Have you mistaken me for Arthur Jensen? I don't consider myself to be a defender of the SAT, although I guess I am if you take "defender of the SAT" to mean one who believes it measures (albeit necessarily crudely and imprecisely), well, something beyond mere class status. My claim that the various problem solving abilities (if you prefer this term to "intellectual capacities") measured by IQ tests do correlate with one another is just a matter of fact; those who are good at finding relations among words on IQ tests also tend to be good at finding relations among shapes on IQ tests (however, such correlations aren't 1/1). Everyday experience leads me to believe that, even if IQ tests are a load of bull, the various intellectual capacities we generally group under the rubric "smartness" do correlate (perhaps weakly) with one another.
-- Luke
^^^^^^^ CB: From my experience, especially at U of Mich ( class of '72 honors) , on campus this thing "smartness" is more effective academic skills, than general,. all around mental ability for every avenue of life and career. Illiterates can be extremely smart, in the sense of having very effective mental skills in other areas of life than academics.