Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!mcvax!kth!draken!d88-cwe From: d88-cwe@nada.kth.se (Christian Wettergren) Newsgroups: comp.ai Subject: Re: Indictment Message-ID: <1256@draken.nada.kth.se> Date: 7 Jul 89 10:47:27 GMT References: <299@ucl-cs.UUCP> <1421@lzfme.att.com> <441@edai.ed.ac.uk> Reply-To: d88-cwe@nada.kth.se (Christian Wettergren) Organization: Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden Lines: 75 In article <1421@lzfme.att.com> jwi@lzfme.att.com (Jim Winer @ AT&T, Middletown, NJ) writes: >My point is that human beings, as a group, are not intelligent. >There does not seem to be any clear correlation between their >behavior and the presumed objective of happiness. I think that human society, as a group, is indeed intelligent, but at another level. A neuron won't feel the intelligence of a living creature. But you can't deny that an animal, or a human, in some sense is intelligent. The problem with the intelligence of a whole population is more complex than it may seem. It is a lot of factor's one have to look at. For example, doesn't this medium in some sense raise the IQ :-) of our society because it raises the level of interconnections. The resources spread out geo- graphically over the globe is used much more efficient because of this. Another factor is that you have to be able to understand and interpret the information that is given to you. And to be able to that, you must have education. The importance of education must also be understood, and isn't that also an information that you must understand. (Of course you can read, you just did!) ---- I've read a very interesting book recently, about 'The Evolution of Co- -operation' by R. Axelrod. Axelrod has studied the concept of 'strategies'. He has battled a lot of strategies against each other in a computer simulation. The strategies has access to the history of the interaction with it's 'opponent' and has to answer either 'Cooperate' or `Defect' on each round. This is an Iterated Prisoner's dilemma. If both answer 'Cooperate', they both get 3 scores. If one says 'Cooperate' and one says `Defect', the one who didn't cooperate gets 5 p and the other gets the Sucker's payoff, 0 p. If both mistrust each other, they get 1 p. (I'm not too sure about the exact scores, but I'll think it's correct this way.) The result was that the strategy Tit-for-Tat won. It does whatever the opponent did. The conclusion, after some analysis, was that you should be provocable, forgiving, nice - don't start a battle, and robust. I'll know that I'm not doing this great book right trying to making a summary in just three paragraphs, so, go and read it. ---- Excuse me, I just wanted to mention the book. What I was going to say was that I think that the Theory of Cooperation gives us a clue to how an organism evolves. (I think that a society is an organism too, in some sense...) The society needs as many interconnections as possible to become 'intelligent'. There is a self-organizing function in nature as soon as the parts is self- -aware and strives for 'profit'. Therefore I think it is a mistake to say that a group of people isn't intelligent. Just think of ALL the layers this article has passed on it's way. I'm writing this at home. Each letter goes from the microchip in the keyboard, up through the operating system, out into the modem & the screen, through all telephone wires, switchboards, into my minicomputer... Each stage is modulated by a lot of factors. Do you have electricity, raw- -material, industry, money !, ...., ...., .... I think you've got the idea. (You read it!) By the way, I do agree with you to call a pseduo-intelligent bomb-controller a weapon. For us 'neurons', it is essential to live at our level :-). That means we should absolutely engage ourselves in our world, and not loose ourselves up in the blue with threatpictures etc, etc. Thank for listening to my chattering. /Christian Wettergren, d88-cwe@nada.kth.se P.S. How did the conventions in this medium evolve (don't flame, don't correct spelling etc) ?