h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

This text is neither the first nor the last text on the nature of intelligence. Intelligence had been theorised and thought of in many ways and defined, re defined, distracted, destroyed, recreated, many millions of times. The manifestation of intellect is what this book is about. Not intelligence itself. The “real and concrete” view of intelligence may never be reached. It’s not a goal of mine nor should it be. Some others will set this as there goals and on their quest I bid them good luck. It’s not my intention to write this particular aspect down. It is the purpose of this book instead to talk about the manifestation of intelligence. In this way, epistemology, the study of knowledge is distinctively different from the study of intelligence. This purposeful duality is not a human construct, it is quite easy to tell that many things, even inanimate things can have intelligence but no knowledge, or store information but not know how to disseminate it. Information is a constant force of the universe; knowledge is something, which has come after the construction of the universe, it is something that has been created by humanity. In this effect it is possible to say that information is in itself an entity, which was here before humanity and will be here for many eons after it.

The title of this text is written purposefully so. One cannot say that inelegance really has an end or a beginning. It could be said that its nature is in fact real in many ways. And it is the universe of man that has conceived it in many different ways. In times past the nature and manifestation of intelligence was not that much different today. Look through any book of mythology or go to your local library and look at the great books serries and read something by Aristotle, or Kant, Homer, Shakespeare, Tactics, Job, Hemmingway, Plato, just to name a few, anyone of the great philosopher or thinkers. Go to Stephen Hawking or Ben Bova. The theme is always the same. There is a central ideal that intelligence has form and structure. This is actually in a way wrong. The nature of intelligence is actually one of ordered chaos. It is in mans universe that intelligence has form and structure. There always has also been a problem defining intelligence, intellect, wisdom, idea and ideal. They all are confused in definition and it is a natural sociable attribute that we confuse these matters. They are not clearly defined in language or indeed logic. They are purposefully left undefined. Information is a constant, but like the constant universe, it is constantly chaotic and it is beyond any human capacity to fully understand, however it is an entity, which we have pretended to conquer using his intelligence and then create his knowledge. It is quite clear to anyone that information is tied to intelligence, and that knowledge is tied to intelligence.

The history of mans universe is incredibly short, however she has managed to, in her time describe most of what he can see. She has anthropomorphised herself to the point at which she can take a look at the history of everything and see that all of it is what it is, a record. A single blob on, a single blob. This is the nature of humanity. We continuously attempt to anthropomorphise ourselves for purposes sometimes defined by the paths to wisdom. Many attempt the path to wisdom is one of self-perpetuality, of self-improvement, of continuously adding to oneself in many means. This is not, in my mind a true means of achieving wisdom. However it is one that I will not critique as a means of achieving intelligence. What use is intelligence however if it is not used? One can read as many books, go to as many meetings, see as many sunrises, as one likes, and these are all purposeful means of seeing things, evidently as they throughout humanity have led to the universe of man becoming bigger and the gaining of perspective. In other words I can only record what these things are to me, convey that to others, others then take a view, which is the same, similar or completely different from mine. They take my information, which is the concrete, use their intelligence to form knowledge from this information. It is this process that we are trying to understand.

“It can be derivatively be said that the grammatical man derives his name from grammar, so can it be said that the courageous man derives his name from courage. “ – Aristotle, Logic

Language and its nature in all things argued by many to be a major problem in this day and age. As a person who has now come very close to completing a communications degree I can say that one cannot possibly understand language without first understanding intelligence, equally so I cannot possibly say that one can understand intelligence without first understanding language.

It is quite obvious to me that we have used the wrong causation in our infinite stupidity. [1] We constantly use the causation “Let us understand language first and then we shall understand intelligence” we then sometimes instead use the causation “Let us understand information first and then we shall understand language”. It is of course obvious that information in its purest form is binary. Dualistic. There are, 0 and 1. These 0 and 1’s are repeated until such time as they make a binary number system. It is not possible to make a number system out of only 0, this is evident because if I use 0, and the 00, this being 2 0’s we have two linguistic problems, there is no 0 and there is also no way of knowing which 0 is which. If I send a 0 down a line of comminations how does the receiver know that it’s the first 0 or the second 0 or any subsequent 0? Secondly we do not even know what 0 is, or what it is meant to represent. In basic semiotic communications theory we have to have not only a simple symbol, it must be signified [2]. It has to mean something. Or does it? It is simple human nature to assume that things have to mean something that they have some sort of meaning. There is the opposing view that we should leave well enough alone, that not everything has to mean something, that we will always have some form of mystery. I agree with the second statement. We simply have a view of the universe, there are an infinite number of views as well as a theoretically possible null view. It is this theory that many have taken as a final clinching proof of the existence of some divine force. The fact that we can see that there can be infinite number of view of the universe means that there is infinite number of ways that one can see a 0 and a infinite number of ways that one can interpret a 1 and thus there must be a infinite number of views of 10 and so on. This information is then open to interpretation and this process involves language. The most basic of all languages is described in mathematics, the science of patterns. Any student of mathematics will know that we have one really tricky set of number that, thanks to the universe of numbers provided to us is only possible to break using subtraction and not division. This is the natural set of numbers know and primes. Primes start at 0 move on to 1, 2, 3, 5, 7, 13, 21 and so on until infinity, infinity being a prime number by definition (thus any argument that diving it by 2 makes it half its value is invalid ).
It is of course bleeding obvious that the human mind depends on more than just a 0 and a 1 for language. It is also obvious that a dog can does not contain more water than a water bowl, unless it’s a large dog can. This seems an obvious statement and your probably wondering exactly were in fantasyland my mind is at this moment. The point I am trying to make here is that there is an empty set. That is that there is a null language, a language that contains all the information in the universe in one single statement and letter, it is of course impossible for it to be expressed as it is so long and short, and tall and small and so on that no one person can describe it in its fullest. However this does not mean that I for a second believe that the beginning was the word, as this constitutes that there was a beginning in the first place.
Putting deep seeded philosophy and religion aside for the minute I must draw a point from this mash of simple phrases.
That is, exactly my point.
Chaos is the natural state for all information, it has no positive or negative, it has no light or dark side, it’s simply just there. It is a human construct that we have derived into something, which as a natural resource that we have used continuously from now until the day we die and even, beyond. The scars we have left of this planet of ours are deep and are likely to be found by someone else (if there is anyone else this is). Like all natural recourses there are those who use it wisely and those who use it stupidly, those who use it to aid themselves and no one else, those who spread it round for everyone else to use and of course those who don’t know how to use it but end up using it anyway. Although seemingly a simple thing, information is so versatile and malleable humanity has used it and melded it into something that has got to a stage whereby no one human can understand all of it.

When mankind learn to talk he learnt to communicate. Of course such skills are not inherit of mankind. Many animals display the same features of communication behaviour and community. If you don’t believe me watch some ants for good while. These trusty formians have a law-abiding group of citizens, each with her purpose and role, each assigned their own goal and ambitions. Of course when the hive is to big or disaster strikes the queens own hive is destroyed and the hive has to regroup and re-do things all over again. How is this different form a human community? Our cities are destroyed in a war or natural disaster and then we rebuild from scratch. The cycle continues. We do this with communication, our communication devices may be more advanced than the simple ant, but they gain the same result none the less. Of course there are ants or ants that have evolved into new creatures, frogs, birds, dogs, cats, ox and so on. Our communications and habits have been infused with the souls of creatures and can have many similarities to an entire paragon of animals. Our music mimics there songs and there beats, our songs talk about there actions and habits, our poetry tell tale of there exploits and wanderings, our stories and mythologies use them as characters to allow us to see that the animal world of communication and information is just as innovative and pointed as ours.

There are three basic forms of communication. The first is person to person. This is the slowest, and generally most unreliable form of communication. A message goes form one person to the next and can, be influenced and reduced, introduced to noise and so on. If you try to send a message in a chain like this, you get an error quite often and if you were to send a message from me to Jim to Fred to max to Justine and so on and so forth, by the time it gets to Jack you have a message that’s very different to the one that you began with. You can of course introduce measures of reducing the “noise” levels and thus allowing the message to get across better however, and over time it has been our skills of commination that have let us do this. No other species has needed to invent lying in such as way as we do. Many still use lying as a skill. The mimicry of many birds is obvious in this fact. However humans don’t just lie, they tell untruths. This is something that is very inherent of humanity, however I would not be in the least bit surprised to find a creature that also has this future. We tell others and ourselves bits of our own perceived realities so that we can help ourselves keep sane. This is a simple protection measure. We cannot possibly perceive the entirety of it all. Because of it, we have set ourselves a goal, and that is to achieve wisdom. Wisdom, being quite nicely defined; often as the search for an inner and or outer truth to the universe.

It is true that the grammatical man derives his name form grammar. In fact this is the very nature of this chapter, hence the quote from Aristotle at the beginning of this book. Humanity is a derivative species and as I said previously information is the natural resource form which all communication and language has been derived. In fact I said that knowledge is something which has been derived from this, it is intelligence that has allowed us to create knowledge and information that has allowed us to create intelligence and so on.
Figure 1. The 5 facets.
Information
Intelligence
Knowledge
Communication
Humanity?
As humans we think like the following:

In this way we think have invented
Archives, great stores for information for future use
Thesaurus, great definers of words for given subjects
Libraries, great sources of information
Communication media, great casters of information
Propaganda, great means of lying in commination
Advertising, great ways for selling commination

Of course it is unfortunate that I have to point out that we are not great inventors. In fact:
Bees, great stores of honey for future use
Ants, many species are great sorters of different items
Nature, great source of information
Pretty much any calling animal, great casters of information
Many bird species “mock” others thus use propaganda
Many species use there calls to sell… well themselves really.

We have invented nothing.
In fact the nature of intellect is nature of all creatures.

Information
Intelligence
Knowledge
Communication
All creatures

It is of course obvious that our use of information, intelligence, knowledge and communications is one, which allows us to have the illusion that we are greater than the creatures that we think are lower than us. It’s of course my argument in this chapter that we are simply better manipulators and more evolved than those creatures that we share the planet with. Our manipulations are greatly attuned and can be used for great-shared ability or great selfish ability. One can draw all information to one thing or spread it out to so many things, and one can make more and more information. It is one of the only resources for which we have a seemingly infinite supply. However that is the topic for which I will speak of next.

Information can of course be complete and utter rubbish. It has a bad side. Like the ants described before we can disturb the trail very easily. One can spay and entire area with a chemical that makes everything smell like ant and thus be so much information for the ant that no possible trail can be followed and the ant is lost in a sea of everything. This is what point humanity has reached with the Internet. It is so large and useful that unfortunately it is also so blindingly full of information that it will likely be it’s own undoing. The Internet is the largest collection of false information that the human race has ever managed to assemble. Only in the recent times of sites like wikipedia have really useful things come out of the 15 year old communication medium. It is in the Internet that information becomes dead again. Chaotic and confused, non useful and in a state of some confusion. The human race really does not know how to deal with her new toy, and she is likely to miss use it again and again until one day the toy either breaks or we get a new one. It is of course like all other human inventions something that has caused a great deal of stress. The reason is it likely to be our own downfall is our current reliance on it. The Internet means an end to our needs of writing skills, and many now are only taught how to write only to forget years latter when they learn about computers. I certainly am one of those people. The Internet gives us a great deal of freedom of expression and thought, but it also gives us a great deal of stress, misinformation, stupidity and tension. The four horsemen if you will in digital form. Slowly but surely we will learn to use our new toy, but I think myself that it marks the extent of our intelligence. I doubt that humanity will be able to step beyond the Internet, that there is a state that we can go beyond. It is the very place for which although changing and evolving in its own right is the last place for which our knowledge, communication, information and intelligence will reside.
Bibliography:

1. Punch. F. K. (2005). Introduction to Social Research. 2nd ed. (pp 58-52). Sage Publications. London.
2. Slade. C., Lewis. G. (2000). Critical Communication. 2nd ed. (pp 64-65). Prentice Hall. Canberra.

How exactly can humans anthromorphisize themselves? Are you saying that we're each trying to view ourselves as more human than we are? It seems a strange way of looking at things,

I would dispute that their are infinite views of everything. Practically I'm sure there might as well be, but that won't do if you're getting into mathematics.

I would also dispute that humans use 1s and 0s at all in the basic levels of our thinking. I think give the scale and nature of the methods of our thinking, its is likely to be analogue/continuity based, with 1s and 0s essentially being an abstract construct built out of this.

When you talk about chaos, are you talking about Chaos as in "small variations in the starting variables of a simple, rules based system can have catastrophic consequences," or chaos as in "lack of order,"?

Your description of humans scarring the planet, and those of animals inventing stuff, appear touched by the same arbitrary value systems you seem to be making an effort to discard. Also I feel your reductions starting with "the five facets," are somewhat tenuous.

Humans are certainly not "more evolved," than any other organism unless that organism is extinct, and even then there is a (weak IMO) arguement that extinction can be considered an evolutionary survival strategy.

I feel that your arguement that two or more things rather than one causing the other can affect each-other with something approaching simaltaneousness (is it a word?) could be well described as correlation or a feedback loop.

The article was interesting enough for me to read it all even though I've only just gotten up.

No I am saying that we try and view ourselves as "higher beings" than we are, I am saying we distinguish what is human as a completely diffrent enitiy to what is animal, it is a part of my central belief that this is what cuases us a major problem in terms of our treatment of the enviroment, its not "a part of us" so therefore it can be safely ignored. To me a animal has as much ability to be able to be as "wise" as any human.

I am not saying humans do, I am saying that this is the most basic form of communication that is possible and thus all communication must be based off of that.

These particular five facets are to do with the way that "information is", its a part of the "information" theory of the universe, if I am to say that everything has some sort of intrinsic information that is then processed by others then this state must be the begining of all information. Then there must be higher porcesses beyond this that are what all cretures use to make sense of this information. Make sense?

People see that we are and many would argue that humanity is ment to be "seperated from the world of animals" even today we are allowed "comparrision" but quite often I encouter people who say that this is all it should be, comparrision, we should never see ourselevs as these creters. I agure that there is no way we can possibly understand the entireity that is the universe to not see ourselves as creaters as we are.

Choas here is defined as a lack of order, it can have rules, it can have no rules.

This is the central point, information is dumb, we tell it what to do and use it in whatever ways we want, intelgecne is the means of which we use to do this. Now that we have the peak of our intelectual communications (the internet) there is no means for which unless we elvolve telephaphy or anything else such as that that we can get more intelegence from our own information processes. Thus it could be argued that intelegence in our universe has returned to a state of dumb, there are various means in which we process informatuon, I argue that there are two ways at least for this to happen, a positive influnce and a negative influence. I would say that we can ignore one or both, but they are still there and of course we can many more influces which may be both negative and postitive.

However I would still argue against the post modern term of "observer over all" I argue, or would argue that the observer has some control and that the influcneces (be they gods, spirits, outsiders, whatever) have some control over the view that is perscived.

I hope that clears it up?