Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!clyde!att!rutgers!mailrus!uflorida!gatech!linus!mbunix!bwk From: bwk@mitre-bedford.ARPA (Barry W. Kort) Newsgroups: comp.ai Subject: Re: Definitions of intelligence and complexity Summary: Don't worry. Just think your way into the future. Keywords: Social construct, productivity measure Message-ID: <42327@linus.UUCP> Date: 30 Nov 88 13:36:53 GMT References: <448@uceng.UC.EDU> Sender: news@linus.UUCP Reply-To: bwk@mbunix (Kort) Organization: IdeaSync, Inc., Chronos, VT Lines: 22 In article <448@uceng.UC.EDU> dmocsny@uceng.UC.EDU Daniel Mocsny writes: >I think any attempt to define intelligence is futile >as long as we do not know how to define complexity. I recently saw an interesting definition of complexity in Scientific American: The complexity of a system may be measured in terms of the amount of information discarded in the process of creating the system. (For all you Zen enthusiasts, this means that the Null System may be the most complex system ever created.) By the way, my own working definition of intelligence is the ability to think and solve problems. (I define thinking as a rational form of information processing which conceives solutions to outstanding problems, generates goal-achieving courses of action, and reduces the entropy or uncertainty of a knowledge base. The antonym of thinking is worrying, an emotional form of information processing which fails to generate solutions to outstanding problems, fails to generate goal-achieving courses of action, and fail to reduce the entropy or uncertainty of a knowldege base.) --Barry Kort