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Article 6598 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: bill@nsma.arizona.edu (Bill Skaggs)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: Defining intelligence
Message-ID: <BILL.92Aug11130136@ca3.nsma.arizona.edu>
Date: 11 Aug 92 20:01:36 GMT
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In-Reply-To: marky@dip.eecs.umich.edu's message of 11 Aug 92 15: 26:06 GMT

marky@dip.eecs.umich.edu (Mark Anthony Young) writes:

   > Actually, the above definition was offered slightly
   > tongue-in-cheek.  But having said that, I will defend it from
   > your scurrilous :-) attack. 
   >
   > [ . . . ]

Pretty clever.  There's something very appealing about a recursive
definition of intelligence -- it makes me think of "strange loops" and
other Hofstadter-ish paraphernalia.

But . . .

   >   > That is, [something is more intelligent than me if] it does
   >   > things the way I would if I'd had more time to think about
   >   > them, or that I would do given its example. 

How about the following:  Adolph Hitler was pretty intelligent, I
think, maybe more intelligent than me, but I hope that I would never
do things the way he did, regardless of how much time I had to think
about them.  (If Hitler seems like a dubious example, substitute
Satan.)

Even better, consider Isaac Newton, who was, no question, far more
intelligent than me, yet devoted a major part of his life to what I
think of as theological nonsense.

	-- Bill


