Conflating knowledge with intelligence

[yetineti]

I also disagree about there is not a human intelligence or animal intelligence. If something is worth distinguishing it has its own bounds, rules, etc. It’s its own game. If I had to be a dolphin right now I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t be someone’s dog right now either.

It’d be a lot to learn. Even a dog has to learn how to be a dog.

But I’m much smarter than a dog?

No, my intelligence, understanding, knowledge, etc. is just different.

Edited May 18 by yetineti

[Inliytened1]

14 minutes ago, yetineti said:

@Inliytened1

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Grokking can be explained and it is interdependent from intelligence, understanding and knowledge.

 

No it can't and this will be something AI can never do because it is a projection of your own mind grokking things.   Don't underestimate this.   Grokking is what intelligence is.  There are some who can grok things at mich deeper levels than the average person (or animal) can and that's what sets them apart.  When you look into your dog's eyes and he understands you.   That's him grokking things. That is the essence of intelligence  AI doesn't grok anything they just spit output out from the data input to them.  The problem is that when AI becomes advanced enough you won't be able to tell the difference. 

Edited May 18 by Inliytened1

[yetineti]

@Inliytened1

Grokking is not intelligence. Grokking is not the thing grokked. Intelligence may not be intelligent, etc.

The topic at hand is about not conflating.

Edited May 18 by yetineti

[yetineti]

A little snippy, myself maybe. I could’ve left it as grokking is not intelligence. These are different words in my mind.

I think when we rank intelligence we are first ranking what’s worth intelligence and it is a relativistic mess. This is why I try to be as specific as possible whenever comparing intelligences and often times it just isn’t compatible for me.

And I think that perhaps I do not mean to say that intelligence is relativistic. I think it’s possible for intelligence to be consistent and have other things react differently to it. Sort of relativistic, but where the intelligence remains unchanged.

 

 

 

Edited May 18 by yetineti

[Leo Gura]

4 hours ago, Inliytened1 said:

Does this encompass understanding or just knowing? 

Understanding. AI has amazing comprehension ability.

3 hours ago, yetineti said:

@Leo Gura

On what grounds? 

On the grounds that I can have a more intelligent conversation with it than with anyone here.

Edited May 18 by Leo Gura

[Nilsi]

1 hour ago, Leo Gura said:

Understanding. AI has amazing comprehension ability.

On the grounds that I can have a more intelligent conversation with it than with anyone here.

I would contend that conversing with a highly intelligent human enables much more insight, as that human brings a unique perspective and experience and can push back on your bullshit far better than an AI, which is mostly unbiased and meets you exactly where you are and want to be met.

[Nilsi]

11 hours ago, Carl-Richard said:

Bill Burr has said something like "some people think you're dumb just because you don't share the same interests as them". The concept of conflating knowledge with intelligence has gotten really clear for me the last year or so.

There have been many times where someone didn't seem to understand what I was talking about, and it somehow contributed to them thinking I'm smart. Conversely, I tend to feel the same way when I don't understand what somebody else is saying. I think there is a mental heuristic that tells you "if you don't understand something, it must be due to your lack of innate abilities", while in reality, it's probably much more about your lack of experience in a certain area; contextual factors. It has really opened my mind about how I view "smart people" and how much of it probably boils down to experience.

While this applies mostly to one's general knowledge, you can also observe it on a micro level in single conversations. For example, if you're talking to a group of people and you zone out for a few seconds, you might find yourself not understanding what is being said, and you might feel quite dumb for the rest of the conversation. But the moment you regain attention and immersion in the conversation, you understand it again and you no longer feel like a dunce. Here, the knowledge about that specific conversation was what was lacking. But again, it also applies to one's general knowledge.

As for general knowledge, there is one particular example that sticks out. So I'm currently taking a statistics class, and I attend as many lectures as I can. I'm in a group project with five other people, and it's generally just me and another person who attends the lectures needed to understand the assignments. Not surprisingly, the other people are seemingly amazed that we're able to understand this stuff, thinking we're innately so much smarter than them and that this is why we're carrying the group. But in reality, the true difference is that we went to the lectures and they didn't.

Now, you can argue that we're the one attending the lectures because we have the innate abilities to understand what is being taught, while the others don't and therefore stopped attending the lectures for this reason. While this could be true, it could also just be that they never attended many lectures and therefore never built up the momentum or got the continuous buildup of knowledge, and that if they had done so, they would've had a better understanding. After all, they admit that attending the lectures helps them understand it a little better. And it's not like I and the other person understand everything 100% either. When we're working in the group, we're constantly learning new things, making mistakes, getting stuck, having insights, making adjustments. We feel stupid all the time, but we work through it.

Truly, if you want to point to an innate factor that is maybe different between us, it's conscientiousness. But even that can be learned to a large extent. I had to consciously learn to be this conscientious, or at least how to manifest it in my actions to this extent. Regardless, it's clear that the truly deciding factor is how much you want it and what you are doing to get it. And according to this mathematician, if you're behind when comparing yourself to another person in your class, it only takes 2 weeks to catch up. In other words, when taking into account that you're in the same class, which requires a certain level of skill to get into (and which is especially true for graduate level classes), the differences in outcome is virtually only a question of time and effort (attention, attendance).

 

 

This is somewhat related to how sophistry works. When somebody makes you believe that they understand something but you don't understand them, you go by their level of conviction and other superficial markers like fluency and verbal richness to determine if they're actually being coherent. It's basically like a back-up plan for when you don't understand someone but you still need to determine if the person can be trusted or not. And this is a very necessary thing to do, because it's often very likely that you simply don't understand someone but they're being 100% coherent.

In fact, this assumption is a prerequisite of all learning. You need to trust in what you're learning before you actually learn it, and if you stop at the first sign of incoherence (or conflict, friction), you won't learn much about anything at all. So ironically, you need to be somewhat complacent with sophistry in order to actually become knowledgeable and to be able to spot sophistry when it's truly happening. Knowledge is a catch-22. And ironically, the people in my group who don't attend the lectures, need to become complacent with sophistry when it truly matters (during the lectures), instead of when they're in the group listening to us who have attended the lectures.

While this is only tangential to your argument, I would like to give you a little heads-up about sophistry.

I contend that verbal fluency, stellar rhetoric, etc., are not very good indicators of sophistry at all. Take business, for example: it is a common tactic in sales to act a little stupid, stumble over your sentences, pretend to lose your train of thought, etc., to give the receiving party a sense of superiority and security. This way, they won’t suspect your subtle manipulations and trickery and won’t know what hit them until it’s too late. The same goes for politics: isn’t the core premise of populism to dumb down your message and pretend to be “one of the people”?

Power is a very sneaky thing and takes on whatever shape is necessary to achieve its ends. I would even claim that typical markers of sophistry are somewhat of an honest signal because it’s much harder to fake elitism than it is to fake commonness.

[zurew]

I don't really have a solid theory for intelligence, but I agree with John Vervaeke on how he defines general intelligence , which is basically about your ability for relevance realization in multiple different contexts - which can be translated to using the right heruistic(s) at the right time and the right place, without searching the whole problemspace beforehand.

[Davino]

2 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

On the grounds that I can have a more intelligent conversation with it than with anyone here.

lmao, the worst part is that it's true

[Carl-Richard]

1 hour ago, Nilsi said:

While this is only tangential to your argument, I would like to give you a little heads-up about sophistry.

I contend that verbal fluency, stellar rhetoric, etc., are not very good indicators of sophistry at all. Take business, for example: it is a common tactic in sales to act a little stupid, stumble over your sentences, pretend to lose your train of thought, etc., to give the receiving party a sense of superiority and security. This way, they won’t suspect your subtle manipulations and trickery and won’t know what hit them until it’s too late. The same goes for politics: isn’t the core premise of populism to dumb down your message and pretend to be “one of the people”?

Power is a very sneaky thing and takes on whatever shape is necessary to achieve its ends. I would even claim that typical markers of sophistry are somewhat of an honest signal because it’s much harder to fake elitism than it is to fake commonness.

Right. Then I was mostly talking about the unintentional type of sophistry where the sophist intends to present their full understanding in an honest way, without any conscious manipulative goals in mind, but their level of understanding simply doesn't match their level of conviction, fluency, etc.

[Nilsi]

2 minutes ago, Carl-Richard said:

Right. Then I was mostly talking about the unintentional type of sophistry where the sophist intends to present their full understanding in an honest way, without any conscious manipulative goals in mind, but their level of understanding simply doesn't match their level of conviction, fluency, etc.

I took sophistry to mean conscious manipulation. That's also the sense in which it has been historically used, including by Plato.

[Carl-Richard]

9 hours ago, Buck Edwards said:

I don't know how to apply this in a spiritual woo woo context. Do i have to attend some seminar or lectures to understand it because it sure goes over my head when it doesn't make any rational sense. Then a creeping assumption comes to my mind that says - maybe it's just me. 

You keep going at it. Conscientiousness (industriousness) is what produces results. Intelligence is only a modulator.

[Carl-Richard]

20 minutes ago, Nilsi said:

I took sophistry to mean conscious manipulation. That's also the sense in which it has been historically used, including by Plato.

It's maybe more historically correct, but I feel like I've seen it today being used to describe well-meaning people. Besides, the Google definition says conscious manipulation is not a necessary criteria ☺️

Edited May 18 by Carl-Richard

[yetineti]

4 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

On the grounds that I can have a more intelligent conversation with it than with anyone here.

@Leo Gura Low bar.

[Inliytened1]

5 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

Understanding. AI has amazing comprehension ability.

 

Yeah but that's you imagining it has amazing comprehension.  You're the one actually comprehending.  Mind fuck.

Edited May 18 by Inliytened1

[Nivsch]

AI can be the master of the Left brain style of thinking, but it cannot access the Right brain's territory and its kind of insights gaining capabilities.

Edited May 18 by Nivsch

[Inliytened1]

3 minutes ago, Nivsch said:

AI can be the master of the Left brain style of thinking, but it cannot access the Right brain's abilities with its kind of insights gaining capabilities.

It admits to this too - using the left brain 😀  that's what I love about AI - it's humility 😀  

[Nemra]

In my opinion, the AI is like a parrot with some kind of high level of intelligence based on the data it has been trained on.

Edited May 18 by Nemra

[QVx]

11 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

AI is more intelligent than most humans.

The limitation of AI is that is cannnot know without knowing; a defining trait of consciousness.

[Carl-Richard]

11 hours ago, zurew said:

I don't really have a solid theory for intelligence, but I agree with John Vervaeke on how he defines general intelligence , which is basically about your ability for relevance realization in multiple different contexts - which can be translated to using the right heruistic(s) at the right time and the right place, without searching the whole problemspace beforehand.

To the extent that this definition of intelligence is separate from knowledge (which could be described as "searching the problemspace beforehand"; essentially experience), intelligence becomes more related to "mystical" abilities like intuition and generalizable principles like logic, systemic concepts and virtues. These generalizable principles are of course themselves a form of knowledge, but they're elegant and adaptable, so you don't have to "search the entire problemspace" (rely on experience/knowledge) to solve a problem. They transcend mere knowledge. But this generalizability has many flaws (hence why Vervaeke says intelligence makes you prone to self-deception), which is why concrete knowledge is important and why for example there is "wisdom in tradition". And of course, recognizing the need for a balance between generalizable and concrete knowledge is part of what wisdom is. And similar to how a generalizable principle is a type of knowledge, balance is a type of generalizable principle, but it's hyper-generalized, transcending mere generalizability. It's hyper-elegant, adaptable and virtuous; sacred. So it transcends both knowledge and intelligence.

Edited May 18 by Carl-Richard