POSITIVE INTELLIGENCE

Researching, studying, and writing about intelligence, I came across a book with the title, Positive Intelligence by Shirzad Chamine. I was immediately turned off by all of the over-selling of the marketing that promoted it. But wanting to give it a fair hearing, I went to Amazon to read reviews. As always and with every book—there were many glowing reviews. Then there was the following critique who reviewed not only the book but the program.

The idea of positive intelligence for Chamine is an extremely global concept— your mind is your friend and serving you or is sabotaging you. He says a score of 75 means that 75% of the time your mind is your friend, and 25% of the time it is sabotaging you. As a definition, this is extremely weak far outside the field of Intelligence. Robert Sternberg who is one of the most well known researchers and leading thinkers in the field of Intelligence defines intelligence as the ability to gather information, recognize the social context, and adapt to achieve one’s goals. Steven Pinker says that intelligence is the ability to attain goals in the face of obstacles by means of decisions based on rational rules.