The Meaning of Life and Other Vegetables

Hello everyone.

A couple of days ago I posted about Intelligence. Although I like the idea in that post, it is rather narrow. In other words, it only focuses on an aspect of intelligence; it feels it falls a little short as an all-encompassing definition (or test) for Intelligence. Today I’d like to write about a different aspect of intelligence (which might be incomplete just the same).

I’d like to suggest the idea that Intelligence is the ability to identify patterns subconsciously and quickly. This is in contrast with mental processes that identify similar patterns through conscious processing – applying rules, methods, procedures and so on (normally, slower).

The above approach might be explained through discussing IQ tests. Consider for a moment an IQ test that is taken by a group of individuals who – without exception – had no previous preparation of any nature. No classes, books, practice exercises etc. If we generalize to the highest possible level, all the types of questions presented in IQ tests involve some sort of pattern recognition. Additionally, the typical IQ test would be taken under a time constraint. In the imaginary scenario I presented above, some individuals will do well, and will be considered as “more intelligent”. Others would do really poorly. Why? What is the difference between them? The more successful ones (“more intelligent”) would be the ones who were able to quickly recognize the necessary patterns and pick the right answers; while the others “just wouldn’t see it” (in time, or at all). Since in this scenario the testing is with absolutely no previous preparation, the “less intelligent” participants wouldn’t have had the chance to level out the playing field by learning guiding principles, helpful procedures and techniques, handy “tips and tricks”, hints and shortcuts; as well as wouldn’t have had the chance to practice, to improve their speed through memorizing or “automation”. All they’d have at their disposal is their natural ability (essentially, their subconscious intuition). The “more intelligent” ones (as in “the ones more successful in that IQ test”) have – according to the definition I’m suggesting here – the ability to quickly recognize patterns, of various kinds, as a natural gift.

What brought me to hypothesize as above?

As humans, a big part of our accumulated “intelligence” (as in the general, every-day, poorly-defined meaning of the term) is generated through deduction / inference. We are exposed to a large number of representative examples of something, and from them we gather / generate a notion, many times undefined and even subconscious – “a sense” of it – of the “typical” thing. We then apply that notion – many times without even being aware of it – to new instances / situations, to determine applicability; and fine tune through feedback. This way of learning is in contrast with being given an explicit, precise, “technical” definition, a set of rules or an algorithm that are supposed to differentiate instances that fit the pattern, from others that don’t.

“Intelligence”, in the poplar sense, is a very good example of a notion that is inferred, and then applied, without being well-defined. For example: What animals (if any) are intelligent to an extent, or, to put it another way, have some kind or level of intelligence? There is a broad agreement that humans are not the only biological creatures that have intelligence, but that’s where clarity ends. Do dogs have intelligence? Dog lovers would say “Definitely yes!”, but what would scientists say? It’s muddy, because there’s no single, clear-cut, agreed definition for Intelligence. Things that are not well-defined are not well-measurable. What about chimpanzees and other apes? Most would agree that they have some intelligence, which seems hard to refute when considering the ones who can converse in sign-language, including fairly abstract terms and concepts. Dolphins? Again, it’s now quite widely accepted that they also have some sort of intelligence – dolphins are known to communicate “verbally” and are also able to plan and execute complex strategies for the benefit of other group members.

If we subscribe to the idea that Intelligence is intuitive / subconscious, it means it’s also mostly unpredictable.

There is wide agreement that Einstein was one of the most intelligent persons ever. When he came up with the Special Relativity theory, no one saw it coming, and apparently no one could explain how he did it. Could he explain that?… Probably not. His ultimate goal was probably something like “a better understanding of the physical world”, a goal which could be easily shared and explained. He could probably also explain in general terms how he worked towards that goal; but did he follow a well-prescribed “recipe” for actually coming up with the key insights that led to the theory?… More likely he “had a hunch” that some ideas had potential, and he followed that hunch. But how these vague insights came about, and why he followed them (and not others) in the way he did?… It involved intuition, which is another way of saying that some of it was subconscious, and thus not fully explainable. To me, this might be an indication that consciousness is NOT a prerequisite for intelligence; perhaps the contrary…?

The above emphasizes the question what exactly is subconscious intuition. If we choose to follow the concept that all our thought processes (conscious and subconscious) take place in the brain, then even subconscious processes have a certain mechanism to them. The brain is a physical apparatus – wiring and all, working on electrical and chemical interactions. Subconscious processes would be no exception to that. The difference is that we do not have sufficient access to their workings to precisely capture them, and we currently only have a (small?) subset of their details. However, this is a snapshot; not unlikely to change (perhaps a lot) over time, as research progresses. If (or when – depends on your stance) we succeed in decoding subconscious processes in full, what we currently perceive as “human intelligence” might become a set of well-understood and even prescribe-able processes that could be automated as a sort of “AI”. But then it will also be valid to state that that “AI” is nothing but an automaton following a script, and not really intelligent…

But then, are humans anything but automatons – just ones we don’t fully understand yet? Could what we refer to as “Intelligence” simply be processes we don’t (yet) fully understand? After all, when we say that chimpanzees, dolphins and dogs demonstrate “intelligent behavior” it’s not entirely different – usually it’s when their behaviour surprises us; when we can’t explain how or why they behave this way.

Food for thought.

Peace to all. See you tomorrow.