brainiac (DC Comics), Dexter (Dexter's Laboratory), The Doctor (Doctor Who), Doctor Doom and Mister Fantastic (Marvel Comics), Doctor Doofenshmirtz (Phineas and Ferb), Washu Hakubi (Tenchi Muyo!), The Emperor of Mankind (Warhammer 40,000)

**Nigh-Omniscient:** Characters who have knowledge of nearly everything, with only minuscule gaps existing in their knowledge.

* **Examples:** Doc Scratch (Homestuck), Eternity and other abstract entities (Marvel Comics), Q (Star Trek), Featherine Augustus Aurora (Umineko no Naku Koro ni)

**Omniscient:** Characters who know literally everything. Be aware that even if they may know everything in their own setting that this does not grant them knowledge of beings from outside of it.

* **Examples:** Yog-Sothoth (Cthulhu Mythos), Downstreamers (The Manifold Trilogy)

### Note

A character may have more than one intelligence rank if the statistic varies depending on the area. This means that they can reach exceptional levels in some respects, but be unimpressive in others.

Here are some examples:

* "Below Average normally. Extraordinary Genius in scientific disciplines" may be appropriate for characters who behave in a silly matter, have klutzy mishaps even when trying to do simple tasks, or often make unrealistically dimwitted tactical decisions, but have displayed exceptional feats in fields of science and technology.
* "Below Average normally. Genius in Martial Arts, combat & strategic thinking" may be appropriate for characters who behave in an immature, naive, uneducated, or unintelligent manner most of the time, but are absolute savants when it comes to hand-to-hand combat and associated strategic thinking.
* "Genius normally. Nigh-Omniscient with X power" could be appropriate for characters who display standard levels of genius intellect normally, and can receive enormously greater amounts of knowledge from a separate power, such as Cosmic Awareness, but may not have access to this power on a regular basis.

As mentioned above, it is a good idea to list feats and/or other explanations for their respective rankings. In cases where this results in considerable amounts of text, it may also be beneficial to make use of tabbers for each of the characters' intelligence statistics, as it can make the structure more organised and easy for readers to understand.