I consider intelligence to be the ability to predict the future. The average human has reached a level of intelligence that allows them to bypass immediate impulses for a greater reward at a later time. Also in a way we are a nested intelligence. DNA and the biological structures it creates abstractly speaking exhibit intelligent interaction with the environment. Our self awareness emerges on top of that 'intelligent' biological structure.
Another definition is that intelligence is the ability to manipulate abstractions. We have to do that in order to predict, plan, etc. First we need to hold the abstraction in our minds, and then we can play some manipulations on it to predict what would happen.
It could be also our brain is a bit of a story teller. It tells several stories to see what would be more likely to happen.
> "I consider intelligence to be the ability to predict the future."
this is the definition i've settled on as well.
you see it, for example, in basketball: the best offensive players can predict where the closest defenders will be, as well as their ability to shoot unimpeded, to a high degree of accuracy. the same with the best defenders - they can predict where the offensive player will be going and their options for shooting and passing. the best rebounders can better predict where the ball will bounce after a missed shot. physical ability is a pre-requisite for being a great player, but intelligence is what puts you in the upper echelons.
I think that there's another way of looking at it. My definition of intelligence would be the ability to tell what is true from what is false. The ability to predict the future is a by-product of that ability.
regarding what is the nature of truth and the issue of self awareness - that's a can of worms that I'll refrain from opening :)
And very complex things would have ranges of truth depending on your perspective. All our sensory input and even memory effectively goes through lossy compression algorithms with modifiers for immediate focus. I would like to think getting wiser is those algorithms converging to more optimal performance.
I also think working with real logic in science, math, etc, any engineering, is incredibly healthy for the brain and makes it much easier to converge on truth. The only way to be good with logic is to absorb new data into the picture as it becomes available. I've noticed the less people are exposed to real logic the more resistant they are to simple facts that conflict with their assumptions.
> intelligence [is] the ability to tell what is true from what is false.
This is a poor definition. There are very intelligent Christians and very intelligent atheists. They can't both be right. Isaac Newton, one of the most intelligent people in history, believed in all sorts of weird astrological stuff. Etc.
My view is that intelligence is a number that's correlated with a wide variety of different measures of cognitive performance. So it's not really possible to give a glib, one-sentence description of it.
>It's not really possible to give a glib, one-sentence description of it.
And yet, you just did.
My definition is poor if you turn it into something simplistic and not realise the vast number of ways and levels of abstraction in which truth can be distinguished from falsehood, which gives rise to various forms of intelligence. It boils down to having a less limiting understanding of the concept of truth.
Intelligent atheists and intelligent Christians can't both be right about what? They can both be right about some things and wrong about other things, but that is true of any two different people, not only any two different groups.
A person who graduates from technical program of good university, but then falls for the first Ponzi scheme and starts selling vacuum cleaners? Not very smart.
It's like he has very good processor able to run any math problem you throw at him. But at the same time he doesn't independently do very good job of discerning what is relevant and what is not.
On the other hand some of the greatest scientists of all time have been able to maintain certain "what if" state of mind for years. Doing quick and accurate true/false analysis is often a trait of street smarts, but the most genius of all seem to be able to play with probabilities.
I'd go more abstract and say that intelligence is about pattern recognition. higher intelligence means increased ability to detect patterns 1) over longer timespans and 2) of increasing complexity/subtlety.
Sad that the collective intelligence of our species appears more limited however. We seem unable to act on the imminent threats of climate change, biodiversity loss, etc.
Our species' collective intelligence isn't that simple.
It appears to me that we are processing substrate for a species-sized game of Core Wars. In turn, because the size of the playing field (aka total human population) has become so large, the outcomes of the game now can produce existential threats, something amplified by the speed at which everything runs.
When there were only 200 million humans, communicating by voice and using only muscle power, the ultimate impact of slow AIs running on Homo Sapiens hardware was bounded. Now, closing in on 8 billion of us with considerable upgrades in the form of industrial- and information-age technology, the output of the game can not just break the board, but flip the table.
Any algorithm is going to be bound by time horizons. Obviously any animal mind needs to be able to react in time horizons starting at something like 1/100th of a second (and your central nervous system can do that), all the way up to ... for humans 10s of years (rare, but happens).
Things that take longer than that are just not going to be responded to.
The fun thing is that if you go back in history long enough, there must have been a period where evolution was actually making this decision. De we go longer term ? Or shorter term. Obviously we know the outcome: shorter term and adaptation is the clear winner, with very few exceptions. But a few organisms do exist with reaction spans that are measured in decades. Even trees take something like a few months to respond to changes in their environment.
The difference seems to be that species that run more efficiently as a rule react slower. That does mean, of course, that after expansion they are running much closer to a level where they'd go extinct, which is not true of humans (it would take a true global catastrophe to really reduce human numbers). So this, assuming you have the choice, is probably the better bet to make long term: the bet that keeps you away from situations where you'll go extinct. Extreme efficiency and long-term reaction spans will do the opposite: they'll take a species closer to the point where it'll go extinct.
The cost, of course, is that members of such a species will always be adapting. Never ever will such a species be truly steady-state (although I'd say genes, both ours and animals' do a remarkable job of stabilizing our numbers). Every generation has to adapt and the solutions of even a few generations past ... just won't work. Well, not without a few changes at least.
And let's please not pretend that which camp you're in matters for this. Both the people against and for climate action (even climate deniers), from a behaviorist perspective, all do it for the same reason : it's a social interaction. It doesn't even have anything to do with science, as such. It has to do with environment. And yes, environment can mean high-priced lawyers and politicians, campus parties, PhD students and academia, protests and the accompanying social groupings, miners and their towns ... and those groups are the real things fighting. But none of the individuals in them are doing it for science.
It's funny how language shapes our thinking. The word rest has a bias towards related words such as inactivity and being passive. Hard to change that now! Imagine a culture/language where we would say "time travel" instead of "rest"! It would completely change how we look at resting..
I think the ancient Romans' concept of otium is close to what you are looking for. It is often translated as "leisure" as in Seneca's essay On Leisure (De Otio). Actually the word is hard to translate into a single English word because we don't really have a parallel concept. It meant something more like "freedom from business concerns" or "freedom to think productively." [1]
Latin writers from Cicero to Augustine understood the word in a very similar way. For example the poet Ovid once referred to his poetry as otia nostra (creations of our leisure). [2] In his case the leisure time was due to being banished from Rome to the little town of Tomi on the Black Sea.
Language; essential for communication yet so incredibly lacking in it's ability to describe the more magical aspects of existence. Imagine a culture where there was more silence. It's easier after a hard days work to tell your partner "I love you" rather than giving them a foot massage. Convenience rules in this busy world.. often at the expense of authentic expression and love.
Yes. We need to change "I need some rest" for "I need some introspection". I agree that is a change from "lazy" or "not-doing-anything" towards "profound" and "self-improvement".
What I've been calling "time travel" is a technique for personal growth. I imagine an idealized future world I'd like to live in (ie. using the time travel mechanisms in the article) and imagine how people and/or myself might respond to events differently based on how the world works. I imagine what I would do with my time, how I'd go about it, and what kind of person I'd be. Then I choose to be that person now.
It's like my present self is reaching out and pulling a future self backwards in time to their past.
Well depending on what is defined as "metaphysical" there is scant if any evidence. Scientists tend to dismiss things when there is no supporting evidence.
As with anything, too much of a good thing can be detrimental: hyperactivity of the DMN has been linked with things like schizophrenia, anxiety, and ADHD. (Indeed, some point to the hypothesis that the DMN was not evolved for today's distraction filled world.) It's interesting that things like meditation (and apparently psychedelics) can quiet the DMN and bring clarity and happiness in people by doing so.
> As with anything, too much of a good thing can be detrimental: hyperactivity of the DMN has been linked with things like schizophrenia, anxiety, and ADHD. [...] It's interesting that things like meditation (and apparently psychedelics) can quiet the DMN and bring clarity and happiness in people by doing so.
The discovery of the default mode network (DMN) and the role it plays in our perception of reality are also mentioned in "How to Change Your Mind", a recent book by Michael Pollan [1], which examines in great depth all the issues you mention and more. I highly recommend it to those interested in the nature of consciousness.
Time is so mysterious and it may not even be a constant rate. I think the universe could be doing calculations while paused for a non-fixed period and resume for a millisecond until pausing again. Observing how every living thing is able to stay in sync to function normally is interesting. I only once had the experience where time felt like it was slower than normal and was with using cannabis. I still doubt if it really happened.
Time is a construct we have created to describe perception. If our brain is well nourished and operating at its peak, time feels slower (especially with caffeine or cannabis). Likewise, if we're tired and mental energy is spent, "time" moves faster because our perception circuits are not operating at peak efficiency.
Perhaps time becomes irrelevant in that state because mental activity is filled with productivity rather than idle moments. Or maybe time can only be slow for those that are waiting, rather than making something happen.
