Intelligence

We are arrogant. 

I have been taught this since my childhood. Humans think they are above the world, separate, distinct. We think we have the right to rule it, shape it, build it. We think we have the right to be its wardens. We think. We think.

I have been taught this since my childhood. I have argued against and for it, sophist that I am, and I have come to explore it. I have come to agree with my teachers. Arrogance is a sin. 

We are not the only intelligent life on this earth.

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I will ask people what it means to be intelligent. What a non human who was intelligent might look like.

“A parrot who can hold a full conversation and make new points it has not been taught.”

“The Turing test then?  The capacity to pass for a human? 

“No - the ability to make new ideas!”

“Do we make new ideas? How often do I speak something I have not been taught.” 

“Yes - metaphor - we take two ideas and put them together in interesting and unique ways.”

“A computer can do that - take two ideas and mesh them randomly linking words together - putting them in grammatical sense.”

“That’s not intelligence. You have to be conscious - you have to try.”

“Conscious - you have to mesh ideas together and then make sense of them? - give me any random jumble of words and I can make a coherent story out of them. I can imagine a computer that could do the same - taking sense making templates matching them - then substituting the new words and putting them together in terms of logic and grammar. ”

“But they’re not trying - they’re not willing it so.”

“Do we will to think? What is will? Is it different from a command in the computer to perform an analysis. Will results in action. The computer acts therefore it wills.”

“A computer isn’t conscious. It doesn’t understand that it exists.”

“We’re not so far from that. Build some software to analyze emotion based on activity. To analyze intent based on result. Give it to the computer and command it to analyze itself. Voila - self conscious machine.”

“But it can’t change its actions based on what it observes.”

“Put in some software that makes it choose red when it analyzes its mood as angry - blue when it analyzes its mood as sad.”

“We’re so much more complex than that.”

“Is intelligence complexity?”

“No - intelligence is the ghost inside of the machine. Intelligence is seated in the soul.

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To be intelligent, I discover - is to be human. To be able to do human things. You have to be able to communicate. Only social animals can be intelligent. You have to make use of the world around you. Only animals with hands or dexterous beaks can be intelligent. You have to think about things besides your survival like rocket ships and how to farm. Only animals that live in easy environments can be intelligent.

Most importantly you have to be able to solve problems - on your own as an individual. Ants might as a colony be able to find perfect solutions - slime molds might be able to solve mazes - but to be intelligent you have to will it as an individual. Problem solving cannot be evolutionary. If you create offspring that survive what you cannot, that’s not actually solving the problem. Predispositions for solving problems don’t count, you have to think of it yourself.

The interesting thing is that you can take any one of these things away and people will still call it intelligent. Imagine a race of little green men who live in societies and talk all the time to each other. They make tools and build buildings. They make art. But they’re not great problem solvers. Intelligent? Sure - just different.

Now we have floating spheres without hands, or other means of manipulating the world. They’re social and talk to each other, they’re amazing problem solvers, who are always thinking about life on other planets and the meaning of it all. Are they intelligent? Sure - just different.

Now we have a race of humanoid creatures that abhor each other and fight whenever they meet. They don’t have any means of communicating, or very very rudimentary “come mate with me” when the season comes. - They are however incredible problem solvers, capable of calculating probabilities to the 100th decimal place, they build one-alien rocket ships, and complex gadgets. Are they intelligent? Sure - they just can’t talk. 

Now lets take away two. This race of aliens is very dexterous, capable weaving amazing nests out of all manner of things, and building incredibly complicated homes. They are not particularly imaginative and they don’t think about anything besides what benefits them. Are they intelligent? - well no. They’re just programmed to make complex things.

Likewise imaginative but not dexterous or social - social but not dexterous or imaginative - capable of non evolutionarily beneficial things but not social, dexterous, or imaginative (oops - that one probably died off) - they are, none of them intelligent. 

Likewise - what if I took any of the races above and told you they were robots - The little green men have been programmed to make art and build buildings, but cannot do anything beyond their programming. The spheres are computational devices - programmed  to periodically reassess its programming and see if its purpose is still functioning. The lone aliens are created to build space ships, and have scavenging software that allows them to use whatever is around them to complete their tasks.

Are they intelligent? No. what changed?

They lost their souls.

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But there’s a problem. I argue this with atheists. I argue it with people who don’t believe in souls. I do. In arguing this tack I always assume that they take a materialistic bent - that by acting as if  people are machines - as life as nothing but a series of programs encoded into our genes - I’m speaking to them in their language - but I’m not.

Descartes lives on - People don’t actually believe that people are machines - except me. I’m an animist. I believe that the Eternal, the Divine, the River, the Power, that Spark, the Mystery, Anima Mundi, Ontology, Soul - flows through all things, and all things have some portion of everything within them. I believe that this portion is life, is wisdom, is imagination - it is Eternal, and infinite in its possibilities. Yet we do not do everything, we are not everything, the eternal on that side is balanced by the finite here. The physical. The machine.

I thus believe that the Eternal and its manifestations come through the filter of the genetics. Soul in a mouse manifests in mouselike behaviors. Soul in a dead mouse manifests in dead mouselike behaviors. Soul in a rock acts rocklike. Soul in a human acts like a human, not because of some inherent property of soul that creates human-ness  - but because it flows through the physical conduits of the human body - built by evolution to be able speak, manipulate its surroundings, solve relevant problems, and think outside of the guidelines of survival. 

I find any definition of intelligence that refers only to humans as meaningless. Why not use the word “Human” - Parrots, dolphins, and octopi are quasi human not quasi intelligent.  The manifestations of the eternal through them resemble some human like behaviors. I don’t see much special there. 

The manifestations of Soul through a machine are no different. Simply more or less human, than the living. The living is so much more complex than any machine we’ve ever built. Yet as we move on I expect to see that line blur.

We are arrogant after all - best put that arrogance to the goal of its own destruction. To humility in the face of beings more human than we are. Ultra-human AIs - mostly human animals we’ve built to act like us. Then perhaps we will have created the world  where we can see what we already are. One among many.

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If to be intelligent is not to be human what is it? I find myself fascinated by the idea of some goal for our creations besides human - some interspecies definition on which we can rank and improve. 

Imagine a species of alien who, whenever it encounters a problem, reproduces a billion young, each drastically different from one another, but all following lines similar to its mother, and all capable of the same feat.  Then the mother dies and several of those billion young might be closer to solving the problem. They reproduce and die - until finally one is able to transcend its purpose and proceed to the next obstacle. As an individual it dies quickly. As a species there is nothing it cannot do, if it encounters the need to do so. A scarcity of resources might send it into the stars - evolving ever new ways to survive the radiation and cold - then down to a planet - any planet it came to it would evolve the means to live on it.

Would such a creature be intelligent? It would not be human. It would certainly be successful. 

In order to determine a new definition of intelligence I do not want anything that relies on the attributes of a single species. An egalitarian view of intelligence would not limit a species because of its lack of dexterity - we would not call a human stupid because they lacked hands. 

In our cross species vision it cannot rely on intent. We cannot judge intent unless it is communicated to us, and who can speak the language of the birds? Thus we must judge from observation. In this way the Turing test - does it appear intelligent - might be the best way - but not focused so singularly on human attributes. 

I also do not want a definition of intelligence that includes short term success - Viruses are adaptable but inevitably fatal to themselves. Symbioses is a better (more intelligent?) option. 

I see several definitions possible here. Capacity to overcome problems, where problem is termed anything that gets in the way of survival, thrival, or some pre set goal. This seems problematic to me - set like my fellows with a definition of intelligence that revolves around the human. An ape is made more intelligent by its strength if both ape and human are trapped under a log.

Capacity at what it does. We see Savants as extremely intelligent because of their extreme capacity in one direction, even while they might fall down if we tested them in another. Likewise a tree is very very good at finding the path of least resistance for its roots, making complex nutrient calculations and combat strategies with other trees, giving ground one way while taking ground another. A tree is very bad at talking or building shelters, or anything else outside its realm of specialization. 

 Complexity is another definition - but here we get into trouble with very complex non living systems, which I intuitively reject. The complexity of a living system seems to have some impact on its success.

Success by biomass seems like another good one, but cows beat us here by a factor of three, and corn beats that by about the same. I’m not sure what to think of this. 

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We are arrogant, but I think instead we should be proud. Life strikes me as one of the more interesting manifestations of the Divine, and I feel we are the only creatures on this earth capable of spreading it beyond. 

As we gradually figure out that we are neither masters nor wardens, but instead messengers - tasked with the power to shape the very patterns the Eternal shines through, not for our own benefit, but that they may prosper where we plant them. 

Google tells me intelligence is “the ability to acquire and apply knowledge and skills.”  This feels very human to me. Biased human that I am I do not feel capable of building something to aim for as we build new life. Biased, and a very proud human, I will always equate intelligence as the capacity to spread life to the stars.