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Comment by mitxela

4 hours ago

Nobody knows what intelligence is. We've recently discovered a lot of things that it isn't.

Intelligence is a word we invent to describe things we see in nature. We don't "discover" intelligence like it's some natural resource. To say we know nothing about it is also a bit strange. Cognitive science has been studying it for decades. Of course it's hard to give a precise definition, but it's related to capabilities like abstraction, reasoning, planning, problem solving, etc.

Why would a set of dictionary definitions not suffice?

  • Those are distillations of existing knowledge. They are necessarily behind the status quo. "You can't call this newfangled contraption a computer, because a computer is a person!"

    • > They are necessarily behind the status quo.

      That seems like a really bizarre way to describe a tool that solved an open Millennium Prize Problem. They are, empirically and repeatedly, ahead of the status quo.

      So if your argument depends on them being behind the status quo, reality has already disproven it multiple times over.

      1 reply →

    • > Those are distillations of existing knowledge.

      Definitions are "formal statements of the meaning or significance of a word, phrase, idiom, etc" (https://www.dictionary.com/browse/definition)

      > They are necessarily behind the status quo.

      The existing state or condition would be what is written in the dictionary, not whatever personal definitions you've constructed.

      > "You can't call this newfangled contraption a computer, because a computer is a person!"

      Seems like a straw man. A computer is not a mammal, no matter how much you twist a set of definitions.

      6 replies →

What we know is intelligence is definitely comprised of the trait of adaptability.

E.g. humans get exposed to new LLM model - yeah its powerful - 1 week later - eh, that thing? Yeah it's whatever. I'm still employed.

The human's ability to adapt so efficiently is mind-boggling - so much so it pi1sses sam altman and dario off.