How Creationism Taught Me Real Science 96 Intelligence

In this episode we examine the absurd notion that intelligence appears through natural means.

REFERENCES:

Creationist Arguments:

Creationist Argument - origin of intelligence and mental disease

The Bell Curve

"Note on the application of machinery to the computation of astronomical and mathematical tables"

“Sketch of the Analytal Engiicne”

Herman Hollerith

“The Laws of Thought”

"On Computable Numbers, with an Application to the Entscheidungsproblem"

“Systems of Logic Based on Ordinals”

"Computing Machinery and Intelligence"

Eliza

Parry

CyberLover

Pragmatics in Human-Computer Conversations
A prokaryotic voltage-gated sodium channel

Worm Brain Mapped

Worm Brain Uploaded Into A Robot

[phileas]

If your kid turns out to be smarter than you - you've just created an intelligence greater than yourself. Now you deserve a cookie.

[poppasmurf]

dude, welcome back...we've really missed you!

[charlidog]

Well done as always. We're fortunate people like you are willing to share your knowledge and hard work. Thank you. And thanks to your patrons.

[ukaszGelChulo]

👏bravo sir! I wish someone explained me these logical gates like that in high school - great job 👏

[gil]

One thing I find particularly annoying about creationists and which I see all the time in their comments is how they seem to think that evolution involves lower forms of life "deciding" to evolve. Like, an amoeba thinks to itself, "I'm tired of being single-celled, I'm going to evolve". Of course this is absurd, and they make fun of evolution because they think this is what it is. But you can rarely get through to them to explain the actual facts because they have their fingers stuck so tightly in their ears.

[justintempus]

Today sucks. We got 10" of snow in Fairbanks AK and I still had to come into work on Frozen Fury Road. This notification makes it suck significantly less.

[amazingbollweevil]

This one is my favorite that you've done

[EdwardHowton]

I've forgotten a bunch of details about exactly which wasp it is, but it's an example I like to bring up when (not if) the predictable denial response from theists to the subject of video is mindlessly spewed: "but people still build the computers, quote a rat demon strand them!"
This wasp lives in a burrow in the ground, and its brain is incredibly simple, to the point where scientists can mess with them and cause a reset. The simple version of it, since I can never find the exact species it is, is that the wasp's brain follows instructions about as simple as you'd see in QBASIC:
exit nest
observe nest area for reference points
leave to find food
return to memorized location with food
deposit food in pre-determined food-delivery area
enter nest to clear out intruders or repair collapse
exit nest
grab food
enter nest
eat food

By putting little plastic trees, like the Lego ones, scientists can alter the landscape around a wasp's nest and make it get lost simply by moving the trees a little bit. The wasp won't notice, but it might "find" an "abandoned" nest and claim it; they'll never recognize it was theirs. Nor will they notice the sudden appearance of weird shiny green "plants" around their nest.
More significantly, though, is the food delivery area. When the wasp enters the nest, you can move their food by an inch, and it short-circuits the programming. The wasp simply doesn't realize the food is still there, just slightly moved; it memorizes the location of its nest and takes flight to find food. Which, amazingly, there's some right near the nest! So the wasp grabs it, moves it back to the delivery area, and re-enters its nest, which it left seconds ago, to clear it of intruders or collapses, before coming back out to get the food.

Scientists can just keep moving the food and cause a reset. Which suggests that the 'memorize location' step includes 'check food delivery area'.

This doesn't suggest that wasps are really, really dumb. It suggests that 'intelligence' is a meaningless word. Humans might be more sophisticated than those wasps, but... have you ever picked up an empty glass, walked over to the kitchen, and then forgotten why you were there, with glass in hand? One part of your brain reacted, but the other parts didn't get a memo about it. Meaning, like neurons and logic gates, what we think is 'intelligence' is just a mechanical reaction to stimuli.

And smart people have better responses, while others' responses show they're dumb as a bricked Xbox.

[Richardj]

Oh my another one. Thank you sir. I hope that with all your work you get some creationist to think a bit harder about it. It seems that changing a creationist or a flattie is a rare occurrence but thank you for trying. Great concise videos.

[jcs]

Very timely video. Very important topic.

[ShotgunLlama]

My expectations were a little misled by the title, since ultimately this had very little to do with creationism or its claims, but I can't complain about a video covering a quick history of computing and AI

[larryclark]

Loved the section on Logic gates!

Machines have mechanical & electrical components, control functions (logic), as well as a program. A lot of pieces must come together simultaneously or the machine does not work. Call the technician.

Computers need hardware as well as software. One is useless without the other.

Thanks Tony for starting up again. Making me think about things I find easy to overlook.

Starting watching a Lecture series by Dr. Stephen Meyer. I recommend it if you have the time. "Stephen Meyer Investigates Scientific Evidence for Intelligent Design (Lecture 1)“. Start at 5:12.

[VierthalerStudios]

My ex girlfriend complained once that I think too logically. How is that a bad thing? It’s a good thing to think logically. It’s better to think logically than to think like an idiot. That’s anti-intellectualism and that’s contributing to the problem of under-education in America.

[robharwood]

Tony! This was frickin' awesome! You put in so much time and effort researching this, and it really shows! This video and your last one on information have done something I've been hoping to see for a long time: Boil down our current best understanding of physical information theory (esp. as it relates to the mind) enough that a general lay-person can get a decent grasp on it. Huge mega kudos to you, my friend! 😎👍 If/when you're ready for 'the next step' on this path of knowledge about knowledge, may I suggest a topic and a book that will quite possibly blow your mind:

The topic is innocuously sounding enough: Bayesian probability (but more specifically, Bayesian reasoning). While Boole, Shannon, and Turing were all landmark figures, there are two others who established an even more fundamental mathematical notion which underlies everything from intelligence, to science, to information. You may have already come across it when researching information theory. The two people are Thomas Bayes, who technically first wrote about it (though it was only published posthumously), and Pierre-Simon Laplace who was the first to really put it to use. The idea is often known as *Bayes' Theorem, * but it is also deeply tied to the notion of *conditional probability* and thus it is intimately entwined with the entire realm of *probability theory* itself. So, that is the topic I'd suggest digging into, if you haven't started already.

The book in particular that I would recommend is titled _Probability Theory: The Logic of Science_ by Edwin T. Jaynes. In contrast to Bayes, who probably didn't publish his finding during his life because he was also a priest, and his theorem could potentially undermine church authority (this is my own speculation, not a confirmed fact, just fyi), E.T. Jaynes was an experienced practitioner of using and teaching Bayes' theorem and only had his book published posthumously simply because he fell ill before he could finish it -- he was not ashamed or afraid to proclaim the importance of Bayesian reasoning and to champion it against the established 'classical statistics' which had taken hold and is still the mainstream version of stats most people are familiar with today. But that is changing rapidly these days, as Bayesian probability models are now commonly used in the latest AI/machine-learning today.

Anyway, I recommend that book in particular because, even if you only read the first 5 or so chapters, Jaynes makes a very compelling case that probability theory, especially when understood from a Bayesian perspective, actually *extends* Boolean two-valued logic (which itself has its roots with the Ancient Greeks), from *only* 0 or 1 to probabilities which can occupy any value *between* 0 to 1 inclusive. Indeed traditional logic can be *derived* from probability theory with 0s and 1s just being the 'extreme' cases of 'certainly false' vs. 'certainly true'.

Anyway, tl;dr: Get the book _Probability Theory: The Logic of Science_ by E.T. Jaynes. It's actually not completely finished, since he died before finishing it, but it's really the argument he makes in the first part of the book (which is complete) that is the most important part. You can buy it the normal way, but just fyi there are at least two versions of it available online (pdf) for free. He *really does* make a strong case that probability theory *is* the *_logic_* of science. Remarkable, under-recognized concept. Could really blow your mind. It blew mine, and continues to do so to this day.

Cheers man! Wishing you the best! Thanks so much for your awesome videos. Like Bayes, Laplace, and Jaynes, you don't get nearly as much credit as you deserve! 🥇🏆💯 😅

[izellets]

The Turing test is well-known, but of little use. Experts perform differently from a more naive, untrained public. It is vaguely relevant to a philosophical argument, not much in science as far as I know.
I was surprised when you went for computing science. Ethology is another field that brings interesting things to the discussion surrouding intelligence. Since I have taken an interest in it recently, I was expecting more of that :)

[danielf.]

5:28 To illustrate the importance of the machine: if the projection had been correct, there would have been another census beofre they finished evaluating the current one.

[jaycie]

Um @7:48 transistors can reach several billion cycles per second.

[daviydviljoen]

This was like an episode of James Burke's Connections.... (The show is an YT, I highly recommend it.)

So that's how IBM got started. There's another story about a bunch of unhappy employees of Hewlett Packard who resigned and started their own company called "Integrated Electronics Corporation" or Intel.

Also: so that's how logic gates work.

I think a true AI would be one that knew it was an AI and what that meant; like Lt. Cdr. Data.

[YoMinBo]

I was afraid you weren't releasing any videos after your debates with Standing For Truth and Kent Hovind. Good to see you making more videos.

[skepticknowledge]

Half way through the video I wasn't sure when you were going to get to the human brain part.