I can't remember a joke, or the punchline, 30 seconds after I've heard it. But I don't think I've ever heard a joke I didn't get. Weird. But my five year old son can remember knock-knocks and riddles he learned when he was three. Obviously not a genetic thing. You should see his delivery of "The Big Orange Head." He just kills... "and that's where things went horribly wrong -- I asked for a big orange head!" Maybe because I've had him tell it a thousand times, it's the only joke and punch line I can remember. : )

...oh, and, "No, that's just ice cream" (blew a seal)

-joe

Interesting thought process, but there is a logical flaw. You state that intelligence can't be considered programmable, because then an alarm clock would be considered to have intelligence. This makes the mistaken assumption that if intelligence is programmable, then everything programmable must have intelligence. It is possible that intelligence is a subset of programmable (or better stated, intelligence is based on cause-and-effect). Stating that the two are equivalent makes as much sense as saying that since pregnancy and alarm clocks are both programmable (or cause-and-effect based), then alarm clocks must also be responsible for bringing new life into the world.

The problem is, true randomness simply does not exist, only an incomprehensible number of variables in the cause and effect program so as to boggle our minds, forcing us to create a new word for aspects of our existence which exhibit this mind-boggledness:

"Random"

So yes, intelligence is programmed, we just can't understand the programming, hence we call it random. Or you could say your alarm clock is random, it's just so very low on the random-scale that we can understand it, either way.

The problem with intelligence is that is overridden by "free will", or rather, our lack thereof. Intelligence is random, as our programmed actions beat up and subdue most of the other thoughts in our heads. Everyone has those moments where they do something out of character, and an awful lot of movies pin their culminations on the moment of 'intelligence' when the baddie turns good just in time to save the hero, city, damsel in distress, etc.

'Course, you could argue that those moments are purely emotional, but emotions and intelligence would have to be pretty tied up. After all, we only have the one head and it all has to live in there together.

Not sure that made any sense outside my head - it looked better from the inside...

Have you thought of it this way? May be intelligence can be programmed but not necessarily its programmable by human beings.

Think about smart products. They are considered 'smart' until they are out-dated, and they they are just 'products.' If the 'non-random' is sufficiently complicated, it takes a long time before it's not considered smart (intelligent), and that can only happen when something better comes along. Until something smarter than a human comes along, humans will be ocnsidered intelligent.

Also, she made a mistake in suggesting that intelligence would have to be either random or non-random. It's more likely to be a combination of both in different components of intelligence (just as artificial intelligence can randomly select a strategy to seem creative).

"Let's assume for a second that the world is basically determined by randomness."

I had a big nerd laugh at that statement by sethandbuddy. People don't seem to understand the difference between randomness and causality/determinism.

How abstract. We're all kind of guessing and giving on spin on things.

"I'm happy the elections are over." Someone said above. Ahhh, unless you have a contested election. I suspect as far as I am concerned the senate election for this state will be over the day alzheimers kicks in for me or I die. It doesn't end even once someone is sworn in for office.

My take on it is simply that we don't know enough about anything, except how to live our individual lifes and to some extent work together to further our know, but the road is long and the learning curve is steep to make progress.

I sometimes think we're fascinated because we have theories and beliefs, but we don't really know. It's like watching a children's magician. If you know things can't disappear because a human wills it, we know the answer is something we did not detect happened and it's a clever trick. However, when I was 8 and I didn't have that knowledge, it had to be magic to me.

If I tell my grandson when he's 4; "Grandpa bought you a pony and Grandma killed it." He's going to look at Grandma a lot differently and be afraid. But if I waited until a certain point and said that, the response would be, "Sure grandpa, why don't you go back to the internet, you crazy old coot." What's interesting is the places we are in between those two responses. I think as a species we're in between accepting what we see and hear in our universe and knowing what's really going on.

I'm glad the elections are over, because your blogs are finally interesting again. Sorry, but all your rants about Obama and McCain being decent people didn't seem "intelligent".

cf. false dichotomy

i was talking to my husband about the robot post and this is the copy of the email i sent him:

"you have to get past the absurdity of it to realize the question he's actually asking. if something that was "programmed" to do something does it, does that qualify as intelligence. and i'd say no, the robot wouldn't be an intelligent designer, who or whatever was responsible for the creation of the robot and the writing of the program would be the designer. so now you're back to square one again. did an intelligent engineer build and program this robot god or did the incredible complexities happen by chance. he's obfuscating the question by inserting an additional ridiculous layer to get you to not think about it in the terms you've been taught and accustomed to and to actually rationally think out what your response to the scenario is. i find it to be a rather creative and brilliant and fun."

the flaw in the programmed vs random theory is that either we're all just moist robots that are following a program (whether you think it's random in origin or designed) and thus no more intelligent than an alarm clock, or there's a third option, free will, the ability to choose to violate our programming. that's what separates us from alarm clocks and robots.

The only logical choice is that there is another classification, which could be called intelligence. But, for that to work, there must be free will.

I used to dither about the existence of free will. Then I heard a story about someone lecturing on the topic. He told the audience to assume that he believed that there was no free will. But, if there isn't, then his belief in the lack of free will is pre-determined. And if it is pre-determined, then it has no requirement to be based in truth. It would be like a parrot repeating a phrase but not understanding it.

Now, if you plug that concept into your theory, it follows that unless there is free will, there is no intelligence.

One could argue that although there is free will, it seems to not be used very often.

OK, this is two days running the blog has followed the format of:

- Premise which is abstract to the point of almost being meaningless
- Logical development of premise, albeit with sinking feeling that there is a big hole in it I am not clever enough to spot
- Conclusion which makes bold claim/conclusion, albeit with sinking feeling that whichever option I choose to agree with is wrong.

I have no problem dealing with abstract concepts with little relation to the real world (I have a degree in economics myself - haha), but I find it hard to connect with these sort of posts.

I am not sure if this means Mr Adams, that us lesser mortals just simply aren't in tune with what you are free to ponder while you are sitting atop Maslow's pyramid, or alternately, if I am just not as intelligent as I thought I was.

I've had this discussion several times before.

First of all, I would like to say that like you've said, intelligence does not exist. But why not? Because it is an umbrella term that can describe a plethora of items that differ from one person to the next. Generally, most of us would formulate in our brains the concept of "intelligent" whenever there is something that functions miraculously; i.e. in a way that we do not understand.

So let's say that the "intelligent" thing itself find a third thing that functions miraculously, then we'd have an intelligent thing that finds something else intelligent; presumably even more so than the first person. Let's say that this is a hierarchy that goes to infinity... Woah, anyone see a social hierarchy here?

My friends consider me intelligent for many things I do that they can't. However, I often find these things to be clockwork. Similarly, when I inquire to others about things which make me think them intelligent, I find I get similar shrugs of clockwork. Is that it? That intelligence is but a mutually observed respect for our respective places (i.e. respective functions) in the social mosaic? That's not for me to answer.

It is a frequent misconception that randomness is not following rules - randomness and determinism are just two sides of the same coin, and the difference we see is an illusion.

The real two ways of things happening are those that we comprehend because we would do them the same way, and those we don't comprehend because we would'nt.

Oh, and that limited illusionary way of thinking about nature is called - you guessed it - intelligence.

Bertram

Nailed it.
The idea of intelligence is the product of naivete, hubris, arrogance, race/species superiority. This season on Nature and Nova (check your local PBS stations) demonstrates how much "human" intelligence other species like birds, monkeys, felines, canines, etc. have in the wild, more than our closer cousins like chimpanzees. It's frightening to see how much human psychology and aggression is reflected in the behavior of baboons in the wild. And apparently Capuchin monkeys in the wild are born liars. And we thought only humans were capable of deceit.
It makes me rethink about evolution for a minute. Suppose evolution didn't stop for our monkey and primate cousins and other animal species, and they continued developing levels of "intelligence" and emotions and toll skills and strategies, while our species started inventing cities, states, codes of conduct, codified languages, money, etcetera. I put it this behavior/intelligence being studied now out in the field is not something that these animals have been stuck repeating on a FOR/NEXT loop for thousands of generations but has been developing at their own rates, much like our own species. Anything domesticated by humans is compromised by servitude and or dependence. Feral beings eventually develop levels social networks, intelligence and behaviors depending on environment and competing species.

A little out there, you think?
I know the PETA fans must be woo-hoo-ing.

oops, I missed off the "but I don'k know why" from the quote.

"The thing that amuses me about that argument is that I'm sure it is wrong,"

I'm not sure I believe that since the errors are so glaringly obvious. You have a false dichotomy, a false sylogism and you are begging the question.

Actually, when something does not make sense but seems like it does is called a Mondo, not to be confused with words in other languages. There are many famous Mondos in the world as well as not so famous ones. An example of a Mondo can be found in the Principia Discordia: "The whole world can tell a snake from a dragon, but you cannot fool a Zen monk." Many will argue why this makes sense, and the more you read it and think about it, the more your mind tries to force it to make sense.

So basically, the idea that there are only two possibilities is a Mondo. It almost makes sense, but it just doesn't.