intelli-junts

Chip Ward gives his take on intelligence with plenty of examples and cynicism in "Is the Crown of Creation a Dunce Cap?" Ward begins with the concept of human intelligence, suggesting that the vast advances and developments of the human race that have placed us at the peak of power on Earth don't reflect the intelligence of the common human; imagine if the educated generations and recorded knowledge disappeared, subsequent generations would quickly plummet to a primitive lifestyle. Furthermore, Ward infers that while we judge the importance of beings on their intelligence, our intelligence largely depends on accumulated mechanical predictability and lacks understanding of long-term dynamics, often leading us to self-harm. Our susceptibility to emotion is also noted as a downfall as it repeatedly results in societies thinking they are smarter than they prove to be with time, seen with each collapsed civilization. Intelligence, according to Ward, can be described as the ability to learn from experience and apply the knowledge for future benefit. Ward links this notion to the "intelligence" of mushrooms that adapt to soil change like computers or the flu virus that annually overcomes the efforts of our top drug designers but I found it hard to buy (the mushroom example being merely mechanically advanced in nature and the success of the flu being due to rapid replication/mutation, as you never actually have the same virus twice). Ward also discusses swarm intelligence, dependent on following simple rules and local stimuli, as highly functional and, thus, valuable. The part about Earth itself having intelligence through feedback loops kindof lost me though, as things like ozone production in response to heightened CO2 levels would be happening if that was true. An important part of Ward's argument was conscious intent as a criterion for learning, suggesting that living things learn differently and thus we cannot make judgements on their intents or value of intelligence. Intelligence is also paralleled with viability through time and the changes it brings, the point being that if we kill ourselves off in our relatively short stay on this planet, we can't be that intelligent. The other side of that claim would mean that the slim-brained sharks are among the most intelligent creatures, as they've been consistently doing their thing since dinosaurs. The connections Ward draws to other animals sometimes came off a bit far-fetched but the point that we should respect this self-organized intelligence and not let our own get out of hand is valid; because if we finally kill ourselves off with war and bound-to-fail sustenance schemes, the sharks will probably laugh pretty hard.

Unrelated, PETA is apparently now in the porn biz? http://shine.yahoo.com/channel/life/peta-to-launch-its-own-porn-site-does-exploiting-women-promote-animal-rights-2561409