What is intelligence

apeiron

I think you have to separate out the notions of adapted and complex still. One is a measure of the system's equilibrium balance, the other of its sheer intricacy and variety.

So the big question about humans is how much we are an out-of-equilbrium fluctuation, soon to be corrected (whereas insects as part of ecosystems are more "intelligently" adapted - they would score higher on the in-equilibrium measure, and the question then is that what you really mean by intelligence?)

Then there is the separate notion of complexity. This can be measured by the number of different states an anticipatory system can access. Clearly, the human mind can access many more states of memory, imagination, expectation, planning, than even a co-ordinated insect colony, a group mind like an ant or bee colony.

We could also count neural complexity as a surrogate measure of mental complexity. The human brain has something like 1000 trillion connections all shaped by personal history. It is the densest occurence of systems complexity in the known universe.

So if intelligence is measured in terms of anticipatory complexity, humans win hands down.

Putting it all together, we can say that hominids were both at the top of the tree in anticipation terms and also in equilbrium with their environment up until about 100,000 years ago.

Then we broke free of a balanced biological situation with the invention of grammatical speech and the new thing of cultural evolution. Something only humans have.

So we became log/normal. On an exponential growth path against a linear environment. Out of equilibrium. We can see this in terms of population growth, oil consumption, rare earth consumption, any measure of entropification really.

Our invention of language (memes on top of genes) was a phase change for earth ecology. It took the biosphere into a new space. The question is what will be left when the new system, a combination of genes and memes, settles to its eventual equilbrium balance, as it must.

Some dream of Kurzweil's singularity. Others would be less optimistic.

Kajahtava

Most people here seem to work on the assumption that intelligence exists (whatever that means). That human beings who simplify and abstract reality to better cope with it experience such a concept is no guarantee to its existence, and I am sceptical towards its supposed existence.

I believe that if you experience a certain concept but cannot come to a definition of it in hard terms that can be objectively tested and verified you most likely deal with a concept that has no place in serious naturalistic science and instead deal with a concept that human beings subconsciously invent to better deal with the complexity of the world around them, you know, like 'chair' or 'evil'.

It also seems that human narcissism seems to make us hold ourselves as the one 'sentient', some linguistics think that 'human', 'man', 'manus' and 'mind' ultimately come from from one and the same origin I believe. Then there's also stuff like the mirror test which is really nazi science and as shaky as Hitler's attempts to prove the superiority of the German people. If people being able to recognise themselves in the mirror is a proof of their 'self awareness' then likewise it's a proof that humans are not self aware but dogs are because they can recognise themselves from the scent of their piss while humans can't.

apeiron

The problem is that a word like intelligence seems like a thing rather than a process. Like consciousness, goodness and other troublesome word, it makes the mistake of "entification" - turning processes (which operate in contexts) into entities (which simply exist, entire unto themselves).

Which is why I suggested shifting the discussion to words like anticipation which are clearly processes. Intelligence leaves an ambiguity over what should be measured, in a way that anticipation doesn't.

The mirror test actually involves animals noticing a red dot or something similar marked on brow and ear. So it is not about recognising self, it is recognising that something has changed about their appearance.

Nothing shaky about the test itself. How it should be intepreted is another matter. But it does produce repeatable data.

For your dog example, what would happen if they were fed asparagus? Humans often notice something has changed.

Kajahtava

I'm sceptical towards the existence of 'consciousness', either, most people believe that the interaction of neurons breeds consciousness or 'introspection' or 'self awareness', I shall be bolder and claim that I don't know what they are and that they don't exist, and that human beings in fact do not experience consciousness, they just claim they do, including myself, counter intuitive I suppose.

In an empirical sense? One should define when anticipations are not met of course.



Fair enough, but you can say that about any test. If I drop water in a bowl and see it fall and then thereby have claimed to prove that ghosts exist? I mean, it's reproducible all right, a lot of things are. I just think very little conclusions can be drawn from this, and the test is politically laden and invented primarily around human beings, first they decided upon a thing that human beings share, then they tried to see if other animals also did. No one would make such a a test and observe from it that humans fail it and thus conclude that humans lack sentience, but dogs have it aplenty.

Also, Wikipedia makes no mention of the dot, and as unreliable you may find wikipedia, I find it more reliable than most sites, and certainly than a random user on a forum if I may be so bold to say so.

Also, it's not as reproducible as one might think, various individuals of species passed it with not extremely similar degrees, then again 'species', is guilty of the principle, it doesn't truly exist, it's just an abstraction the human mind makes to categorized and thus reserve brainpower.

Of course, most animals' primary senses is their nose, not their eyes.

Dogs however do so a lot sooner. I doubt a human being would smell from a dog that she's ready for it, male dogs have no trouble whatsoever.

Which is also why I find 'sexually dimorphic' an awkward category for species, it's at max 'sexually dimorphic' to the perception of humans. Fruit flies have no trouble seeing the difference between their sexes, and I doubt they'd notice the difference between a human being and a chimp, let alone a male and female human.

apeiron

Well, that trumps Descartes I guess.

I think what the researchers were trying to show, and did indeed show, was that there was a gradation in this regard from animals to humans.

I agree. Wiki is reliable. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirror_test and read the second paragraph.

Kajahtava

Je dis que je pense donc je dis que je suis.

Of course, that I think suffices as proof for me that I think, but that I think is not a given, it is a naïve assumption. I find the hypothesis that all humans have no more or less feeling than a random rock and just process signals by the laws of physics and have evolved to become a sophisticated and adaptive swarm-intelligence based computer to be a lot simpler. With respect to the lethal weapon of Mr. Ockam, it explains all the observed data, that humans claim they are self-aware can easily be attributed to that doing so of course enhances their chances of survival. And it removes the complicated and vague issues like 'where does consciousness come from?', 'do other people have a mind?', 'what is consciousness?', by just not making the axiom that human beings are conscious, which is different than making the axiom that they are not, just leaving it out of the whole schlump, we can answer all quaestions, and needn't raise any new ones.

Sure, but we can show a gradation in many things, we can probably show that humans have one of the best senses of balance on the planet. However, does that bring us to any meaningful data on 'self awareness'?

Ahh, good, I was afraid the wiki card would be pulled. Wiki system isn't perfect, but it's a hell more reliable than for instance a newspaper or just a random site on the web made by one person with Ph.D. behind his or her name. A million people that can edit also means that a million people can check for errors, and the sourcing policy is quite okay.

Indeed, I just read it, and I agree that the test is flawed in its usual context. We can us it to some extend to see what animals realize visually that another animal copies their every move, but that's about it. It's not really self awareness, and for all we know it just tests egocentricity, ahaha.

Also, I find 'self awareness' far too vague to be tested. If I make a computer program that prints "I know that I am a computer program and that I my only capability is informing you of what I am." then surely I have just programmed a very simple intelligence that does some computation and accurately is able to describe what it is, is it then self-aware?