Wednesday, March 14, 2012

Social Intelligence?

H. M. Collins has argued the "social nature of human beings and their knowledge." ( Artificial Experts, MIT Press, 1990, page 224) He further claims that "there are no stand alone human beings." (page 221) and "socialization is necessary for learning" (page 12).  At one point he claims that a man working alone in a room does little that counts as intelligent! ("If I lock myself up in a room for a day, so that I have no contact with anyone else, when I come out in the evening my knowledge is not much changed." page 12) I guess he believes that all intelligence is collective intelligence.

If I was alone in that room with a physics experiment I believe my knowledge may have increased a great deal!

Also, it occurs to me that the explosion of everything related to "social media" is a  contribution that computers make to society, a contribution from their "social intelligence."

Collins also states that "it is induction that we can do and that machines cannot." (page 132)  I would think that the various "invention machine" experiments show that this is false. (Including my own published work.)

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