[Robert]

Our next chat session scheduled for this coming Saturday, January 21th, at 3:00pm Central Standard Time (CST) or GMT-6.

The topic is ...

Intelligence
What is it and who has it?

I'm starting to select topics from the suggestions thread in no particular order. The first such topic was suggested by baudrunner. Questions that baudrunner raised are the following:

• what is intelligence?
• does a dust mite have intelligence?
• does a flower have intelligence?
• does an atom have intelligence?
• the intelligence of evolution: the evolution of inanimate matter into life is so awesome and yet it still took two billion years for single celled life with just a few nucleotide sequences to evolve into eukaryotes, single celled life with a nucleus.

Some other questions I'd like to add are?

• must one be conscous to be intelligent?
• is Carly intelligent? Or could she be, given enough patterns?
• is the universe intelligent? Could there be intelligent design without the creator?

Timezone Information
You can use the timezone converter to convert to your local time. Once there, enter the day and time as specified above, then select US/Central in the "From Time Zone" column and your own location in the "To Time Zone" column, then click Convert. Be sure and unclick the "Use Current Date/Time" option. This will give you the time of the chat meeting in your own local time.

Some other areas:

Texas, U.S. - Saturday, 3:00pm
California, U.S. - Saturday, 1:00pm
India - Sunday, 1:30am
London - Saturday, 9:00pm
Madrid, Spain - Saturday, 10:00pm
Melbourne, Australia - Sunday, 6:00am
New Zealand - Sunday, 8:00am
Sweden - Saturday, 10:00pm
Canada, Eastern - Saturday, 4:00pm
Pakistan - Sunday, 1:00am

Chatroom Update
I have upgraded the chat room to the latest release and have increased Carly's intelligence by providing her with more pattern recognition ability. The code has been optimized and I'll make some more optimizations closer to chat time. Hopefully we won't need to go to the backup chatroom again. Also, I have installed an mp3 player within the chat room! It has a few songs already, but I may add some more by Saturday.

Let's meet in the Flash Chatroom. Hope to see you there!

Now, let's get the pre-chat started!

[Guille]

Intelligent decision to chat about intelligence.

There are too many errors in people's thought. Intelligence cannot be an entity in the fundamental idea that you think as "The brain has intelligence" or "Peter has intelligence"... There is a principle in philosophy called principle of compoisition which states that what something means is wht the sum of it's parts mean. If we divide intelligence into atoms, the sum of the intelligence of the atoms don't sum up to the intleligence for atosm don't have any intelligence therefore eithert hereis no intelligence, or intelligence is not some-thing, but a concept itself.

[AntonioLao]

As part of a study in QBD (quantum brain dynamics) intelligence is just an objective function which knows by self-consciousness when, how, and where to maximize or to minimize the usage of energy.

[Guille]

Originally Posted by AntonioLao As part of a study in QBD (quantum brain dynamics) intelligence is just an objective function which knows by self-consciousness when, how, and where to maximize or to minimize the usage of energy.

I have a very interesting paradox now. A wholemind can be self-consciouss in the sense that some of it's thoughts are about the mind. But this is not Direct Self-Consciousness (DSC). DSC is that a single thought is consciouss of itself, or that a mind is consciouss of itself. This never happens. A thought about a thought is always an independent thought of the thought of which it is about, or do you have an example of DSC?

[Marko]

Originally Posted by Robert what is intelligence? does a dust mite have intelligence? does a flower have intelligence? does an atom have intelligence? the intelligence of evolution: the evolution of inanimate matter into life is so awesome and yet it still took two billion years for single celled life with just a few nucleotide sequences to evolve into eukaryotes, single celled life with a nucleus. Some other questions I'd like to add are? must one be conscous to be intelligent? is Carly intelligent? Or could she be, given enough patterns? is the universe intelligent? Could there be intelligent design without the creator?

Here is what I think:
Humans are self aware and they posses high level of intelligence. Humans are only self aware beings, but this is not preventing other biological and non-biological structures of developing the intelligence.I see intelligence as some kind of pattern, ability to organise. In that way, everything posses some level of intelligence.So, we can say that ape is more intelligent than snail,snail more than flower,flower more than photon...etc.More intelligent or more organised.We can place a computer into this leveling, where it will be it is up to the number of patterns.
But in terms of self awareness, I only see relation humans -rest of the universe. There is no difference between ape,horse,shark,germs,flower,atoms,computer...etc. They are all "the rest of the universe", without "real existence".
Of course, since humans are self aware,this requires high level of organization,hence high level of intelligence.
Best wishes!
Marko

[dleviwing]

Oxymoron: "Is there intelligent life in the universe"? - also see "Military intelligence"

[Guille]

Is there intelligent life on Earth?

Yes, but I'm here only for a time.

[baudrunner]

<<< GUILLE >>> said:

A thought about a thought is always an independent thought of the thought of which it is about, or do you have an example of DSC?

Thinking about thinking? A thought about a thought is not a real-time event but thinking about thinking is.

[Guille]

Originally Posted by baudrunner <<< GUILLE >>> said: Thinking about thinking? A thought about a thought is not a real-time event but thinking about thinking is.

I don't care if it's a thought about a thought or thinking about thinking, any of the two. It doesn't really matter, yes, one has time the other doesn't, but the relationship is still there.

But note that I don't ask for an example of a thought about a thought, or thinking about thinking. What I ask is an example of a thought which is about itself, or a thinking about itself. It's completelly paradoxicall to think this. But if I turn to be wrong, then we will have solved an important problem in the philosophy of mind.

[Robert]

A thought about a thought is a meta-thought
A thought about a meta-thought is a meta-(meta-thought)
A thought about a meta-(meta-thought) is a meta-(meta-(meta-thought))

What are your thoughts about the third line above?

This is just a reminder to vote in the Who's Chatting poll.