[extropy-chat] Singularitarian verses singularity +HIGH IQS!

Marc Geddes m_j_geddes at yahoo.com.au
Thu Dec 22 05:38:38 UTC 2005


--- Jack Parkinson <isthatyoujack at icqmail.com> wrote:


> 
> This is a good point, and I believe we are right to
> be skeptical on the 
> benefits of super intelligence. By way of
> illustration, a number of years 
> ago, I received notification that my son (then aged
> 10) was being considered 
> for a gifted children's program.
> 
> I attended an interview with the child psychologist
> who had conducted a 
> variant of the Stanford test on my son. She told me
> that he had scored in 
> excess of 145, but that IQ's over 145 were (in her
> opinion) meaningless 
> numbers and refused to divulge to me the actual
> score.
> 

It all depends on how you define 'intelligence'. 
Intelligence in the most general sense of the word
does not have to mean just IQ.

I'll take a crack at some definitions.

IQ (and 'Intelligence' in a narrow sense) means:

*The ability to make accurate models about functional
systems.  A 'functional system' is basically a
physical process... or in more abstract terms, a
'computation' consisting of a succession of ordered
on/off states.  So IQ (and 'Intelligence' in the
narrow sense) means: 'The ability to accurately model
functional systems in order to make correct
predictions about the behaviour of these systems'.

However, a more general definition of 'Intelligence'
should include the social (or 'volitional' domain). 
Then in *this* sense I think 'Intelligence' means:

 *The ability to achieve one's goals efficiently.  i.e
The ability to maximize 'gains' in the utilitarian
sense.

But I think there's an even more general definition of
'Intelligence' than the above.  In the most general
sense, Intelligence means, I think:

*The ability to integrate different kinds of knowledge
into a single explanatory framework.

That third definition is my final definition of
'Intelligence' (this third definition, I believe,
subsumes the other two definitions).

  



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