From: rhs@world.std.com (Richard H Schwartz)
Newsgroups: rec.org.mensa
Subject: Re: Non-sequitor, but interesting (was: A criticism)
Date: 17 Apr 92 01:30:46 GMT
Organization: The World Public Access UNIX, Brookline, MA

choy@skorpio.Usask.CA writes:
>I compare a person to a car; let's see if a car is intelligent.
>Certainly a car has significant features that distinguish it from other
>lumps of matter. For instance, it permits smooth travel over washboard
>roads. A car can have anti-lock brakes, automatic transmission, fuel
>injection, cellular phone, oil and temperature guages, etc. These
>things function. But is there intelligence involved? 

True enough, a car has a variety of sensing devices, and its control systems
make decisions according to the input from those devices.  But it does not
make intelligent decisions, it merely simulates intelligence through the
application of specific pre-programmed rules.  And this, I take it is what
you claim may be the case with human intelligence -- albeit with a lot more
rules, including meta-rules that control changing of other rules, and meta-
meta-rules, etc.  

I don't buy it.  Why?  Cogito ergo sum, for starters.  Adaptability for
good measure.  I don't believe that the observed level of adaptability in
human intelligence can be explained by a deterministic system of meta-
meta-...rules.  Adding non-deterministic rules helps a lot.  Almost 
enough to make your position plausible.  But then the Turing Test comes
comes to mind: if it simulates intelligence so well that it's not
distinguishable from intelligence by intelligence, then it is intelligence.
Ooops!  I forgot.  Turing and the rest of us were just pre-programmed to
probably come up with that definition.  Endless loop, here.  

OK, try this:

	Unsolvable problems exist.
	
	"What is intelligence?" is an unsolvable problem.
	
	Unintelligent methods must either abort or loop forever making
	no progress when trying to solve unsolvable problems.


Either:
	We are looping and making no progress, and this must always
	be the case... you win!  There is no intelligence!

Or:
	We are able to think useful thoughts about intelligence
	even though we know it is an unsolvable problem...  
	We must therefore be intelligent.  Intelligence is real!

(Hey, it's worth a shot, but I'm not going to stick around for an infinity
to see if this discussion makes any progress! :-)

You can believe what you want, but then again maybe you can't because maybe
you don't really exist.  There's no definitive answer to your question.  It
simply leads on to "why are we here?", "why is here here?", and other
imponderables.  Yet we ponder them -- how?  The answer is 42.  What is the
question?  (don't bother... I know it! :-)  Here come the hyper-intelligent
mice...

In addition to "The Emperor's New Mind", have a look at "The Hitchiker's
Guide to the Galaxy" -- all four books of the trilogy.  If the forces of
the universe allow you to, that is.

-rich

-- 
             Richard H. Schwartz, Scheduling Systems Inc.,
            1000 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge, MA  02138
                  (617) 864 8330; FAX (617) 864 8377
                          rhs@world.std.com
Newsgroups: rec.org.mensa