Comment by RandomLensman
1 day ago
So intelligence is an intrinsic property of matter then? It's not a mainstream view now, but who knows.
1 day ago
So intelligence is an intrinsic property of matter then? It's not a mainstream view now, but who knows.
I personally don't think it's an intrinsic property of all matter, but an emergent one with interaction specifically. Systems have intelligence, not particles, and to be a system, you must have constituent parts (which may not be intelligent themselves). That's why they say it 'emerges'.
A cell is a system, as is a virus, a tucan, a human and an LLM. They exhibit different levels and brands of intelligence, hence continuum.
That's the popular view among scientists/philosophers/my podcasters, at least, and it makes sense to me!
Yes, I think, emergence is the currently prevailing view.
I was thinking more that something like this:
> any system capable of doing an if-else is intelligent to a certain degree
could probably be getting quite broad in terms of things covered (chemistry, physics), hence making it much more intrinsic.
No, intelligence is a description of behavior, not stuff.
As a crisp example: a newly dead person is almost exactly the same stuff as an alive person, but has no intelligence at all. Not a little less, as the difference in stuff would suggest.
I reckon there would probably still be some if else system going on the body of a newly dead person.
Not parent, but since we discussed in the other thread -- yeah, I think that's a good example of your observation that "intelligence" is broad and means different things depending on the context.
Cognitive intelligence in parent's example dies with you. It's gone. But a molecular biologist might say the cells of your corpse exhibit intelligence for some time after. They die gradually, and they do so according to a script of sorts.