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Comment by api

4 days ago

What you're really saying is that intelligence is multi-modal, what we'd call an "ensemble" in machine learning terminology. Intuition is another mode, a cognitive process that doesn't look or feel like symbolic reason but has evolved to do something that fills in symbolic reasoning's blind spots or serve some other evolutionary function.

I agree.

I might be wrong, of course, but I would argue that general intelligence -- meaning intelligence reducible to a single scalar 'g' -- does not exist. All intelligence is a hybrid ensemble and an adaptation to a particular niche or set of niches. I'm a reasonably smart human but I'd make a really dumb tree or dolphin.

To get started, look up the no free lunch theorem.

There's room for debate here though. I think our technological journey with AI is going to help answer some of these questions.

With the Rationalists, I get the sense that 'g' is a faith, a prior they won't examine.