1st December 2005, 11:02 AM
Your definition of intelligence is not the popularly shared one. Intelligence in the form of data storage is what computers do. Intelligence as defined by everyone with some level of education I've encountered is the ability to actually use that information, combining and restructuring it, to form decisions. Computers may one day be capable of this, but not yet.
A single celled organism is not capable of self awareness. It has no idea why it is doing anything, because it has no ideas. There is no brain structure at all. A single celled organism is a series of reactions, exactly as intellectually complicated as the precipitation system of the planet. To state a bacteria is self aware is to state that a brick is self aware, as both are merely following laws of physics with no actual decision making along the way.
And yes, inquisitiveness is important. That is a part of intelligence.
A single celled organism is not capable of self awareness. It has no idea why it is doing anything, because it has no ideas. There is no brain structure at all. A single celled organism is a series of reactions, exactly as intellectually complicated as the precipitation system of the planet. To state a bacteria is self aware is to state that a brick is self aware, as both are merely following laws of physics with no actual decision making along the way.
And yes, inquisitiveness is important. That is a part of intelligence.
"On two occasions, I have been asked [by members of Parliament], 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?' I am not able to rightly apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question." ~ Charles Babbage (1791-1871)