X-Message-Number: 4370
From:  (Thomas Donaldson)
Subject: Re: CryoNet #4324 - #4329
Date: Mon, 8 May 1995 00:00:02 -0700 (PDT)

Greetings once more!

I'm sorry that Michael Riskin had his heart attack but of course glad that it
did not go further. One (uncomfortable) fact is that even the very best
known drugs and treatment to help us stay healthy have only a statistical
effect ie. you can take all kinds of antiaging drugs, exercize, diet, and 
all the rest, and STILL come down with heart disease (or brain tumor, or 
something else).

As for INTELLIGENCE, the fact that no one has a good definition is important.
It relates to a lot of things, from drugs which are supposed to increase our
"intelligence" to our understanding of computers. I will also point out that
no one I know uses "intelligence" as an expletive: it is always a form of
praise. That is important because the word itself must therefore say more 
than something about the world: it says that something out there is "good".
I very much doubt that such value laden words will help us to understand
anything at all. 

I would therefore suggest that we use such a phrase as "mental abilities"
or "computational abilities" instead. And when we consider not just adult
healthy human beings but the entire range of mental or computational 
performance over both machines and animals, it becomes obvious that there
is also a very great range of mental/computational abilities. In some of
them some animals exceed us, and the combination of restricted and very
poor abilities in some areas combined with tremendous powers of computation
shown by computers (in the narrow sense of the machines we make and use)
tells us that there are many more mental/computational abilities than
animals of any kind have yet shown. Even if we limit ourselves to the 
abilities shown by human beings (not necessarily "healthy" ones) a simple
reading of Oliver Sacks suggests that there is a very wide range. Some
"idiots" can do amazing things. 

Nor for that matter does the presence of one or another mental/computational
ability necessarily relate at all to such traits as consciousness. Why
should it?

By taking a value-laden term as if it expressed something in the world 
independent of our values, we are likely to fail completely in understanding
that world. And if we wish to acquire more mental/computational abilities,
thinking about "intelligence" is not the way to go.

			Best and long long life,

				Thomas Donaldson


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