JORDAN POLLACK
Computer Science and Complex Systems Professor at Brandeis University
A persistent belief is that human symbolic intelligence is the highest form of intelligence around. This leads directly to both creationism and good old-fashioned AI which seeks to model cognition using Lisp programs.
Evolution can design machines of such great complexity that the space shuttle with half a million parts looks like a tinker toy construction. In order to explain the design intelligence of evolution, most Republicans are convinced that a superintelligent creator was involved. Developmental intelligence which manufactures machines with 10 billion moving parts without any factory supervisors is another area where nature outstrips the best human performance. Immunological Intelligence, telling self from non-self, is another AI-complete problem. And human intelligence itself is so vastly complex that we've made up stories of conscious symbol processing, like logic and grammar, to try to explain what goes on in our heads.
The mind, like the weather, envelopes the brain like a planet and requires dynamical and integrated explanations rather than just-so stories.
from a fascinating thread over at http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/thaler10/thaler10_index.html by way of http://www.marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2010/11/richard-thalers-question.html
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