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Intelligence Levels
#933817 07/14/17 08:59 AM
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I am playing again with the idea for a text-based Legion RPG, and I have been trying to piece together the main protagonists/antagonists. I like the idea of one of them being the son of Dream Girl and Brainiac 5. How do you think Colun intelligence would be inherited? My initial thought is it would either skip the child completely or be the average of the parents intelligence.

Or is the Intelligence levels of 10, 12, etc based on outdated science and it would be best to just ignore it?


Go with the good and you'll be like them; go with the evil and you'll be worse than them.- Portuguese Proverb
Re: Intelligence Levels
Emily Sivana #933832 07/14/17 02:26 PM
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I don't think we have enough canon examples to say. In the Reboot, Brainiac 5 inherited his intelligence directly from Brainiac 4. But we don't know where Brainiac 4 got it from, though we do know she is a descendant of Vril Dox's.

Re: Intelligence Levels
Emily Sivana #933860 07/14/17 09:29 PM
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There is no “scientific” basis for Coluan intelligence levels.

Human IQ (created in 1912 in Germany) measures a quality ranges from scores of 60 to 200, with 67% of the population scoring between 85 and 115.

Originally intended as a measure of “mental age”, what IQ actually is is subject to debate, but scores are highly correlated with success in school, from first through twelfth grade. It is also well-correlated with size of vocabulary, memory, attention, and speed of calculation. About 50% of the variance of IQ can be attributed to inheritance, although there is a tendency towards regression to the mean. (Children of low-IQ parents tend to be “smarter” than their parents, children of high-IQ parents tend to be stupider less intelligent.) There is an exception to this: high-IQ parents of very different genetic profiles tend to have children who are as intelligent or more intelligent than themselves. In spite of this regression to the mean, cross-generational IQ scores appear to be increasing by about three points per decade. (The Flynn Effect) That is, if 10-year-olds who took an IQ test in 1917 and scored 100 were to scored against a population of 10-year-olds in 2017, rather than their peers, they would only score 17.

According to the Coluan intelligence scales, all those IQ scores, whether 60 or 200, count as 3rd-level intelligence.

20th-century Coluans were said to have 8th-level intelligence. The Original Brainiac was created with 10th-level intelligence, but increased it to 12-level intelligence. 30th and 31st-century Coluans are said to have 10th-level intelligence; Brainiac 5 has 12th-level intelligence. Grax of Exxor claimed to have 20th-level intelligence. In one of the Justice League cartoons, Luthor claimed to exceed 12-level intelligence, but of course he would.

Brainiac 5 has exhibited few actual signs of trans-human intelligence, other than the ability to process information rapidly, or to create deus-ex-machina technological devices.

It may be that “3rd-level intelligence” simply means that the human brain has three levels: the neo-cortex, the limbic system, and the “reptilian brain”. Brainiac 5 may have nine more: the super-cortex, mega-brain, giga-brain, tera-brain, peta-brain, exa-brain, zetta-brain, a single sub-system dedicated to just counting seconds, and one set aside for thinking about blonde female sexbots.


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Re: Intelligence Levels
Emily Sivana #933923 07/15/17 03:45 PM
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I appreciate the comments so far and the knowledge that there is a lot of wiggle room for fan interpretations. I also realize I should try to estimate the intelligence of other Legion races. Is it safe to assume Naltorians count as baseline human?


Go with the good and you'll be like them; go with the evil and you'll be worse than them.- Portuguese Proverb
Re: Intelligence Levels
Emily Sivana #934021 07/17/17 06:35 AM
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From what I saw back in the '80s', humans had a 'third-level effector intelligence' (what effector even meant, in that context, I don't know), and each 'level' afterwards was supposed to be an order of magnitude 'smarter' (in terms of processing power and memory storage, I would assume, since there's no real way to measure 'intelligence' at present in other terms, 'intelligence' being kind of squishily defined and often misinterpreted). Kryptonians, like Superman, had a fifth level 'effector' intelligence, meaning that they where, as a race, *100 times smarter* than humans. (As a race who, at maximum potential, could think and react near light-speed, and may have had their entire races culture, history, science, etc. downloaded into their brains, at some point, like baby Kal-El, who grew up on a farm in Kansas, but still able to create alien technology like the 'Super-Mobile' in seconds.)

A standard Coluan had a 10th level effector intelligence, making them five orders of magnitude 'smarter' than Superman (which, again, might only have represented their increased processing power and memory storage, since the scale seemed to be a Coluan scale, and probably had zero measurements for stuff like 'social intelligence' or artistic ability), while Brainy himself was a 12 on what the rest of Colu thought of as a scale-to-10 (with themselves at the top), making him, by Coluan measurements, 100 times 'smarter' than the average Coluan.

None of the other races were, that I know of, even measured on this scale, but I don't see any reason why Bgtzlns or Winathians or Braalians or Titanians or Naltorians or Carggites or Trommites, etc., who seem basically human in both physiology and, for the most part, psychology and behaviors, would be any smarter (or dumber) than Earth-humans. Similarly, aliens like Blok and Tellus and Chameleon Boy don't seem superhumanly smart (or more than normally 'dense' in the case of Blok), although Cham is certainly smart within the normal range of 'human-smart' (as are Nura and Imra).

Outliers;

1) Mon-El should be as smart as Superman, but has never been shown to be able to make super-science gizmos the way Superman has, nor did Universo seem to consider him one of the four smartest Legionnaires (along with Querl, Imra, Reep and Nura).

2) In the Threeboot, someone quips that Brainy said humans are a fifth level intelligence and Brainy snaps back, 'I said that humanity, as a species, is a fifth level intelligence,' which makes no sense and I'm just going to ignore.

I'd be inclined to veer away from trying to use these numbers in a game, as anything other than data points, just as actual IQ scores aren't anything other than benchmarks for the Intelligence attributes in games (or how much weight you can lift or how fast you can run in KM aren't used as literal attribute numbers to represent a characters Strength or Speed). What I feel that the effector intelligence scale does represent is that Brainy can remember a million times more precise data than I can, and do math a million times more quickly, not that he's a million times 'smarter' (since, thanks to the demands of plot, and merely-human intelligence of those writing him, he can do some pretty dumb stuff). smile


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Re: Intelligence Levels
Emily Sivana #934033 07/17/17 10:24 AM
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I'm sure we had this discussion when Phantom Girl was designing her game. Maybe sift back through some of her posts?

Not sure if this is still her final game site or if it's been updated elsewhere:

http://thelegionofsuperheroes.wikidot.com/start


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