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Article 6591 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: choy@skorpio.usask.ca
Subject: Basic definitions
Message-ID: <1992Aug10.211239.17308@access.usask.ca>
Sender: choy@skorpio (I am a terminator.)
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Organization: University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, Canada
Date: Mon, 10 Aug 1992 21:12:39 GMT
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Some things have to be defined to aid the discussion on intelligence.

  . information

    We talk about storing information in memory, communicating it,
    etc. In the physical universe, there may be no such thing as
    information. When an electron interacts with another electron,
    there does not appear to be any transfer of information. Human
    brains are made of particles among other things interacting
    with each other. At the lowest levels information is an
    abstraction. It may be possible for an intelligent object to
    use no information. At the lowest levels, nothing uses anything.
    Things just happen. (In a deterministic universe, there may be
    no intelligence. People can't make intelligent decisions
    because they can't make decisions. They are forced into their
    roles.)

    I see a couple of ways to define "information"

    . input, output

      Information is used for communications. It's something
      transmittable.

    . computation

      I look at the origins of communications. An idea is expressed.
      For why? Some need must be satisfied. Some computation is
      required. Meaning is the invocation of a subroutine.


Henry Choy
choy@cs.usask.ca




