Ranges of Intelligence

"It has yet to be proven that intelligence has any survival value."

~ Arthur C. Clarke

In my work I meet people from more or less every conceivable background. My current position in law is such that yesterday I was defending a down and out beggar on a charge of assaulting a police officer, and yet today I am advising an engineer on the legal implications of his contract with a local council. Tomorrow I'll probably be pleading that a loan shark shouldn't take some lady's Mercedes. Now, I don't pretend that the background of a person determines their intelligence, that is clearly wrong, but such varied exposure to different areas of society does present a wide view. What never ceases to amaze me is the variety of intelligence displayed by different people.

I'll quickly define my meaning of intelligence: "the ability to perceive the meaning and implication of one's surroundings."

It really can be anything from simply understanding a legal concept upon explanation to conducting an intelligible (even interesting?!) conversation. It's about understanding the effects of actions and the meanings of static concepts. I'm no closer to defining it am I? My definition, in short, attempts to define intelligence by reference to perception, rather than 'knowledge' or 'wisdom' ('wisdom' seems to me to be 'experience' applied to 'perception').

The question, then, is how does it happen? I have some vague idea how evolution works. I've studied it, thought about it, and examined it in nature about me. I have a great deal of difficulty in understanding how it accounts for the vast chasm between, on the one hand, someone who does not see the causative link between spending money and finding you have none left, and on the other, someone who can describe the rules of our very existence with algebraic equations.

Or, the person who doesn't understand that if you hit someone, they'll hit you back, compared to Sun Tzu. Paris Hilton compared to Aristotle. George Bush to Einstein.

It's the bell curve, right? But what, is the church tower the size of a city?

I think the answer may lie in a continuation of a debate I posted a while back, namely that evolution has been surpassed by humanity.

If humanity was still governed by natural evolution then stupidity would be slowly eliminated. Humanity would tend to greater and greater intelligence. Instead, something quite different is happening. It isn't evolution, but it still follows some of the same patterns. It seems that now the stupid will copulate with the stupid, and the intelligent likewise. But both have a similar chance of survival - and crucially, both chances are high enough to sustain their respective populations.

BUT, as the stupid copulate with the stupid, and the intelligent copulate with the intelligent, the bell curve gets wider and wider. I think that sinice the dawn of civilisation this process has been accelerating, and it will continue. In the end it may well be that a new classification system is required: sub-human; human; super-human. And the 'human' category will thin out and eventually disappear as its remnants tend to one side or another.

Could it be that humanity is coming to dividing point? Will the castes split?

The War

It was, of course, Remembrance Sunday yesterday. (At least it was in England, I don't know when you American dudes remember the war heroes.)

I personally was playing football on a muddy and littered pitch in East London yesterday, but even there the Ref made us stand around the centre circle in silence for half an hour to pay our respects.

Now I'm not one for being particularly 'current' in my blog. There are thousands of others doing that already and I certainly don't think I have anything different to say about it...

...But my grandfather does.

A while back he wrote a fantastic account of the Dieppe Raid. It's about 20 pages long and one of the best reads I've come across. He describes the fear of being shelled on a ship, having the man by your side shot in the head and then the experience of drowning out at sea...

"The question demanding an immediate answer was, should I retreat to the beach and be taken by the Germans, or continue out to sea in the hope, now somewhat tenuous, of being picked up? I decided to press on.

My life jacket, which had so far given me good service, now seemed to be losing its bouyancy. As I continued swimming I appeared to be lower in the water. My legs, instead of being fairly horizontal behind me, now inclined deeper as they tried to thrust me forward. I rested more frequently, and instead of trying to float on my back, I found that it required less effort just to stop swimming and gently tread water. I don't know how long this continued. I was cold, had swallowed too much sea, my vomiting was painful and my eyes felt raw. Gradually I lost the strength to even tread water, and after floating legs down for a while, I became aware that I was drowning. My brain seemed to accept the thought without fuss as if my will to survive was about to 'throw in the towel'.

I was suddenly enveloped in a smoke screen. The acrid stuff caused more vomiting and coughing and more swallowing of salt water. Now, only my nose was above the surface of the sea. Is is said that drowning people are visited by a kaleidoscope of snapshots of their previous experience. This mental phenomenon came to me and the pictures it brought were so clear it was as if they were the reality and my drowning was only a dream. Then, abruptly, the dream dissolved into a new reality.

Around me a gap appeared in the smoke and there not twenty yards away was a small craft with smoke spouting out of the canisters at its side."

Yes, that's how close I was to never existing.

Origins of the Universe

A short break from 'neutrality' for an alternative discussion: (though all discussions by implication have associations with neutrality!)

Here are a few options for 'origin of the universe':

['universe' = "everything that exists anywhere". However, for the purposes of this discussion, I intend to expand this definition to "...anywhere and anywhen"]

1. A deity created it.

2. It was produced by the big bang.

3. It has no origin, and has existed 'forever'.

4. It originated at its own end (it is a product of circular time - its end is its beginning.)

5. It is a tiny part (piece of dirt) in an inconceivably larger universe (someone's backyard).

6. It does not exist.

Here are my replies:

1. To be terribly unoriginal: what is the origin of the deity? The answer to this question would usually be suggestion #3 above, in which case this suggestion can be considered implicitly there. This would usually be backed up by the definition of most 'gods' as omnipotent, omniscient and omnipresent. 'omnipresent' one can assume, means not only present at all places simultaneously but also present at all times simultaneously; thus, without 'determination'. To accept this suggestion would be total rebellion against logic, and would require a vast leap of faith. Further, this suggestion requires defining the deity in question as somehow outside the meaning of 'everything'. Interestingly, in both Egyptian and Greek myths, the first gods are themselves borne out of the 'void' or 'chasm of darkness'. This implies a sort of neutral absence of matter, or a lack of anything, and hence an exception to the requirements of the definition of universe ['absolute absence' is not contained within 'everything']. This, of course, presents the additional problem of creating 'something' from 'nothing'. However, as shall be seen, any of these suggestions requires just that.

2. The same question applies: what is the origin of the big bang? In this case, however, there are no theological (and untestable) answers. Perhaps one might say that the big bang was created by the total compression of a previous universe (a common theory), in which case this suggestion becomes a subcategory of suggestion #4 (but a cycle of matter rather than time). Clearly, though the big bang may well be an answer to the question "What created this, our present universe?", it is not an answer to "What is the origin of the universe."

3. This answer is pretty similar (as already suggested) to #1. In other words, it requires an illogical leap of faith. 'Illogical' only because, at present, there is no logic known to man's philosophies to support it. The simple point is that man cannot conceive of infinite time, it is not within our current capacity. This, although a philosophic possibility, is no more acceptable than belief in creation by deity.

4. This suggestion suggest looping time. Implicit in such a suggestion is the concept of 'closure'. In other words, this loop creates a concept of a 'closed loop' of time. The problem with 'closure' is that it is completely incompatible with any concept of the infinite. And the problem with that is that anything which is not infinite must, by definition, have 'room' for something more along its axis of existence. For example, if one were to think of time as being represented in one dimension (a piece of string), non-circular time is an infinite length of string whereas if one loops the piece of string along a curved single dimension (such as the circumference of a sphere) then that leaves room for other (spheres) on either side. Of course, it could be suggested that this 'extra room' is merely a repetition of the journey around the same circumference. Essentially, it seems to me that looped time, as a concept, cannot account for "everything that exists anywhere and anywhen".

5. This is clearly not an answer, but a mere (and vain) attempt to explain the infinite. It is perfectly obvious that were one to pursue this line one could progress through an infinite series of 'universes' and be absolutely none the wiser.

6. This is really a question for Descartes, and another time. "I think, therefore I am."

So where does this leave us? I would suggest it leaves us thoroughly without an answer. I would like to think that the answers lies somewhere in between it all. It seems to me that there may be a fabric of 'existence' the like of which we cannot presently conceive; a 'divine state' if you like. This fabric would be capable of being at the same time 'neutral' [nothingness] and yet still possess an inherent potential. This would be the 'void' out of which the gods sprung.

Hundreds of years ago people believed that rotten meat turned into flies...

....Will we one day craft a microscope powerful enough to see the egg out of which we hatched?

Zen

Today my foolish imagination has posed me a brand new question:

"Is the attainment of 'Zen' an attainment of Neutrality?"

This question is a bit of a problem for me because I actually don't know very much about Zen, save for that which I vaguely recall from "Siddhartha" by Hermann Hesse, which, so far as I recall, was all about becoming 'one' with a river. (I should probably re-read it).

After a brief bit of internet research to correct my ignorance I have discovered that the question I posed myself is extremely badly stated, since 'Zen' is, itself, a religion, rather than a state. It is, for anyone interested, a form of buddhism (as may be obvious) and it constitutes a way of life made up mostly of two forms of meditation, sitting and walking.

What I am really after, it seems, is "Bodhi". This is the name given to the state of 'enlightenment'. Following Buddhist ideals, one must grasp the 'perfections' (of which there are usually said to be ten, including 'serenity', 'generosity', 'virtue', 'honesty' etc), and the 'four noble truths' (which relate rather fascinatingly to suffering and the ways in which it can be battled). If one is succesful then one sheds all ego-centred consciousness and frees oneself from the cycle of life-suffering-death-rebirth.

Well, I'm glad I asked myself the question, that was a useful little exercise in education. Now, to analyse:

It seems to me key that if a man attains 'Bodhi' then he sheds ego-centredness. This is a fascinating concept for the philosophies of neutrality! The implication is that in this state a man is free of subjective consideration. This (theoretical?) state is quite remarkable. The ability to reason without subjectivitiy seems an impossible concept to me, but if it is true that 'Bodhi' represents such a thing then herein lies an answer to many of the questions I have so far considered.

In some ways it makes some sense. You spend years and years of your life devoted to extinguishing all acts of selfishness and promoting all states of detachment from suffering. (The stoics theorised at similar targets, but none I know of pursued them with this verve and determination). At the end of it, and only if you truly have devoted yourself to the act, some lucky few might finally detach themselves from subjective concern.

I consider this a worthy concept and not at all ludicrous. There is definite philosophick worth in it. However, it seems to me that the next leap of a consequent escape from the circle of life is ludicrous and represents the point at which this philosophick ideal becomes religion.

Truly, it seems to me, the attainment of 'Bodhi' may represent 'neutrality in life'.

It's all rather exciting really. Although, of course, excitement is far too emotive, and represents my ego's thrill at the possibility of personal enlightment. Therein lies a grave concern: in order to attain enlightenment, one must devote one's life to careful practice and meditation, but in order to complete the process, one must detach oneself from all personal drive! This paradox must be, I imagine, the stumbling block of many. I should suppose that it is the final test: having worked so hard all your life to achieve something, you must then inwardly accept that your own personal achievement of it is irrelevant (i.e. it wouldn't matter to you if you never did achieve it).

Interesting stuff.