From: Chris Capel (pdf23ds@gmail.com)
Date: Wed Apr 12 2006 - 08:18:01 MDT
On 4/5/06, Russell Wallace <russell.wallace@gmail.com> wrote:
> On 4/5/06, Philip Goetz <philgoetz@gmail.com> wrote:
> > Let me rephrase: The perceived difference between humans of low
> > intelligence and education, and humans of high intelligence and
> > education, can be used as a lower bound on the difference between
> > humans, and these hypothetical superintelligent species.
> >
>
> Not necessarily. Perhaps there's a threshold of intelligence required to
> understand this universe, such that human intelligence spans that threshold
> (and once you get above it, it's quantitative rather than qualitative from
> then on, at least as far as activity within this universe rather than in the
> Land of Infinite Fun goes); one could argue that this is not a priori
> improbable, even.
Given the Flynn effect and the amount of time since the industrial
revolution, I think if humans do straddle the threshold, the threshold
would still be below the average IQ. Even in human beings, the main
component of intellectual accomplishment is dedication and energy,
leading to steady, long-term progress, not raw processing power. Ask
any bright person with ADD.
Chris Capel
-- "What is it like to be a bat? What is it like to bat a bee? What is it like to be a bee being batted? What is it like to be a batted bee?" -- The Mind's I (Hofstadter, Dennet)
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