>It would be a monumental achievement if computer science ever advances to the point where we have a mathematical way of determining the minimum absolute intelligence required to solve a given problem

For a huge number of problems (including many on IQ tests) computer science does in fact have a mathematical way of determining the minimum absolute amount of compute necessary to solve the problem. That's what complexity theory is. Then it's just a matter of estimating someone's "compute" from how fast they solve a given class of problems relative to some reference computer.

You're right - we can get closer and closer to an absolute measure by looking at many brains and AI's solving a problem, and converging to maximum performance given a certain amount of hardware by tweaking the algorithm or approach used.

But I think proving that maximum performance is really the ultimate level, from first principles, is a much harder task than looking at a performance graph and guesstimating the asymptote.

> Then it's just a matter of estimating someone's "compute" from how fast they solve a given class of problems relative to some reference computer.

Heh... "just"...

Good luck with that.