On Proving Intelligence

The raging 'discussion' about evolution -vs- intelligent design got me to thinking.

Before approaching an idea like intelligent design, can science provide evidence of intelligence?





Others have considered such things in the past, notably a fellow named Alan Turing.

His first test was not about detecting intelligence at all, but rather, the sex of a person on another computer terminal (a bit of a visionary for 1951, hmm?):
http://www.psych.utoronto.ca/~reingold/courses/ai/turing.html

Following that, he proposed a 'looks like a duck, quacks like a duck, IS a duck' test for intelligence. While not everyone may agree with that, I'm not sure there is a much better test, 54 years after his paper on it.

There is a 100,000 USD prize for creating a computer intelligence that passes his test: http://loebner.net/Prizef/loebner-prize.html

Also a company seeking to create a computer intelligence for its own sake: http://www.cyc.com/cyc/technology/whatiscyc




Obviously, most people act as if other people have intelligence, and grant some degree of it to dolphins, dogs, cats and so forth.

So, what sort of evidence convinces us that intelligence is present, be it in a bit of silicon or a creature?

Faith.

None.

The atheist's responses are predictable.

Merry Christmas, Kevn. *hugs*

Merry Christmas Logan, hugs back at ya

Here is some food for thought on this matter....

http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/bill_schultz/crsc.html

Which one is the atheist?

I still like the Turing test. Some objections have been raised (e.g. Searle's Chinese room), but I don't think they're very strong. We live assuming that the people we interact with are intelligent/sentient, and the evidence we have for this is in terms of how they act, which is really just the Turing test.

I would also make the point that sentience isn't some on/off binary thing. There aren't any magical "sentience" particles floating around, and if you lose yours you suddenly become a zombie. All kinds of interesting thought experiments can lead you to consider states on the "edge" of sentience, for which a binary view of sentience just doesn't work.

I wonder if you think a test of intelligence could be characterised, measured, codified or such.

Perhaps a kind of 'Voight-Kampff test', as in the Blade Runner story?

I wonder myself. My own guess is the opposite - that we *all* use a sort of faith to detect intelligence.

When we are born, we have no such concerns (it's all about us) - but later, we make a leap of sorts, and presume others are like us.

And I suspect that we all made this leap without solid evidence or scientific method, at a very young age.



So... is anyone willing to take a stab at describing a logic, or rationale for detecting intelligence?

It might mean 'losing at forums' a bit, but I think the discussion would be worth it. Any takers?

When we are looking for intelligent life on other planets what do we look for? We look for things that show order that wouldn't be expected. For example, if we land a probe on Mars, and we see small, shiny triangles all lined up in perfect order, this would lead us to believe intelligence created them. Even if the things we see aren't very hi-tech, the order they are in seems to be a sign of design.

We can't see the life that created the objects, but we know they exist, or did exist at one time.