WHAT IS INTELLIGENCE?

[Hermann]

This question came up repeatedly in the Artificial Intelligence thread. I think it deserves its own thread.

How do you define "intelligence?" Your personal as well as dictionary definitions, please. And how do you specifically define human intelligence? Also, typology of intelligence. Are there different types of intelligence, and how do you define those?

 

[Neo]

There's definitely a difference between intelligence and wisdom. It's like intelligence is split between a lower and a higher intelligence, where the latter is more associated with the Soul instead of just the brain.

 

[Seeler]

Off the top of my head I would say that intelligence is the ability to process information and to learn from it.

 

[Mendalla]

In my experience, the term has become a bit of a catch-all that covers a number of key human abilities (that may or may not be unique in some cases):

• Imagination (the ability to mentally create people, places, events, etc. that do not really exist and use that in reasoning through or investigating problems and ideas)
• Reasoning (the ability to take data or a set of principles and extrapolate or to seek an answer to a question that we or someone else has posed)
• Learning (the ability to gain new skills and knowledge through experience)
• Memory (the ability to store and retrieve knowledge of the past and use that in the other three)

Mathematical ability may fit in there, too, but it is also arguably a set of skills encompassing all four so I'm leaving it off.

 

[Hermann]

"The ability to store information and use it in a meaningful way" probably is the most basic definition of intelligence. This basic intelligence may well have been present at the beginning of the universe, or even before. From there, intelligence evolved and still evolves, and becomes ever more complex.

If the basic substance of the universe is eternal energy, and the transcendental power to transform itself into its opposite yet remain what it is an innate power of eternal energy, then transcendence is an information that is immutably stored in energy, and to transcend itself yet remain the same is the meaningful way by which energy uses this information.

There you have it, folks: not only my speculative definition of intelligence, but also my speculative definition of God. Thus, God is intelligence. But the intelligence which is God was, in the beginning, not yet anthropomorphic. Anthropomorphic intelligence took 15 billion years to evolve! The intelligence of the God of the beginning was/is the basic intelligence that was/is everpresent and omnipresent, and was present in the universe since before the beginning.

The intelligence of God has, by now, evolved into many types of intelligence. I get into the typology of intelligence later.

 

[Waterfall]

I think sometimes we mistake intelligence with the acquisition of certain types of knowledge. I have met many people who seemed intelligent without darkening the doors of higher education or any schooling. Intelligence I think is hard to define but we seem to sense when someone is speaking great truths because their words impact us with a profound sense of meaning.

 

[Hermann]

Thank you, Waterfall. I am one of those who have never darkened the doors of higher education, yet I consider myself reasonably intelligent.

Some people think I have a higher education, and ask me for my degree. I tell them that I have a BS degree from TU. When they ask me which university that is, I say: "The university of universities, the university which everyone attends by default: THE UNIVERSE!"

 

[Mendalla]

Education does not equal intelligence. In fact, intelligence is needed for education to have any benefit. If we do not have the capacity to learn something, no amount of education is going to fix that. My math aptitude, for instance, is well below that of both my wife and son. I grok the broad principles (the philosophy if you like) but the mechanics sink me every time. Were that not so, I might well doing particle physics or something rather than babysitting computers.

 

[Delightful Life]

This question came up repeatedly in the Artificial Intelligence thread. I think it deserves its own thread.

How do you define "intelligence?"

Let me first write that I find intelligence to be as warm as my love's touch, as fuzzy as a gamboling kitten, as cute as a newborn panda, as cool as a refreshing waterfall, as beautiful as a beethoven sky

Intelligence is an entity's general ability to comprehend reality

 

[Hermann]

No one has replied in a while, so I think it is time for some concluding remarks by the author of this thread.

As I said before, I think intelligence is the ability to store information and use it in a meaningful way. And I think that intelligence is an innate, cosmic quality. The capacity for intelligence is omnipresent and ever present, and is rooted in the ability of eternal energy to transcend its forms and states yet remain eternal energy throughout this creative process.

Intelligent energy has evolved into many forms and types. Basic energy has its innate basic intelligence, subatomic particles have theirs, atoms and molecules too, and cells are quite complex in their intellectual development. Organism are more complex, ecosystems even more so, and the biosphere of our planet is one huge, self-regulating ecosystem. And our and other solar systems, galaxies, and, of course, our entire universe, are intelligent systems or beings.

We humans commonly differentiate between spatial, mathematical, emotional, and social intelligence. Consciousness, conscience, and awareness are also classified as types of intelligence. But there are many more, depending on how far we want to go with a detailed typology. But, as I said, I think that the power of transcendence is at the root of all intelligence. And, if the transcendental or self-creative cosmos is God, then intelligence is THE godly quality.

In German, the noun for both "intellect" and "spirit" is "Geist." "Geist" also means "ghost." I believe intelligence to be the ghostly or spiritual quality that permeates the physical universe. In other words, the physical universe is also the spiritual universe.

In the evolution of intelligence, we humans are a biological species that has become aware of the self-creative intelligence inherent in the universe, and and has begun to use it creatively. We have become creators ourselves. And we have, throughout our history, created aids and tools that helped us become ever more intelligent and creative. Our most recent achievement in that regard are intelligent machines (computers), and the next step will be computers that are as self-creative as we, or the universe.

What's next in the evolution of intelligence? Perhaps self-creative supercomputers will help us access the cosmic hologram, the cosmic memory body that contains all cosmic memory, from the zero moment of time to the present, and keeps on recording it until the end of time. THE cosmic supercomputer!


We pluck till time and times are done,
The silver apples of the moon,
The golden apples of the sun.

-Ray Bradbury