jerryk on Nostr: A hundred years ago, psychologists and psychiatrists thought they understood the ...

A hundred years ago, psychologists and psychiatrists thought they understood the concept of intelligence pretty well, that they could test it, measure it, put a number on it, and that it was a comparatively stable variable across the entire human lifespan.  However, those days are long gone!  While there are still professional psychometrists who will swear on a stack of bibles that intelligence can be measured with their technical rulers, no one else actually believes them anymore, at all.  Those tests are acknowledged pretty universally now to be merely skills tests, and skills can be learned, and unlearned, over time, pretty much any and all skills.

So, where does that leave us exactly, with the concept of intelligence? What is it, and what is it not?  Can it even be defined, at all?

Additional confusion is being introduced into this discussion and debate by the increasingly important field of AI, artificial intelligence, at least from an economic point of view.  While the actual practical significance of AI is still highly debatable, there is no question whatsoever that, currently anyway, AI technology is largely driving the entire world economy, so, inevitably, it becomes a matter of considerable interest to people.  Hence, AI must be brought into the picture now, I think in trying to understand what intelligence "really" is.  

AI is simply a mass of data structures associated in various ways, particularly in terms of mathematical statistical analysis, with an emphasis particularly on natural language processers as a convenient human interface and indexing device.  The mass of data is enormous, and, that explains its massive consumption of electricity.  Enormous quantities of data must be worked through to answer even comparatively simple questions.

This is clearly not how the brain operates, although we really don't understand very well how the brain operates. Put simply, the human brain is vastly cheaper and more efficient at doing most of the things AI is now doing.  So, why use AI at all?   Well, while the human brain is cheap and efficient, people themselves are expensive and lazy!  AI, on the other hand, given limitless energy resources, is more than happy to work 24/7, and, other than energy to keep going, it makes no demands whatsoever for anything else, at all, ever!

This leads to the fear of many, apparently anyway, that AI will take over the world, and displace human beings as the dominant "lifeform" on the planet.  Actually, I have no fear whatsoever of this.  For one thing, AI is incredibly stupid!  AI has no insight, no sensitivity, no perspective, no intuition.  None whatsoever, it can only summarize masses of input data.  That's it, period.  And, although this skill can be quite convenient at times, it is by no means essential, we can really do it ourselves, when we want to, albeit more slowly, because our power consumption is orders of magnitude lower than AI systems. And, in our normal human conception of true human intelligence, it is insight, sensitivity, perspective and intuition.  These are what constitute true wisdom, true "intelligence".

The ancient Greek poet Homer says at the beginning of the Iliad, probably the greatest and most important poem ever written, "Sing through me, oh Muse".  Now, what does he mean by that, exactly?  Homer was probably a trained doctor, and a good one, we can tell that from the incredibly detailed anatomical descriptions of wounds in battle in the Iliad.  Then, he went blind, and the great lords of Greece decided to let him hang around and play music and poetry for them.  Homer decided to use his education and skills to redefine the Greek pantheon in simpler terms than conventional polytheism, and to frame this in the form of epic poetry.  So what does this brilliant guy mean by saying "Sing through me, oh muse"?

I think what Homer means is, true intelligence is inspiration, not skill.  We know not whence it comes from.  And we know not where it goes.  

#intelligence #iqtests #iqtesting #psychology #psychiatry #psychoanalysis #metaphysics #philosophy #neuroscience #ai #computerscience #technology #philosophyofscience #economics #homer #iliad #poetry #intuition #insight #historyofphilosophy #greekgods #ancientgreece #greekpantheon #polytheism