Ep 34: What is intelligence? | INNER COSMOS WITH DAVID EAGLEMAN

[@johnbradson2657]

The part about imagining being a horse was so good to me. Maybe it's a normal thing to ponder on but I always feel like I'm alone in that I OFTEN consider what it's like to be a bird, fly, turtle etc... but I always end up with the belief that if I could ACTUALLY experience being a fly, then at that point I wouldn't be able to come back to being a person

[@OokwaYikmagwa]

This cortex vortex says: Great lecture!

[@Pixelatedworld-iu2dd]

Great Channel! Interspecies communication exists at basic levels, like dogs understanding "Sit" or "Stay," and dolphins responding to commands. The chimp-human or chimp-gorilla interactions, especially with Koko the gorilla using sign language, are notable. However, the scientific validity of these interactions is debated. For humans to communicate with aliens, the more intelligent species (presumably aliens) would need to initiate and simplify communication.

[@deepthyraj991]

Thank you David

[@slightlygruff]

Is this the episode about how brain simulates reality or haven't you released that one yet?

[@djangowoof]

I love these lectures and David BUT i find the background music distracting. REALLY DISTRACTING. thanks.

[@yamenshahadeh]

Awesome content again, mind-blowing how this channel is not getting millions of views.

[@RiversJ]

Because social proof takes critical mass and that takes time. And you don't get millions of views or subscribers without social proof, only those relatively strongly interested in the topics. The quality is certainly there and it'll get there eventually and when it does it'll happen fast.

[@stellarwind1946]

I’ve read that pupil size is now being looked at as a measure of intelligence.

[@jowilf9994]

A way to communicate with less intelligent beings is to provide them something they need. Example given food to a squirrel. If they are more intelligent beings THAT WANT to communicate with us, I think they can easily do it because they were able to see us or identify us . they can just change something that we know it’s not possible without a certain level of intelligence….

[@tartanspaghetti3204]

If our brains were so simple that we could understand them, we would be so simple that we couldn't! 😊

[@thuynguyenthidieu2074]

Individual and collective intelligence building is a balance thing

[@thuynguyenthidieu2074]

Never say never. There is a whole global community for that.

[@mrwaters5371]

Consider the phenomenon of a man who lived in the 7th century in a desert for 40 years, with no access to institutions of education, libraries, halls of science - not even the ability to read or write. He is renowned for being highly honest and trustworthy, charitable, caring and of high moral character. His tribesmen are known for being masters of eloquent and poetic expression, though he is not. In his 40th year, he begins urging his community to adopt higher morals, to respect women and guarantee their rights to inherit and participate in politics. Way before the "Age of Enlightenment" and the birth of astronomy and technology he informs them of how planetary bodies rotate on axes and travel in orbits; how mountains are actually nine tenths below the earth's surface and act as stakes stabilizing the surface against tectonic shifts; the stages of embryonic development in a mother's womb; all expressed with such eloquence of language that the best of linguists and masters of poetic expression are dumbfounded and unable to match his eloquence. It happened. His name was Muhammad. The morals and the astounding scientific facts that he taught are all preserved in The Quran.

[@boriszverev6598]

I recall reading that ants, for example, are not aware that humans exist. We live side by side for thousands of years. Why not human species some higher forms of life doing the same?

[@macdisciple]

I’ve been thinking the same for a long long time. Our 5 senses are so limited in scope we only experience a fraction of what exists at a time. And what if there are more senses - senses we don’t even know exist that open the door to other observations of what is real.

[@macdisciple]

Our experience is based upon the very limited abilities of our 5 senses. Im very sure reality is far greater than what we perceive. How could we think otherwise?

[@kevincarothers7486]

Although I really support the research of the question of "what is intelligence", my personal hunch is that, much like living cells, intelligence might be just part of something MUCH BIGGER ... Evidence shows intelligence at thee cellular level foe many organisms. And regarding cells themselves; heck, we STILL don't even have a complete manifest of even what ALL the things a single living cell even DOES....

[@a.bodhichenevey1601]

As I look around at human activity, globally, as a human, I am envious of that squirrel-brain. 😉

[@thuynguyenthidieu2074]

Levels --> kinds

[@thuynguyenthidieu2074]

But there is one type that's straightforward: right on and fundamental, like Maths.

[@jenniferpalomino1340]

como puedo aumentar o potenciar mi inteligencia?

[@alanwhitworth3633]

... we don't know, what we don't know

[@simesaid]

This is absolutely true. We _don't_ know what we don't know, and so it's impossible to understand what it might be like to be more intelligent. Moreover, the least intelligent person on Earth will still feel exactly the same within themselves as the most intelligent person. We don't know what we don't know, and we don't know what it would really mean even if we _did_ know... but it almost certainly wouldn't be any different to now.

[@robertferraro236]

Animals deal with physics in real time. We have the ability to think about it after the fact.

[@SimonFalkentorp]

Citizen to police dog handler: “The dog must be intelligent.” Police dig handler: “Well, it’s smarter than fish.”

[@macdisciple]

Somewhete there is some kind of a sentient being talking about the limitations of humans and the things they cannot perceive and understand.

[@Ipadstands]

I was thinking about learning AI and programming for it bu† I thought I'd search for a video just on normal intelligence and found this. I think this is a pre-requisite before looking into the artificial stuff.

[@dwightyokum3700]

I don’t like the idea we couldn’t conceive of a more intelligent species or communicate with them and vice versa. We could interact with a squirrel in a variety of ways, Feed it, yell at it, chop its tree down, like us they occupy physical space. Same with an alien species, they take up space they make noise they use resources. They could interact with us without understanding us. So boo, thin argument. Rest is awesome 😅

[@RiversJ]

I've found this always a rather lazy argument by people who haven't actually thought through it with anything but their contemporary ethos. Certainly a dramatically more intelligent being would find it difficult to stay engaged with a human, but we still have people that investigate the sociology of insects and the like all the time. When you have a society in the billions (more likely Trillions), just one in a million researcher's along then would outnumber every person on our planet even fleetingly interested in SETI. This results in a Huge surface for quick and efficient development of meaningful communication by mutually curious beings capable of abstract communication.