5 questions redux

[spudtater]

1. Do you believe that intelligence is an emergent, evolving characteristic in life forms? Particularly self-awareness and abstract thought, but in general: is our capacity for sapience as a species a trait like our number of arms (fixed at birth) or like our height (something that changes over time)?

   First let me address intelligence in general. Obviously, a human has more capacity for intelligent thought than, say, a mouse. It would stand to reason that different humans have different capabilities for intelligence; this is what drove our evolution in the direction of large-brained thinking primates.

   It was once popular to suppose that everybody had an inate "intelligence", and that learning only utilised that potential. It was that sort of reasoning that gave us such things as the (*hack, spit*) IQ test. This would, it was said, measure your inate intelligence. Education was irrelevent. Even practice at IQ tests was, supposedly, irrelevent. What happened? Well, the educated sections of society were proud to show that their IQs were higher than any of the working class hoi polloi. This showed that not only were they more intelligent, but they were more intelligent by birth. I shudder at the thought. Of course, anybody with any shred of real intelligence denounces IQ tests as pseudo-science at best.</rant>

   My comparison would be not with number of arms or height, but rather with musculature. Some people have a physiology that means that they can acheive great strength... but without regular exercise, they'll still be weaklings. Same thing with brains. And to extend the metaphor to that old cliché: use it or lose it.

   Now for sapience, which is interesting indeed. I think that sapience (which I define as being largely synonymous with "self-awareness") is the same as having a theory of mind — when we understand that our own beliefs are internal, not external; that we can be wrong, or that other people may disagree with us; that naturally entails a sense of self. There's an experiment which is often touted as a demonstration of development of a TOM. One version of it features a Smarties tube. The child is asked what they think is inside it, and they reply "Smarties". Then they are shown that actually, it contains pencils. They are asked "if I ask <some other person> to come in and guess what's inside it, what will they say?" The correct answer is of course "Smarties". Children three years old or younger, however, will usually say "pencils". Autistic children also perform poorly.

   Unfortunately, the experiment doesn't answer your question. It shows that children develop sapience, but it doesn't show that they develop the capacity for sapience. Rather, this could be fixed at birth, with the TOM only developing as the child "grows into" it.

   So we're in speculative territory. Is sapience an obvious development from our general intelligence and from human society, or is it something else? Perhaps there's a specific mechanism in the brain that causes it? Would it be possible for an alien race to develop great intelligence without ever developing sapience as we know it? I simply don't know. As a guess, I'd say that it is nothing special; anything of a certain level of intelligence that learns of other intelligent beings should develop sapience.

   Phew! Didn't mean to get quite so in-depth!

2. In your opinion, why do people peg religion (inc. spirituality and other belief systems) as diametrically opposite to science?

   Because in the main part it is. Most forms of religion emphasise faith as the biggest part of their belief system. No matter what doubts arise, you know that the universe was formed out of the droppings of the great squirrel T'kirrit, or whatever. Whereas the most important thing in science is knowing that you could be wrong. In other words, science is built on doubt. The falsifiability requirement makes this concrete. It says "this theory might be wrong. It entails this and that, and if those don't happen, then, well, you've proven it wrong." By contrast, religion says that "if this doesn't appear true to you, it's because you just don't believe hard enough."

   I can't remember who it was that put it the most concisely: "If a scientific theory doesn't fit the facts, the theory is discarded. If a religious theory doesn't fit the facts, the facts are discarded." And another quote which I like to bring up when I'm in a ranty mood: "To be a Christian, you must pluck out the eye of reason". No, it's not some atheist being unneccessarily cruel — that quote's by Martin Luther!   8^P   8^)

   All that said, I don't think religion has to be that way. Most of the religious people I know don't actually think that way, and several entire sects are pretty good (eg. UUs and Quakers). A well-balanced person can think both logically and spiritually, and have those aspects complement rather than oppose each other.

   Standing back a bit, the religion/science thing is really no more than a version of the logic/emotion thing. And that's got some solid neurological reasons behind it (reptilian vs. mammalian brain, etc.). So putting science and religion "diametrically opposite" on a diagram or whatever is actually saying something about our own brains. Going back to hypothetical aliens, I'd wager a fair few of them, observing us, would see the science/religion divide and utterly fail to understand it; there's no corresponding quirk of the brain that would cause those sorts of tensions in their minds or in their societies.

3. What's with the potato fixation?

   I had to pick a handle for IRC, and I recalled that my sister had recently compared me to Mr. Potato Head (in a good-natured way, to be fair.) So I went by various versions of PotatoHead, Potato, Spud, Tater, etc, finally settling on "SpudTater" as I didn't need any awkward numerals to distinguish me from anybody else. Anyway, the reason it snowballed into a potato fixation is because it acted as a very useful "mask" online, at a time when I was incredibly shy and lacking a social life. When it came to real social interaction, especially after going to university, I sometimes used the same potato persona. It helped with insecurities, and it always made for an interesting conversation (to me, at least, silly == interesting).

   It always sounds quite psychologically twisted and slightly tragic when I analyse it. But it helped me get out of a very shy phase, so on balance it's a good thing.

4. You can tell your twelve-year-old self one thing. What do you tell him, and why?

   Could I give him a good slapping around instead? 'Cause it strikes me that my twelve-year-old self was, on reflection, extremely irritating. But seriously... if it was only one thing... it would probably just be to avoid going to a certain school (my parents gave me a choice between two). Or maybe I'd go down the unselfish route... there's a couple of mishaps in the family that could have going be¹ averted.

5. What's your take on magic?

   I think it's more of a mindset than anything else. Many things used to be considered "magic" (or "supernatural") before science came along, categorised them, and started putting out theories to try to explain their behaviour. What's the difference between "mind control" and "neurolinguistic programming"? A name, an attitude.

   I keep an open mind about everything, but I believe that nothing is fundamentally inexplicable by science. It might be mysterious now, but that's because we don't yet understand it well enough.

   That said, there is one worldview that would make magic more "real" than just a mindset, and that is that of chaos magic. This is the idea (which would be familiar to Mage players) that the physical reality of the world is (directly) shaped by the beliefs of the people observing it. Enough people believe that aeroplanes can fly, and they do so. Enough people stop believing that lightning-struck trees can cure toothaches, and they'll stop doing so. The consequence is that you can get what you want by willingly changing your belief system. Why is this more real than other magical beliefs? Because it is meta-belief. It encompasses, it explains, both other magics and all of science.

   Chaos magic is lovely and it rocks, but I don't believe it's true. My reason is that there are things that "everybody knows", but which are false. Everybody knows, for example, that humans only use 10% of their brains. Which is patently false.

[1] Or whatever the correct time-travelling grammar is.

Right. Anybody who wants questions in return, comment. I will (eventually) get round to asking them. (I'm still thinking of questions for gominokouhai for the last one.)

Comments

[kropotkin29.livejournal.com]

Love your answers Alex,
but it would appear that I am unwilling to commit the effort required to join in this questions and answers game.

;-)