Wednesday 9 December 2009

processing speed doesn't make it more intelligent.

In some cases, we can see how "quickness of thought" is correlated with different modes of understanding, and we have no reason to believe that the faster consciousnesses necessarily yield knowledge of greater import. Their scrupulousness may in fact cause them to be endlessly fascinated with microscopic details, like a cat chasing a moving point on a wall cast by a beam of light. If there is a pattern to the flash, or even a pattern in its pattern, it will go entirely unnoticed.
What reveals at once conceals, but intelligence testing does not appreciate how slower minds coincide with slower patterns and can appreciate them in ways not accessible to those much quicker. It is this sort of mentality that leads people to state that cows are "stupid", when in fact their intelligence is elegantly rhythmically in synch with the type of situations they are likely to have to deal with in their lives. Herbivores, in general, do not need to plan quickly how to eat because their food is not a moving target.
A comprehensive intelligence must strive to modify the rate of thought using different types of activities in order that the universe may be allowed to reveal itself in as many orderings as it can.