Our fundamental dependency on unintelligent processes

Whatever intelligence is, it can't be intelligent all the way down. It's just dumb stuff at the bottom.
— Andy Clark

I believe we act based on a fundamental reliance on gut feelings. What we do is merely following 'the line of least resistance'.

Those who restrain desire, do so because theirs is weak enough to be restrained.
— William Blake

Intelligence is not a proactive approach but simply trial and error allowed for by the mostly large error tolerance of our existence. What you learn you'll have to apply by relying on prior knowledge, even if it is in the form of advanced algorithms. You can only hope to be lucky to learn enough in-time to avoid fatal failure. Since no possible system can use advanced heuristics to tackle, or even evaluate, every stimulus that is either part of its internal structure or the environment in which it is embedded. For example, at what point are you going to make use of statistical methods? You won't even be able to evaluate the importance of all data to be able to judge when to apply more rigorous tools. You can only be a passive observer who's waiting for new data by experience. And until new data arrives, rely on prior knowledge.

The bottom line is that even the acts of applying advanced heuristics, evaluating further or simply to gather new knowledge, are ultimately executed by purely non-intelligent processes. After all, you don't decide how to think either? Thus I don't believe that intelligence exists, beyond the ability to learn, acquire knowledge and apply it.

You might object that intelligence is an emergent phenomena. You might say, intelligence exists on a higher level. That the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. But why then do we ask and care about motives? Motivation is always an underlying cause of conduct, which itself is in turn based on desire and so forth. Thus asking people for their motives, why they do what they do, is always an inquiry of underlying causes. It is asking for the summands, for the terms of the greater whole. Seriously considering the concept of emergence would imply to take actions as given, as part of an emergent pattern that is the universe. Thus, if you don't expect a differing answer to that, that it simply was intelligent to do so, why do you ask?

Sat, Apr 3, 2010  Permanent link

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