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"General Intelligence" is a well defined term and there's a lot of literature on why it makes sense. There are many human cognitive skills that seem to be very

"General Intelligence" is a well defined term and there's a lot of literature on why it makes sense. There are many human cognitive skills that seem to be very helpful for some specific tasks (e.g. noticing that someone is watching you, identifying the pitch of a strummed guitar string) but are not very useful in general, but others (e.g. analogous thinking) that we found to be relevant to a vast range of cognitive tasks. There are also tasks that require mostly the second kind of skill. An animal that can perform them well should be considered intelligent even if it doesn't have perfect pitch and can't notice that it's being watched. An animal that we can't get to perform them well may or may not be intelligent - perhaps we're not good at convincing it to try hard. Some relevant links: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G_factor_(psychometrics) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G_factor_(psychometrics) and also, I guess https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_general_intelligence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_general_intelligenc...

mike00632 6y ago
What if the animal can't hear or is disabled? I know I sure can't tell what different pitches are.
- SonOfLilit 6y ago
  I think you're agreeing with me?
grawprog 6y ago
That was kind of my point, all of that is through a human centric point of view. What if higher intelligence is something else? Look at say plants, they've been shown to be intelligent in various ways. https://academic.oup.com/aob/article/92/1/1/177536 https://academic.oup.com/aob/article/92/1/1/177536 Now, when you take an ecosystem like a forest, something interesting happens. The plants begin to communicate with eachother using electrical signals passed along the mycorrhizal networks of the fungi that live symbiotically with them. https://academic.oup.com/aobpla/article-abstract/doi/10.1093/aobpla/plv050/201398 https://academic.oup.com/aobpla/article-abstract/doi/10.1093... https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-75596-0_10 https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-75596-0_... So, these networks facilitate learning by individual plants within the network, they facilitate long term memory, complex coordinated long term behaviour. Now, a lot of these behaviours and things happen over spans of decades to hundreds if not thousands of years. That sounds very much like some level of higher intelligence, yet those plants will never complete a 2048 or sokoban puzzle.
- filoeleven 6y ago
  Those seem like great reasons to focus our efforts on things that are very close to us in their mode of being first, and expand from there as we learn more examples. Plants and fungi being broadly sessile means that their cognition, if they have it, will be expressed in radically different ways from ours. Whereas birds or dolphins are a lot like us: brains and bodies.
- SonOfLilit 6y ago
  If plants were highly generally intelligent (as I suspect corvids are) and if I were able to convince them that they would get a prize they highly desire if they solve a difficult Sokoban level with controls they can use (which has been done many times with corvids) then I would definitely expect them to solve the level given a few decades or centuries, yes. (I personally don't believe plants to possess general intelligence, but I would be delighted to discover I'm wrong)

mike00632 6y ago

What if the animal can't hear or is disabled? I know I sure can't tell what different pitches are.

SonOfLilit 6y ago
I think you're agreeing with me?

grawprog 6y ago

That was kind of my point, all of that is through a human centric point of view. What if higher intelligence is something else? Look at say plants, they've been shown to be intelligent in various ways. https://academic.oup.com/aob/article/92/1/1/177536 https://academic.oup.com/aob/article/92/1/1/177536 Now, when you take an ecosystem like a forest, something interesting happens. The plants begin to communicate with eachother using electrical signals passed along the mycorrhizal networks of the fungi that live symbiotically with them. https://academic.oup.com/aobpla/article-abstract/doi/10.1093/aobpla/plv050/201398 https://academic.oup.com/aobpla/article-abstract/doi/10.1093... https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-75596-0_10 https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-75596-0_... So, these networks facilitate learning by individual plants within the network, they facilitate long term memory, complex coordinated long term behaviour. Now, a lot of these behaviours and things happen over spans of decades to hundreds if not thousands of years. That sounds very much like some level of higher intelligence, yet those plants will never complete a 2048 or sokoban puzzle.

filoeleven 6y ago
Those seem like great reasons to focus our efforts on things that are very close to us in their mode of being first, and expand from there as we learn more examples. Plants and fungi being broadly sessile means that their cognition, if they have it, will be expressed in radically different ways from ours. Whereas birds or dolphins are a lot like us: brains and bodies.
SonOfLilit 6y ago
If plants were highly generally intelligent (as I suspect corvids are) and if I were able to convince them that they would get a prize they highly desire if they solve a difficult Sokoban level with controls they can use (which has been done many times with corvids) then I would definitely expect them to solve the level given a few decades or centuries, yes. (I personally don't believe plants to possess general intelligence, but I would be delighted to discover I'm wrong)