I'm pretty sure this whole intelligence is merely thinking faster idea is non sense. From my own personal experience, I think quite slowly, I'm bad at mental arithmetic, but I have a very high IQ. Look at IQ tests, our best measure for intelligence: getting the questions right is not about speed, it's about insight. The harder questions do not require more time, it is not simply a matter of enumerating through the different options. One has to "see" the patterns and then apply the rules.

> Average person with less intelligence is capable of doing the same thinking, just slower

Intelligence is not just about the speed of thought. It's also about the depth of memory, the number of associations one has in one's internal model, and numerous other factors.

Consider a computer's memory that's halved. Suddenly it can run significantly fewer programs despite the fact that it rjnd at exactly the same speed.

It sounds interesting, it' s more likely the number of associations than working memory, as I always had very bad working and long term memory compared to other people, still I was the best in elementary class in math without any studying (of course this changed after I went to a school specialized in math).