Digital Artifacts of Daniel

Comments Made Elsewhere:

1. Nabeel’s Blog

Summary:

Introduction:

Author desires to return to the simple motives behind intelligence and thinking, claiming that evolution has lead our bodies and our cognitive abilities to be “overdetermined” and “unnecessarily complex”.   He also sets up that thinking is indeed part abstract, but mostly it is visual in that we replay and simulate our experiences.  Author also explore why we need intelligence and if humans truly have a monopoly on it.

The fundamental elements of intelligence are: (1) prediction of future actions (imagining), (2) response to change instead of inalterable instinct or conditioned reflexes, (3) intentional, goal-oriented action, (4) reasoning based on collection of data.

AI has borrowed from five fields to obtain views on intelligent reasoning: (1) mathematical logic (everything a result of first-order logic and it can be capture in a formal description), (2) psychology (more a function of natural science, (3) biology, (4) statistics, and (5) economics.  Author also discusses social collective intelligence…

Author admits and cites others also to the notion that no hard facts on the evolution of human cognition.  Lays claim to nature making nothing by blind searches on what works and what doesn’t.  Presents different theories on why our brains grew over millions of years, whether it be to hunt better or to just get along with other humans.  Notes that we did not really adopt languages until our brain growth leveled off.  Makes distinct between animal and human intelligence in that we can imagine while an animal is more of a “here and now character.”

Author claims that intelligence is merely a “natural phenomenon” of evolution, unable to explain why we obtained it outside the notion that we somehow moved past hunting and gathering.

Discussion:

Having just read the introduction, I can already tell I may not like this article.  I, in no way, believe we are “overdetermined” and “unnecessarily complex” beings made by “blind searches” of nature without thought or design consideration.

Following up, I am not of the belief that we are part of an uncontrolled, unguided chain reaction, meant only to survive and exist.  Instead I believe humans are the result of purposeful and intelligent design, given a life to live with meaning and set apart from the rest of creation, or “nature”, for such.  How much weight is continually put on discrepancies between our eye and that of a octopus or other animal when I’d rather you explain to me how a “blind search” made an eye that was able to see?

Where I do agree with the author is that human intelligence achieves much through visual interpretation and the reproduction of such through imagination. The discussion on this I did find interesting, especially to the application of recreating “intelligence” artificially, just as was done with the parrot example and similarly can be done with a computer.  What a gift human intellilect and reasoning are!