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What Is Intelligent Life?
we tell ourselves that humans do something clever or tactical because our brains have simulated that this course of action will produce favourable outcomes, but when we learn that ants do the same thing by enacting preprogrammed responses to pheromones, surely that doesn’t count.
Abigail Desmond & Michael Haslam • What Is Intelligent Life?
In our view, intelligence has inadvertently become a ‘human success’-shaped cookie cutter we squish onto other species.
Abigail Desmond & Michael Haslam • What Is Intelligent Life?
While the outputs of intelligence may have changed over time, they continue to grab our attention because together they advertise fitness, and have been maintained across generations through adaptive social selection to ensure humans’ survival.
Abigail Desmond & Michael Haslam • What Is Intelligent Life?
Intelligence does not refer to a single measurable trait or quality, but rather it indexes behaviours and capacities that have arisen at different times throughout our species’ evolutionary history.