[ExI] 1DIQ: an IQ metaphor to explain superintelligence

[John Clark]

Jason Resch <jasonresch at gmail.com> wrote:

*> You can generate random functions, then produce some sequence of outputs
> generated by those functions, and then ask the superintelligence to
> identify the function that produced the sequence.*


*If you only print a finite number of elements in an infinite sequence then
there are an infinite number of functions that could produce it. And** from
an information point of view the shortest program to print that finite
sequence might be to just include the finite sequence in the program. For
example, the shortest program to print all the digits of π would be to use
this formula *

*π = 4∑((-1)^n)/(2n+1) for n = 0 to ∞*

*Such a program could be very short, just the formula and a loop, maybe 10
or 15 lines of code. But suppose I wanted JUST the first hundred digits of
π and nothing more, then the simplest way for a program to print them would
probably be to just include those first hundred digits in the program. Or
you could still use the formula, but instead of n = 0 to ∞ you need n = 0
to x, but to find x you'd need to do a lot of computation, it would be
algorithmically simple but computationally expensive. The hardcoded digits
method is algorithmically complex but computationally trivial.*

>
*>> If IQ is lousy for judging non human intelligence then it must also be
>> lousy at judging human intelligence;*
>>
>
> *> As I said from the beginning, it only serves to rank human
> intelligence.*
>

*So you couldn't say that Albert Einstein was intelligent unless you had
proof that Albert's brain was wet and squishy and not dry and hard?  *



> *> It gives no insight into the actual differencesnin capabilities that
> might exist between two scores of IQ. But you can use it to say this person
> with a 160 IQ is generally smarter than this person with the 140 IQ.*
>

*And what does "smarter" mean? It means being able to do the sort of things
that Albert Einstein and William Shakespeare can do that the average human
cannot do. And that definition works just as well for an AI as it does for
a human.  *

*>> how could you say there was a meaningful repeatable
>> measurable difference between somebody who had an IQ of 170 and somebody
>> who had an IQ of 171?*
>>
>
> *> Give them a large sample of questions and see which one tends to gets
> more right.*
>

*Questions made up by psychologists whose IQ is nowhere near 170. *


>  > ... f*orm a statistical distribution...*


*How many points on that bell curve that represent people who have an IQ
greater than 170 do you have to work with?  If you only have two points you
can connect them with a straight line or with any curve you like. *

*John K Clark*








>
>
>>
>>
>>>
>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> *Suppose the year was 1901 and one of the items on an IQ test was
>>>>>> "prove Fermat's Last Theorem" and suppose that somebody had given a proof
>>>>>> that was identical to the one that Andrew Wiles gave in 1995, how could
>>>>>> anybody know if it was valid? In 1901 even the world's top mathematicians
>>>>>> would have had no idea what Wiles was talking about because in his proof he
>>>>>> was using concepts without explanation, he didn't need to because they were
>>>>>> common knowledge to all mathematicians in 1995, but were completely unknown
>>>>>> to mathematicians in 1901. If Wiles had included all those explanations in
>>>>>> his proof then it would've been 10 times as large, and even then it
>>>>>> would've probably taken mathematicians at least a decade to fully
>>>>>> understand it and realize that Wiles was right.*
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> *John K Clark*
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> On Thu, Oct 23, 2025 at 9:32 AM John Clark <johnkclark at gmail.com>
>>>>>>> wrote:
>>>>>>> >
>>>>>>> >
>>>>>>> >
>>>>>>> > On Thu, Oct 23, 2025 at 8:47 AM Adrian Tymes via extropy-chat <
>>>>>>> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>>>>>>> >
>>>>>>> >>  > IQ 160 AI will outthink me on average, but not always
>>>>>>> >
>>>>>>> >
>>>>>>> > I see no reason to believe that a smart human is about as smart as
>>>>>>> something can be. I also don't believe an IQ test can meaningfully measure
>>>>>>> the intelligence of something that is significantly smarter than the people
>>>>>>> who wrote the IQ test, so an IQ of 300 or even 200 means nothing. And I
>>>>>>> don't think there are many people who have an IQ of 160 and are in the IQ
>>>>>>> test writing business. But if there was such a test that could measure
>>>>>>> intelligence of any magnitude, and if you made a logarithmic plot of it, I
>>>>>>> think you'd need a microscope to see the difference between the village
>>>>>>> idiot and Albert Einstein, but if you were standing at the Albert Einstein
>>>>>>> point you'd need a telescope to see the Mr. Jupiter Brain point.
>>>>>>> >
>>>>>>> > John K Clark
>>>>>>> >
>>>>>>> >
>>>>>>> >
>>>>>>> >
>>>>>>> >
>>>>>>> >> I've been thinking about that video that claimed a
>>>>>>> superintelligence can always perfectly outthink any lesser intelligence,
>>>>>>> such as a human.  The assumption of narrative godmodding aside,
>>>>>>> intelligence just doesn't work like that.  I think I may have come up with
>>>>>>> an imperfect but simple metaphor to explain this.
>>>>>>> >>
>>>>>>> >> I have been a member of Mensa since a young age.  While it has
>>>>>>> been a while since my IQ was measured (and I do not trust the free online
>>>>>>> tests), let us say my IQ is around 150: not the record highest ever, but
>>>>>>> comfortably into the top 2%.  So I am speaking from the experience of
>>>>>>> having lived with high intelligence.
>>>>>>> >>
>>>>>>> >> In cases where just your IQ applies, it's like rolling a die,
>>>>>>> with sides numbered from 1 to your IQ.  (Skills and training also factor
>>>>>>> in.  I'm nowhere near as good at fixing a car as a trained auto mechanic,
>>>>>>> for instance, regardless of our relative IQs.  But here we'll ne comparing
>>>>>>> me to hypothetical AIs where both of us have access to the same database -
>>>>>>> the Internet - and some training on relevant skills.)
>>>>>>> >>
>>>>>>> >> I will, on average for such matters, roll higher than someone
>>>>>>> with IQ 100.  This means I come up with the better answer: more efficient,
>>>>>>> more often correct, et cetera.  (This does not apply to subjective matters,
>>>>>>> such as politics, which shows one weakness of using just IQ to measure all
>>>>>>> intelligence, and why some speak of multiple kinds of intelligence.  But
>>>>>>> here we'll be looking into tactics, technology planning, and so on where
>>>>>>> there usually is an objectively superior answer.)
>>>>>>> >>
>>>>>>> >> But not always.  Sometimes I'll roll low and they'll roll high.
>>>>>>> I know this.  Any AI that's as smart as I am, and ran for long enough to
>>>>>>> gain such experience, would know this too.  (The video's scenario started
>>>>>>> with the AI running for many subjective years.)
>>>>>>> >>
>>>>>>> >> From what I have seen, IQ may be partly about physical
>>>>>>> architecture but also largely depends on heuristics and optimizations: it
>>>>>>> is literally possible to "learn" to be smarter, especially for young
>>>>>>> children whose brains are still forming.  For an AI, we can map this to its
>>>>>>> hardware and software: a single-chip AI might be a million times smarter
>>>>>>> than an average human, and then run on a million GPUs.
>>>>>>> >>
>>>>>>> >> From what I have seen, IQ is not linear.  It's closer to
>>>>>>> log-based.  Twice as smart as me would not be IQ 300; it would be far
>>>>>>> closer to 151.  (I don't know if that is the exact scaling, but for this
>>>>>>> metaphor let's say it is.)  1,000, or 10^3, is approximately 2^10, so a
>>>>>>> thousand-fold increase in intelligence corresponds to a 10-point IQ
>>>>>>> increase by this metric.
>>>>>>> >>
>>>>>>> >> So, that "million by million" AI I just described would only be
>>>>>>> IQ 140.  Let's toss another million in there somewhere, or change both of
>>>>>>> those "million"s to "billion"s, either way getting to IQ 160.
>>>>>>> >>
>>>>>>> >> This IQ 160 AI will outthink me on average, but not always - not
>>>>>>> perfectly.  Further, the AI in the video wanted to be the only AI.  2% of
>>>>>>> humanity is in the tens of millions.  Even if we can only take our maximum
>>>>>>> collective roll, not adding our dice or anything, that AI will rarely
>>>>>>> outroll all of us - and it needs to do so several times in a row, reliably,
>>>>>>> in the video's scenario.  Otherwise, we figure out the AI is doing this,
>>>>>>> find a way to purge it, and stop its time bomb, so humanity lives.
>>>>>>> >>
>>>>>>> >> Knowing this, the AI would see its survival and growth - the
>>>>>>> imperatives that video assumes to explain the AI's actions - as more likely
>>>>>>> if it works with humanity instead of opposing it.
>>>>>>> >>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>> =

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