Summations Only

GDR writes:Where is that intelligence if it isn't in our cells?

Taq writes:The fungus does not bid the ant to do anything. There is no decision making process in the fungus. The chemicals released by the fungus cause the ant to act in a specific manner. Neither the fungus nor the ant has any choice in the matter. That is what they do, just like a rain drop has no say in falling from a cloud.

GDR writes:It seems to me that by that reasoning elephants should be really smart. What makes one collective smarter than others?

In the first I have no idea, and in the second at the very least AI doesn't make moral choices.

I would suspect that, unless programmed otherwise, AI would rely on utilitarianism as a moral code. Which outcome is greater? Okay, that's what we do.It may not be a form of morality that humans will like very much, but it is morality.

Taq writes:If you give someone a large dose of TNF- is it their intelligence that causes them to feel like shit?

1.61083 writes: The fact that a plant cant plan ahead and a human can means we are intelligent and they are not. It does not mean the laws of nature have a inherent "innate" intelligence. It means given the right conditions and enough time a thing called intelligence can eventually emerge. Intelligence may simply be a emergent property of matter

William H. Calvin writes:Why aren't there more species with such complex mental states? There might be a hump to get over: a little intelligence can be a dangerous thing. A beyond-the-apes intelligence must constantly navigate between the twin hazards of dangerous innovation and a conservatism that ignores what the Red Queen explained to Alice in Through the Looking Glass: "...it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place." Foresight is our special form of running, essential for the intelligent stewardship that Stephen Jay Gould of Harvard University warns is needed for longer-term survival: "We have become, by the power of a glorious evolutionary accident called intelligence, the stewards of life's continuity on earth. We did not ask for this role, but we cannot abjure it. We may not be suited to it, but here we are."

NWR writes:Look at some of what we consider intelligent:
We have squandered the fossil fuel reserves that we have discovered;
we have acidified the ocean and damaged fisheries;
we have destroyed forests;
we have allowed the human population to rise to a level that will be difficult to sustain without further damage to our habitat;
we have put men on the moon (which does not do anything to help feed the population).