Over the last week or so, @themarkymark has been adding some artificial intelligence themed posts and for #showcase-sunday this week I will add a tangent post from about two years ago that explores and raises some questions about what happens if we were intellectually awoken, would we change our social positioning also? While intelligence doesn't indicate goodness, I wonder if there is a logical point that intelligence would find that the best way to maximize is through the healthy development of understanding and community.

As I say in the piece, our intuitions about this are likely invalid, because we cannot know what someone with a 400 IQ would think and do, in the same way we do not know what a super intelligent AI would develop. We might have the imagination for prediction and feel that we are accurately reading the situation, but we do not have the experience to truly know for sure and while we think we know how others think, we have never had thinkers that far from the 0-point on the distribution.

Hopefully this is a bit of a fun read for a Sunday :)

---

The Spock Effect

---

Are the most intelligent the ones who have the most, know the most, laugh the most? I do not know, but it is something to contemplate on.

I like to dabble in conversations about better worlds and utopias and the more likely dystopias we will face before they come about. In my opinion, artificial intelligence will play a large role in either the destruction of our species as we know it to be or the resolution of it, but it is something outside of us, an external event.

I was having a coffee with one of my new sign ups the other day and helping him understand a little of the basics behind Steem. As he and I often do, we soon turned the conversation to the future and the possibilities and threats we see coming.

We like to lay blame as a species, we like to find the causes of our miseries and find avenues of escape, anything to stop us looking at our role in the situation. But, even when we find a scapegoat for our emotions, if we look closely, what do we find?

This morning, my daughter, a book-loving person, tore a page out of one of her 'Spot, the Dog' books and was subsequently told off. But, what is the issue here, is it that she did it on purpose to destroy, accidentally or, she just did not understand what the future experience with one of her favourite books now torn looks like?

When we look at the world, the errors, the failures, the damage and violence we do to each other and ourselves, is it because we are terrible, evil? Or, is it because we do not understand ourselves well enough or the part we play in the future ramifications of our actions? For me, education is always key but, up until this point in time, we are far too stupid to realize and create solutions.

When speaking with my friend, I described a scenario where a small group of people were given a pill and granted super intelligence and what may come about. He thinks that with such power, they will battle it out and quickly dominate the rest of the species, essentially enslaving us.

I disagree. This is the thinking of us now, the uneducated, the inexperienced in such matters, the one's who are potentially yet to understand what, 'for our own good' truly means. When I look at the most intelligent among us from history and the present, there seems to be a trend that runs through nearly all, even though they are incapable of achieving it, unable to think far enough. Peace, Unity, Community.

They may have different ideas about how this looks, but they are almost unanimous that this is the goal. Einstein had an IQ of 160, what if we double it, triple it, what would he have discovered? Like @tonyr's piece from a few hours ago (now a few years), would he have thought of the 'right words' to bring us all together?

Unlikely, for we all probably need different words to take us to the understanding he may have reached. What this means is that we cannot wait to be saved, we must save ourselves. Waiting for an external event to save us is foolish, but searching for that event need not be. Perhaps, this is what Einstein and others like him were doing and even though he failed, it moved humanity further along the path. Whether they realized it or not, it does not matter as virtue is virtuous even without acknowledgement.

But, what of the group that have access to the pill of Super intelligence? What will they discover, what conclusions will they reach? Will they mercilessly enslave the unintelligent or, will they now have the capacity to understand the solution is simple, it is understanding itself?

With an intellectual awakening like none ever experienced by the species before, will they realize that there is only one way, to awaken all. Peace, Unity and Community. With their supercharged minds holding unforeseen and unpredictable visions and abilities, how long until they give the pill to others, how long until they can flip the switch and illuminate humanity? It may take only one among them to make the decision and spread the pills to all.

Most cannot imagine this world as most if granted such power will use it for personal gain and therefore assume others would too. And, they are most likely right, but they are thinking from an unenlightened intellectual position, their thoughts aren't from the mind of the supercharged. This makes it impossible to understand what is in the darkness that may become so blindingly obvious when the light gets switched on.

We tend to think the worst of people, for we ourselves are those people. We may operate at different levels, it may present in various ways, but we see what we think we know and that is what we fear in ourselves. It takes one to know one as they say but, a supercharged mental capacity at this level is so far, unknowable to us.

Our thinking limits us, our thoughts place ceilings on how far we can go, how much we can do as individuals and a species, but as our understanding develops, the roof gets shifted upward. At what point is it high enough that we recognize ourselves in the mirror and find the solution to our problems, solutions to what up until now have been unsolvable because we just do not have the ability to think ourselves out?

It is inching upward though, day, year, decade and century at a time. With the advancements in AI and gene splicing technology, how long until that switch is found and intellectual enlightenment is not only within reach, but superimposed or genetically implanted? How far can we go if we are unlocked and free at such levels with the understanding; we are all in this together.

I do not know, I am too limited of mind and knowledge to see what that may look like. You may see different to me but, in this scenario, you are likely wrong also, no matter how you feel about it. It is just too different from how we think, what we can imagine and who we are now.

However, we are on the path and tomorrow, we will be slightly different, tomorrow we may have taken another small step and at some point, one of us may uncover the switch and flip it. From that point on, logic and reasoning could lead decisions whilst the heart holds us united. Perhaps only then as a species we can, Live long and prosper.

All of us.

Taraz
[ a Steem original ]