← Back to context

Comment by famouswaffles

12 hours ago

Intelligence is Intelligence. It's intelligent because it does intelligent things. If someone feels the need to add a 'real' and 'fake' moniker to it so they can exclude the machine and make themselves feel better (or for whatever reason) then they are the one meant to be doing the defining, and to tell us how it can be tested for. If they can't, then there's no reason to pay attention to any of it. It's the equivalent of nonsensical rambling. At the end of the day, the semantic quibbling won't change anything.

6 comments

famouswaffles

Reply
latexr  10 hours ago

> It's intelligent because it does intelligent things.

Most people would consider someone who can calculate 56863*2446 instantly in their head to be intelligent. Does that mean pocket calculators are intelligent? The result is the same.

> then they are the one meant to be doing the defining, and to tell us how it can be tested for. If they can't, then there's no reason to pay attention to any of it.

That is the equivalent of responding to criticism with “can you do better?”. One does not need to be a chef (or even know how to cook) to know when food tastes foul. Similarly, one does not need to have a tight definition of “life” to say a dog is alive but a rock isn’t. Definitions evolve all the time when new information arises, and some (like “art”) we haven’t been able to pin down despite centuries of thinking about it.

  • famouswaffles  5 hours ago

    >Most people would consider someone who can calculate 56863*2446 instantly in their head to be intelligent. Does that mean pocket calculators are intelligent? The result is the same.

    If you wanted to insist a calculator wasn't intelligent and satisfy my conditions then you can. At the very least you can test for the sort of intelligence that is present in humans but absent from calculators and cleanly separate the two. These are very easy conditions if there is some actual real difference.

    >That is the equivalent of responding to criticism with “can you do better?”. One does not need to be a chef (or even know how to cook) to know when food tastes foul.

    No it's not, and this is a silly argument. Foul food tastes different. Sometimes it even looks different. You can test for it and satisfy my conditions.

    You come across a shiny piece of yellow metal that you think is gold. It looks like gold, feels like gold and tests like gold. Suddenly a strange fellow comes about insisting that it's not actually gold. No, apparently there is a 'fake' gold. You are intrigued so you ask him, "Alright, what exactly is fake gold, and how can I test or tell them apart ?". But this fellow is completely unable to answer either question. What would you say about him ? He's nothing more than a mad man rambling about a distinction he made up in his head.

    What I'm asking you to do is incredibly easy and basic with a real distinction. I'm not going to tell you to stop believing in your fake gold, but I am going to tell you I and no one else can be expected to take you seriously.

    • latexr  4 hours ago

      > At the very least you can test for the sort of intelligence that is present in humans but absent from calculators and cleanly separate the two.

      But you can only do that now, in hindsight. Before calculators, one could argue being able to do math was a sign of intelligence, but once something new comes along which can do math in a non-intelligent way, you can realise “ah, right, my definition was incomplete/incorrect, I need something better”.

      > Foul food tastes different.

      You’re right, that was a bad example.

      > You come across a shiny piece of yellow metal that you think is gold. (…) He's nothing more than a mad man rambling about a distinction he made up in his head.

      No, that is not right. Fool’s gold is a thing.

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyrite

      It’s not the same as gold and you can test for it, but that doesn’t mean you know how to do it. Yet it’s perfectly possible that by being exposed to the real and fake thing you’ll get a feel for each one as there are subtle visual clues. It doesn’t mean you can articulate exactly what those are, yet you’re able to do it.

      It’s like tasting two similar beers or sodas. You may be able to identify them by taste and understand they’re difference but be unable to articulate exactly how you know which is which to the point someone else can use your verbal instructions to know the difference. That doesn’t mean the difference isn’t there or that you can’t tell, it just means you haven’t yet found yourself the proper way to extract and impart what you instinctively understood.

      1 reply →