What Exactly IS Intelligence? (The nature of a \'Creator\')

by xeno6696 , Sonoran Desert, Thursday, August 19, 2010, 23:36 (5208 days ago) @ romansh

This is a useful definition from a scientific perspective--at first glance; probably one of the best I've seen yet. But it does allow for some silly formulations. How would you rate one subject being more intelligent than another? Or better yet, how would you rate something like musical or artistic intelligence, when they arise from a stimulus that cannot be verified by a third party? Even the definition you provide misses a great deal of things that we have come to accept to be human intelligence.
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> It's from a computing professor at George Washington University, I'll have to read his book. So it is a scientific definition, you are right; is this inappropriate for this kind of discussion?
> -Well there's a difference. You've proposed (through the prof) a method to define intelligence; it isn't inappropriate, but it is woefully incomplete. It's suitable for AI research (I'm starting my Master's in Computer Science, btw) but it only describes perceptive intelligence. -I use the same definition as M. Adler for perceptive intelligence, but again, it only addresses one type of intelligence, and in context to my original post--wouldn't tell us anything of consequence about the creator. If it's intelligent and capable of knowing what we are up to, it could simply refuse to participate, which would of course be an intelligent response, though it would result in our (wrong) conclusion that our godly test subject that it was not intelligent. -In the previous discussion, I surmised that if this universe was designed, than clearly the designer has to have two things.-1. A memory.
2. Symbolic reasoning. -David Turell (our self-appointed ID gadfly ) promptly denied my ability to make these inferences, which lead to me asking the question in my original post. If we assert that the designer has no memory and/or no ability for symbolic reasoning, what would this intelligence be?-> I don't actually think the formulations are silly - despite the prospect of ever so slightly intelligent bricks. But it does give us a different perspective on our place in the universe (if we have one at all?)
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> So which is more intelligent an amoeba or a brick? Instinctively I would say an amoeba. But in saying so I'm anthropomorphizing an intent for that amoeba. Do you agree? Both objects react and interact with their environment. Bricks bind with calcium oxide and silica in the cement and amoeba adsorb and metabolize organic nutrients in their environment.-You argue similarly to Aristotle, who looked at all non-humans as soulless automata. Does the Amoeba, in its ability to eat, respirate, find mates and reproduce, have any more intelligence than a brick? On some levels I can agree with you, but buried here is the implied argument is that ultimately, human intelligence relies upon some critical threshold of brain complexity. Adler argues pretty persuasively here that we haven't come close to answering that question yet. -The difference between a brick and an amoeba is that the amoeba is self-driven. It's cellular machinery carry out its tasks as if it were a program, directed by its genome. This doesn't imply intelligence, but we can safely say that on earth, intelligence requires access to DNA. (At least at this stage.)

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\"Why is it, Master, that ascetics fight with ascetics?\"

\"It is, brahmin, because of attachment to views, adherence to views, fixation on views, addiction to views, obsession with views, holding firmly to views that ascetics fight with ascetics.\"