Where does intelligence come from?

[lindagarrette]

Lindagarette,

can something be looked at as chaotic even when we know that is deterministic? I would say yes, all the chaotic systems I herad of are actually determinitstic but underlying there is some partial differential equation we don't know to solve analytically. Therefore I look at natural selection in two ways one if we consider all the universe let us see that it is deterministic, but if we accept that it is much too complicated so that we can can solve it analytically (at least nowadays) then natural selection can be seen as random.

All chaotic systems are deterministic. Chaos is probably the strongest evidence of determinism I can think of. The "butterfly effect" is a good example. It shows how a slight variation in a cause can eventually result in a proportionately larger effect since many other events along the way are also affected. Randomness is not a factor.

[lindagarrette]

hmm.. i'm not quite sure of what you mean. but can intelligence arrive from matter? meaning, can it be reduced to matter? or, the information it contains came about as a result of the interactions of pieces of matter?

 

another quote:

Tinny, quit reading that ID crap. It makes no sense whatsoever.

[TINNY]

Tinny, quit reading that ID crap. It makes no sense whatsoever

I mentioned that my purpose was for someone to point out the fallacy. You always pick on me... :friday:

 

TINNY, i'm going to start by saying that your display pictures scares me

scary? i thought it's cute.

Intelligence for me is not information or the understanding of information. For me, intelligence is the potential to learn, comprehend, and apply information.

this seems vague. animals can learn. even a piece of stick can learn. just thwack it, and it'll apply that information by breaking.

It's the same as how our body's are constructed. We have been developed so that we can adapt, learn, train, etc.. AI will eventually get to that point I'm sure.

can AI go to the extent that it is aware of itself? meaning that, it is a whole entity which is consciously doing something.

I would agree- DNA is mechanical and thus can be thought of as a computer- input in, output out. I disagree that it's intellegent in the human sense of free will. That free will is real intellegence- the ability to make different decisions based on the same input.

i don't understand how DNA is mechanical. it seems obvious, but strange to state it the way you did.

[sanctus]

All chaotic systems are deterministic. Chaos is probably the strongest evidence of determinism I can think of. The "butterfly effect" is a good example. It shows how a slight variation in a cause can eventually result in a proportionately larger effect since many other events along the way are also affected. Randomness is not a factor.

 

 

What I'm trying to say is that as we cannot predict the end result of a chaotic system (because we are not smart enough as I agree chaos is deterministic), one can see it as it were random. I know deterministic and random is contradictory, but as we are far away from being able to be determine the end result of eg. the butterfly effect for it is like it was random.

 

So i agree it not proper random, but randomness due to ignorance.

[Will]

scary? i thought it's cute.

 

what is it exactly? for some reason i just find it really creepy.. especially the way its all glossy and covered in a weird suit.. i dunno, maybe its just me, but that thing gives me nightmares.

 

this seems vague. animals can learn. even a piece of stick can learn. just thwack it, and it'll apply that information by breaking.

 

animals can learn.. animals are intelligent.. we are animals too. as for a stick learning, it doesn't learn. when you break a stick, it breaks.. that has really nothing to do with learning, so i'm not sure what you're trying to say..

 

can AI go to the extent that it is aware of itself? meaning that, it is a whole entity which is consciously doing something.

 

possibly. we aren't that far, but i don't see why it couldn't. the only thing is that how can you program AI to be aware of itself.. wouldn't the awareness be artificial?

 

(although someone could debate that its as real as our awareness of ourselves.. we exist because of the way we're constructed, but that doesn't meant thats ours is any less real than we think it is)

 

i don't understand how DNA is mechanical. it seems obvious, but strange to state it the way you did.

 

well if you know how DNA works, then you'll see that it fits into the larger mechanism.. life

[TINNY]

animals can learn.. animals are intelligent.. we are animals too. as for a stick learning, it doesn't learn. when you break a stick, it breaks.. that has really nothing to do with learning, so i'm not sure what you're trying to say..

you were saying that intelligence is the ability to learn, comprehend, and respond appropriately right? well, taking 'learn' in the widest possible context, the stick can 'accept, comprehend' information that it has been hit. that stick responds appropriately by breaking. I'm quite confused of what you are sayng. maybe you should explain intellilgence again.

 

possibly. we aren't that far, but i don't see why it couldn't. the only thing is that how can you program AI to be aware of itself.. wouldn't the awareness be artificial?

 

(although someone could debate that its as real as our awareness of ourselves.. we exist because of the way we're constructed, but that doesn't meant thats ours is any less real than we think it is)

if you program a computer, there is no whole entity (computer). it is made up of its parts. those parts just do what it does according to natural laws. so how can there be a whole entity aware of what it is doing? once again, reduction clearly does not apply.

[bumab]

I was wondering if Will could define intellegence explictly again, for the sake of my understanding!

 

For example: Intellegence is the property of self-awareness.

Intellegence is the ability to respond to simuli from the environment.

Intellegence is the capacity for free will actions.

Intellegence is the ability of long range thought.

 

etc etc... those are just examples.

 

So- for the purposes of discussion- could you define your idea of intellegence?

[Will]

you were saying that intelligence is the ability to learn, comprehend, and respond appropriately right? well, taking 'learn' in the widest possible context, the stick can 'accept, comprehend' information that it has been hit. that stick responds appropriately by breaking. I'm quite confused of what you are sayng. maybe you should explain intellilgence again.

 

The stick isn't learning. The stick has no awareness, no consciousness. The parts within the stick, down to the molecular level, are responding to the stick being broken. But this has nothing to do with learning.

 

if you program a computer, there is no whole entity (computer). it is made up of its parts. those parts just do what it does according to natural laws. so how can there be a whole entity aware of what it is doing? once again, reduction clearly does not apply.

 

all i was saying is that we're made up of parts too. like a computer, the human body is made up of many complex mechanisms. that's why i was saying people could argue that artificial intelligence is as real as ours, because if AI were to have awareness of its intelligence it would be like how humans are aware of our intelligence.

 

the only problem there is how would we know they were aware of it? they could tell us they were, but that could be a result of our programming to give them that false perception. the only reason we can agree that our perception is real, is because we all experience it..

 

I was wondering if Will could define intellegence explictly again, for the sake of my understanding!

 

For example: Intellegence is the property of self-awareness.

Intellegence is the ability to respond to simuli from the environment.

Intellegence is the capacity for free will actions.

Intellegence is the ability of long range thought.

 

etc etc... those are just examples.

 

So- for the purposes of discussion- could you define your idea of intellegence?

 

initially all i was referring to was our ability to learn, comprehend, analyze, etc.. because in my view intelligence is not possessing knowledge, but it is the ability to possess that knowledge.

 

so for example i consider someone who is more intelligent than me, someone who can think faster than me, be more creative than me, see things that i can't see in situations, etc.. whereas someone who knows more than i do, may not necessarily be more intelligent than i am.

 

that may not have answered your question; if not, please ask more specifically.

[TINNY]

I think we are in need of a different set of paradigms here. we're getting nowhere.

[TINNY]

so for example i consider someone who is more intelligent than me, someone who can think faster than me, be more creative than me, see things that i can't see in situations, etc.. whereas someone who knows more than i do, may not necessarily be more intelligent than i am.

But if 'someone who knows more than i do', and that 'knowing more' is better than knowing less, then that person is intelligent enough to know more than me.

[Will]

knowledge and intelligence are different. you may know more than i do, but that doesn't make you smarter than me.

 

for example.. you may know a lot more than me about politics.. but does that mean you're smarter than me? of course not. the way to measure your intelligence will be to see how you apply that knowledge.

 

a test of intelligence in regards to knowledge would be to see how much you can learn versus how much i can learn. how much you retain from what you've learned, versus how much i've retained.. and then patterns, conclusions you draw from what you've learned versus the ones i find (if any)

[infamous]

Necessity is the Mother of Invention, and intelligence comes when one asks themselves how to overcome a problem. The simplest of life forms develope intelligence by this same method, overcoming obstacles and difficulties. Evolution at work, natural selection seeking an accommodation from the enviornment. However, when we quit asking why, or we become too comfortable, the growth of intelligence will suffer.

[Apes Anonymous]

I tend to define intelligence as the core ability or potential to think and reason. Intelligence for me doesn't involve knowledge or wisdom; I think of it as the raw brain power that you have. So what troubles me at times is why we (humans) are able to think the way we do, reason the way we do, and express our thoughts in such a way that we are able to communicate with one another. Furthermore, where does all this creativity come from!?

In my opinion, intelligence (as we humans experience it) is the ability to memorize and to visualize a representation of our environment.

Memory is obviously needed because a brain that can't register information will not understand the world. Once you have a good visual memory (comparable to the persistence of images on the retina), and the ability to retrieve visual memories (visualization), you can see in your mind that

2 apples + 2 apples= 4 apples. Now I'm not sure how much analysis goes into retrieving the right memories for solving such a problem, but it could be just a matter of trial and error until the retrieved memory fits the problem at hand and then the result is stored in memory as future reference. I know that this might sound hilarious to experts :) , but I'm willing to learn. Any ideas?

 

On the other hand, most animals we know are capable of analytical thinking, some of the apes can even count. So when we speak about intelligence, we should do so with extreme humility. In my opinion, the leap between the apes and ourselves is nothing compared to the leap between the apes and cats, for example. Again, I'm no specialist but it seems that the most fundamental difference between us and other primates is the capacity of our brains to store memory, hence our larger brains.

 

I'm already laughing at how much outrage this post will raise among scientists. So please don't hold back. :)

[Biochemist]

Again, I'm no specialist but it seems that the most fundamental difference between us and other primates is the capacity of our brains to store memory, hence our larger brains.

I thought the most important difference between humans and apes is our ability to accessorize, and to look really good in pastels during the Spring season.

[C1ay]

Is it possible that any plants have intelligence?

 

Flowers evolve in bright colors which attract bees. The bees collect pollen from the flowers and spread that pollen in the process causing pollination to occur. Is there any underlying intelligence in this?

 

I read somewhere that certain trees allow the giraffes to graze a certain amount and then release a distasteful toxin when the tree needs time to recover. Is this an intelligent response?

 

Certain plants form symbiotic relation ships with animals. I think I remember seeing a show on a plant in South America that produces a certain sap to attract a particular species of ant. This ant is an enemy of another parasite that feeds on this plant. Is this another intelligent response?

 

A recent article here covers a plants ability to bypass genetic abnormalities in it's parents and revert to traits from it's grandparents. Is this information stored inside some kind of memory? Is it a sign of intelligence?

 

Is it possible that all life forms have some kind of intelligence?

[Apes Anonymous]

I thought the most important difference between humans and apes is our ability to accessorize, and to look really good in pastels during the Spring season.

 

I deserve every sarcastic remark I'll get :) , but in my own defense what I meant was that apes would attain our intellectual level if they had the same capacity to store memory. (I could still be wrong, but that's what I meant)

[Apes Anonymous]

Is it possible that any plants have intelligence?

 

Flowers evolve in bright colors which attract bees. The bees collect pollen from the flowers and spread that pollen in the process causing pollination to occur. Is there any underlying intelligence in this?

Good question. It's good to remember that René Descartes thought that dogs, like robots, had neither a soul nor a consciousness, and that they never experienced any sensation whatsoever. This ignorance sounds incredible to us today, so maybe our children might think the same of our ideas regarding plants.