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A comment on Why extraterrestrial life may not seem alien. Parent comment

Re:Why extraterrestrial life may not seem alien by ClumsyPilot on Monday August 02, 2021 @11:15PM (#28045347)
"And we don’t need to delve into phenomenology of being a mushroom, adaptivity gives us an observable proxy to the “intelligence” of an organism; how general and efficient of a problem solver they are, the ultimate problem being surviving genes onward."

By that logic the most intelligent animals is a cockroach

Viruses and prions reproduce, not only are they not intelligent, they are not even alive.

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Re:Why extraterrestrial life may not seem alien by acituan on Monday August 02, 2021 @11:30PM (#28045421)
> By that logic the most intelligent animals is a cockroach

Firstly, please notice the quotes around intelligence; clearly we’re playing with a fast and loose definition.

Secondly, if humans had driven themselves into extinction with nuclear warfare, that would as well have been true.

Intelligence is not mere symbolic processing, nor symbolic processing is guaranteed to be adaptive, as evidenced with its failure modes in our perennial irrationalities.

> Viruses and prions reproduce, not only are they not intelligent, they are not even alive.

I know one particular virus twisting humanity’s arm these days, and in a way that is not fully intelligible to us yet. I wouldn’t readily diminish the internal logic that’s going on there.

[ Parent | on HN ]