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Comment: Re:A pretty low requirement (Score 1) 432

by at_slashdot (#47192577) Attached to: Turing Test Passed

Nobody thinks that pocket calculators are intelligent because they can do square roots much faster than average people can do. The program that beats a human at chess cannot fly a plane or even beat somebody at tic-tac-toe, you need a different specialized program for that. Nobody thinks that calculating very quickly a number of huge but finite alternatives is intelligence (takes intelligence to program it and make it "smarter" in how it chooses the alternatives and eliminates bad cases in a faster way, but not "smart" in the sense of understanding anything else than the strictly defined problem). Computing something very fast is different than intelligence. A big collection of facts (data) and speed of processing are important to intelligent people and they make them more "intelligent", but those elements are not what intelligence is. None of your examples show actual intelligence, they are either fast processing, or fast data access or combinations of that, none of them show the needed flexibility and understanding of abstract concepts that are the characteristics of the intelligence. Wilson can come up with E=mc^2 from a pun about Einstein by looking up the info in a database and matching word frequency, but that doesn't mean it understands anything about the equation and its implications. I want to see more learning and understanding of abstract concepts to be able to say that a system is intelligent. A dog can at least learn new tricks... Deep Blue can plays great chess, but it cannot learn anything else or even apply the simple concepts of chess, like "defense", "attack", "overwhelming force", "timing" to anything else. It basically plays chess without understanding it which is very much possible because it's a limited type of problem that can be brute-forced. Even though the abstract concepts in chess are limited and can probably be implemented in machine code, they are "understood" by the machine only in the context of chess, they will not translate to anything else, as far as I know learning to play a great game of chess would not help Deep Blue to play even a weak game of Go which is conceptual very close to chess. I need to start to see concepts being applied in different fields, learning, flexibility to assume that computers show some intelligence.


by at_slashdot (#46109453) Attached to: 20% of Neanderthal Genome Survives In Humans

Math is universal 1 + 1 = 2 in any culture no matter how the numbers look, but indeed math ability is influenced by schooling. However good IQ tests can use numbers in a smarter way, it's not actually a math test, like: what number is out of the place: 1, 2, 4, 7 (that's 2 because it's the only one that has round edges -- so you don't need much math knowledge to get this, you just need to be familiar with the concept of numbers and have flexibility in thinking to switch from one context to another -- which is what IQ test should measure anyway). And all the people have languages with words that fit in a way with other words, and yes, while we might fit birds and mammals in different categories, some other cultures might categorize animals in big and small, but that is taken into account. I don't know what's your impression about Africans, but many live in cities (40% last time I checked, not much lower than some European or Asian countries) and go to school, the bushmen who might have problems understanding the simple math concepts required by a test are actually very few.

But granted, some of the concepts are school influenced, that's why I asked about tests that are neutral. Any way, I'm not that interested in the subject, I don't know how I got into a "debate" about it, I just posed a question and the response I got was giving me a clear example of a knowledge test, not intelligence, which was not what I asked for.


by at_slashdot (#46107063) Attached to: 20% of Neanderthal Genome Survives In Humans

See, that's not really a test of intelligence, it's a test of knowledge, it's like asking somebody from NY which metro and buses to take to reach Time Square, or even a random point in NY. How you know it doesn't measure intelligence and measures knowledge, if you give the info about hyenas to somebody they will know how the correct answer regardless of their mental capacity (to some extent). So if you tell a guy from NY that

1. hyenas chase animals that run away
2. hyenas are afraid of taller animals
3. hyenas are aggressive and respond to challenges and is not a good idea to throw food at them.

The guy who knows those facts will do just as well as a bushman. It would also be so indiscriminate that the test would not measure anything.


by at_slashdot (#46106493) Attached to: 20% of Neanderthal Genome Survives In Humans

Has anybody designed a test that measures intelligence (not necessarily standard IQ tests) in which Africans can beat or at least equal Europeans or Asians in a systematic manner? Navigation, pattern recognition, memory, that you mentioned but not something that measures memorized knowledge, something that uses abstract ideas.

Comment: Re:Linux needs more desktop forks (Score 1) 185

by at_slashdot (#43857197) Attached to: Linux Mint 15 'Olivia' Is Out

I'm sorry, I'm not a developer, but I don't think programs target desktop environment, there's almost no reason to target Unity, KDE or Gnome. What kind of application do you have in mind? I think links on desktops work pretty much the same, what exactly do you need to know about the desktop environment when you build your application?

Comment: Re:English system is fine (Score 1) 1145

by at_slashdot (#43825209) Attached to: White House: Use Metric If You Want, We Don't Care

In case if Fahrenheit it's true.

10s and 20s - damn cold
30s - freezing
40s - cold
50s - chilly
60s - cool
70s - room temp, t-shirt time
80s - warm
90s - hot
100s - very hot

Take Celsius is 26C warm or hot about about 31C? How about 17C is it too cold or only chilly?

And I'm saying as somebody who lived most of my life in a country with a metric system. Somehow I got used to Fahrenheit and I find it easier to follow for day to day things. I prefer metric for all the other stuff though.
