From: Chris Capel (pdf23ds@gmail.com)
Date: Wed Apr 12 2006 - 19:26:21 MDT
On 4/12/06, Charles D Hixson <charleshixsn@earthlink.net> wrote:
> On Wednesday 12 April 2006 07:18 am, Chris Capel wrote:
> > 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.
>
> To me it appears that there is something analogous to stack depth that renders
> some concepts unintelligible to many people, even though some others can
> understand them. This doesn't appear amenable to teaching or solvable
> through interest. I'll grant that for many concepts this doesn't apply, but
> for some it appears to.
>
> It's actually even worse (more extreme) than that...sometimes, e.g. when my
> allergies are acting up, I cannot understand thoughts that I had
> earlier...it's as if there is a step involved in processing that is a
> variable, and it must allow a certain depth of recursion or stack or
> something. Somedays I can't understand things that I couldn't on other days.
If what you say is true (and I have no opinion, though it sounds
plausible) then the thesis of this thread is false, and progressively
complex ideas require progressively smarter sentience, without limit,
or with a limit much higher than human-level intelligence.
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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