That seems reasonable, until you factor in that language and communication are itself part of intelligent life. Sharing knowledge and cooperation are fundamental to learning and intelligence, keeping in mind that these learned strategies are fundamentally asymmetric (and thus cannot be shared by simple copying).
We need to appreciate that intelligence is not an individual trait, but part of a shared strategy, utilizing diversity to be able to react quickly to changing demands.
For example, lets say we have a group of people with a shared task of moving a (large) set of boxes from one source to one destination. When performing this task initially, different strategies are tried and a winning strategy is chosen, without one person coordinating the group and without each individual having total knowledge of the strategy. However, when a similar task is presented, the group will quickly perform the winning strategy again. Who possesses the intelligence? Would we gain anything when all the knowledge would be shared? (Given limited time and space, the answer is no for most strategies)
We need to appreciate that intelligence is not an individual trait, but part of a shared strategy, utilizing diversity to be able to react quickly to changing demands.
For example, lets say we have a group of people with a shared task of moving a (large) set of boxes from one source to one destination. When performing this task initially, different strategies are tried and a winning strategy is chosen, without one person coordinating the group and without each individual having total knowledge of the strategy. However, when a similar task is presented, the group will quickly perform the winning strategy again. Who possesses the intelligence? Would we gain anything when all the knowledge would be shared? (Given limited time and space, the answer is no for most strategies)