“So as convenient as technologies can be, they also have the potential of making us stupid.”
“How do you know when you re getting dumber? It gets harder, and harder to tell, doesn t it?”
“No one knows where the borderline between non-intelligent behavior and intelligent behavior lies; in fact, to suggest that a sharp borderline exists is probably silly. But essential abilities for intelligence are certainly: to respond to situations very flexibly; to take advantage of fortuitous circumstances; to make sense out of ambiguous or contradictory messages; to recognize the relative importance of different elements of a situation; to find similarities between situations despite differences which may separate them; to draw distinctions between situations despite similarities may link them; to synthesize new concepts by taking old them together in new ways; to come up with ideas which are novel.”
“Novelty of outcome + Social Approval of that outcome = fake creativity”
“A very thin line separates wisdom from wickedness.”
“The thinking child seeks equals; the conformist seeks protectors.”
“When someone asks a question, don t assume they don t know the answer. Clever people will always test you.”
“Your passport to influencing others is emotional intelligence, your fabric to choosing the right friends is social intelligence, your path to creating lasting wealth is financial intelligence, and your key to identifying your future is brand intelligence.”
“I care not whether a man is Good or Evil; all that I care Is whether he is a Wise man or a Fool. Go! put off Holiness, And put on Intellect; or my thund’rous hammer shall drive thee To wrath, which thou condemnest, till thou obey my voice.”
“I’m sorry to say, Marcus, that each of your recent choice of companions—the last four or five, at least—displayed all the intelligence of a turnip.”
“In the economic sphere too, the ability to hold a hammer or press a button is becoming less valuable than before. In the past, there were many things only humans could do. But now robots and computers are catching up, and may soon outperform humans in most tasks. True, computers function very differently from humans, and it seems unlikely that computers will become humanlike any time soon. In particular, it doesn’t seem that computers are about to gain consciousness, and to start experiencing emotions and sensations. Over the last decades there has been an immense advance in computer intelligence, but there has been exactly zero advance in computer consciousness. As far as we know, computers in 2016 are no more conscious than their prototypes in the 1950s. However, we are on the brink of a momentous revolution. Humans are in danger of losing their value, because intelligence is decoupling from consciousness. Until today, high intelligence always went hand in hand with a developed consciousness. Only conscious beings could perform tasks that required a lot of intelligence, such as playing chess, driving cars, diagnosing diseases or identifying terrorists. However, we are now developing new types of non-conscious intelligence that can perform such tasks far better than humans. For all these tasks are based on pattern recognition, and non-conscious algorithms may soon excel human consciousness in recognising patterns. This raises a novel question: which of the two is really important, intelligence or consciousness? As long as they went hand in hand, debating their relative value was just a pastime for philosophers. But in the twenty-first century, this is becoming an urgent political and economic issue. And it is sobering to realise that, at least for armies and corporations, the answer is straightforward: intelligence is mandatory but consciousness is optional.”
“It’s an insoluble dilemma, really. Presidents change, different men with different temperaments and appetites sit in the Oval Office. However, a long-range intelligence strategy doesn’t change, not one like this. Yet an offhand remark over a glass of whiskey in a postpresidential conversation, or an egotistical phrase in a memoir, can blow that same strategy right to hell. There isn’t a day that we don’t worry about those men who have survived the White House.”
“Intelligence uses knowledge to solve problems. More people can be proud of knowledge they have - fewer with intelligence. Everyone can get knowledge by holding one s attention for three seconds to gather it. Intelligence may require more than three seconds.”
“Intelligence consists not in handling intelligent ideas, but in handling any idea intelligently.”
“I have no idea. People who boast about their I.Q. are losers.”
“But in today’s world, being seen as intellectually, cognitively, or developmentally disabled is dangerous because intelligence and verbal communication are entrenched markers of personhood.”
“There are many ways of being clever, but only one way of being wise.”