The KHIT Blog: "Peak human intelligence?" Are we nearing it? Have we passed it?

Tuesday, November 19, 2019

"Peak human intelligence?" Are we nearing it? Have we passed it?

Recently encountered at The Neurologica Blog:

There is an interesting article at The Conversation asking the question – have humans reached peak intelligence? ... [A]re there ultimate limits to the ability of humans to think, understand, and hypothesize? If so, are we approaching that limit now? ... [I]s there is limit to our ability to manage complexity (as opposed to just comprehending reality)?...

Some might sadly conclude that we've passed peak intelligence, at least in some demographic strata.

Are the tails of the IQ bell curve distribution getting fatter ("kurtosis")? Asymmetrically so (epistemically skewed, with a thin upper tail of "cognitive elites" and a lower "fat tail" comprised of a "Dunning-Kruger" demographic)?

More from Neurologica:

...The article essentially focuses on what we are capable of when thinking clearly, but humans do not always think clearly. We therefore backslide and this also hampers progress. One question is – is the ratio of progress to backsliding changing over historical time? Will this also reach a point of equilibrium?...

...[W]e are also developing artificial intelligence. Whatever you think about the current state and the rate of progress of this endeavor, we are steadily developing more and more intelligent machines, and eventually we will very likely develop general AI with capabilities beyond humans. We may be able to evolve intelligent machines and select them for their ability to solve scientific mysteries...

I will have more to say about "AI" in the foregoing context shortly. See my prior post "Ethical Artificial Intelligence?" for now. Author Flynn Coleman in particular argues that our AI advances may well result in the "birth" of a "new species," one (or more?) with "cognitive" abilities far exceeding those of humans.

Highly recommend you read The Conversation piece in its entirety. Quoting from it:

Will science ever be able to provide all the answers? Human brains are the product of blind and unguided evolution. They were designed to solve practical problems impinging on our survival and reproduction, not to unravel the fabric of the universe. This realisation has led some philosophers to embrace a curious form of pessimism, arguing there are bound to be things we will never understand. Human science will therefore one day hit a hard limit – and may already have done so.
...
Some questions may be doomed to remain what the American linguist and philosopher Noam Chomsky called “mysteries”…

Well, "two cheers for uncertainty." Two cheers for the "mystery."

If we all knew everything, there would be no point in living, no need for curiosity, for inquiry, for science. It would essentially all be "history" (or, for some people, the "Godhead"). Think about it. Why would you ever even bother to read a book, watch a movie, go to a ball game, take a trip, launch a startup, or whatever? Many uncertainties resolve into verifiable knowledge. Some do not (or have not yet). It's the process of sentient experiential inquiry that really comprises worthwhile living.

Ahhh... what do I know? (Q: Is being God boring? Or does that very question simply reflect a speciocentric, anthropomorphic projective neurosis?)

Tangentially apropos,

LOL.

Back to The Conversation piece:

…Biologically, we are no different than we were 40,000 years ago, but now we know about bacteria and viruses, DNA and molecules, supernovas and black holes, the full range of the electromagnetic spectrum and a wide array of other strange things.

We also know about non-Euclidean geometry and space-time curvature, courtesy of Einstein’s general theory of relativity. Our minds have “reached out” to objects millions of light years away from our planet, and also to extremely tiny objects far below the perceptual limits of our sense organs. By using various tricks and tools, humans have vastly extended their grasp on the world…

Yeah. But, if you're seriously reflective with respect to the import of the word "infinity," the universe will always exceed our "grasp," given our finitude. So, again, Two Cheers for Uncertainty.

"One hopes not only for the courage of one’s convictions, but also for the courage of one’s doubts in a world of dangerously passionate certainties." - the late Eric Sevareid, Not so wild a dream.

CODA

Full disclosure on my "Two Cheers for Uncertainty" riff.

https://www.amazon.com/Rational-Choice-Uncertain-World-Psychology-ebook-dp-B00FBTNQHE/dp/B00FBTNQHE/ref=mt_kindle?_encoding=UTF8&me=&qid=

14.4 Two Cheers for Uncertainty

Imagine a life without uncertainty. Hope, according to Aeschylus, comes from the lack of certainty of fate; perhaps hope is inherently blind. Imagine how dull life would be if variables assessed for admission to a professional school, graduate program, or executive training program really did predict with great accuracy who would succeed and who would fail. Life would be intolerable—no hope, no challenge.

Thus, we have a paradox. While we all strive to reduce the uncertainties of our existence and of the environment, ultimate success—that is, a total elimination of uncertainty—would be horrific...

Hastie, Reid. Rational Choice in an Uncertain World (p. 331). SAGE Publications. Kindle Edition.

One of my long-time favorite books.
_____________

More to come...

No comments:

Brave New Health

Commonwell Health Alliance

Another important read (pdf)

I love this kind of stuff. It sustains and humbles me. "As politicians, advertisers, salesmen, and propagandists for various political, economic, moral, religious, psychic, environmental, dietary, and artistic doctrinaire positions know only too well, fallible human minds are easily tricked, by clever verbiage... Common language—or at least, the English language—has an almost universal tendency to disguise epistemological statements by putting them into a grammatical form which suggests to the unwary an ontological statement. A major source of error in current probability theory arises from an unthinking failure to perceive this."

Quotes

"An economist is a person who sees something that works in practice and tries to figure out whether it will work in theory."

- J.D. Kleinke, medical economist
___

"The only person who enjoys change is a baby with a wet diaper."

"Every misspent dollar in our health care system is part of somebody's paycheck.

- Brent James, M.D., M.Stat

“We could do healthcare, at markedly higher quality, for everyone in this country, without rationing or denying anybody the care that they need, without having the government dictate how doctors practice or whether hospitals could expand, at half the cost we do it now.”

- Health Care Futurist Joe Flower

Most of the sciences, unlike parts of medical science, are not concerned with the impossible. There is not complementary and alternative physics, or chemistry, or biochemistry, or engineering. These disciplines compare their ideas against reality, and, if the ideas are found wanting, abandoned."

- Mark A. Crislip, MD

"Q: How much alcohol is too much?
A: More than your doctor drinks."

- a physician I once heard speak during a CME presentation

“Just because science doesn’t know everything, doesn’t mean you get to fill in the gaps with whatever fairy tale most appeals to you.”

- Dara O’Briain

'[I]t is one small step from using the computer for "helping" doctors to monitoring them, judging them, dictating to them what to do, and withdrawing payment for computer non-compliance. The use of computer data is a multi-edged sword. It can be used for the "good," facilitating diagnosis and treatment and making it more accurate and up-to-date, and for “evil,” invading privacy, inviting security breechs, and making decisions based on the opinions of remote authorities rather than those present at the patient-doctor encounter.'

- Richard Reece, MD

“[T]here ARE statistics which are non-political. Just because The Washington Post/Fox News reports the temperature is 75 degrees doesn’t mean it’s really snowing and sunscreen is a liberal/conservative plot. Even if you earn a living being ideological.”

- Michael L. Millenson

"It is a generally a fairly convincing argument that people shouldn’t have to be subsidized to undertake a change which is in their best interest.

The reconciliation seems to be that EHR is not supposed to make a doctor’s practice more efficient and higher quality. It is supposed to make the system of care more efficient and higher quality, which is not the same thing. Those of you who took calc recall that maximizing the total of variables is not achieved by maximizing any one variable and this is a perfect example of that.

Those of you have served in combat certainly noticed that too — if everyone works as a team the unit takes fewer casualties. If you try to save your own hide, you might, but at the expense of more casualties overall."

- Al Lewis

"There are two ideas to keep in mind about Bayesian reasoning and how we tend to mess it up. The first is that base rates matter, even in the presence of evidence about the case at hand. This is often not intuitively obvious. The second is that intuitive impressions of the diagnosticity of evidence are often exaggerated."

- Daniel Kahneman, "Thinking, Fast and Slow"

"Physicians apply advanced scientific knowledge, but they must do so without the favorable conditions that experimental scientists create for themselves. Multitasking is forced on physicians, often in chaotic environments and under severe time and resource constraints."

- Lawrence and Lincoln Weed, "Medicine in Denial"

"It’s time to stop the whining about Obama care and acknowledge we already have universal health care. We just pay for it in the stupidest way possible that ensures problems are that much more disastrous and complicated when they’re finally treated."

- Mark Hoofnagle, MD, PhD

"Every act of conscious learning requires the willingness to suffer an injury to one's self-esteem. That is why young children, before they are aware of their own self-importance, learn so easily."

- Thomas Szasz, MD
___

"Of course, one reason that process metrics* are so popular is that processes are much easier to define and measure than outcomes."

- The Skeptical Scalpel
___

"There is an “illusion of validity” for any random data point, a seductive sense that is colored by what we hope will be true. Mountains of pharmaceutical claims are often made from mere molehills of data."

- Danielle Ofri, MD
___

"Joy empowers people. It is a source of energy that enables people to hope and plan and change their lives for the better. Spend some time around someone who is relentlessly negative and how do you feel–drained, right? More and more research shows that joy is not something that just happens to you, like a bolt of lightening out of the blue. Joy is, instead, a habit to cultivate. Negative thinking and despair are the crabgrass of our souls–weeds that take root and spread, sometimes to all areas of life. Joy, in contrast, is a soul’s rose–hardy when cared for, able to put down roots over time and withstand disease and extremes. Like a rose, however, your joy can become blighted from neglect or harsh conditions. We all need to tend to our joy–to prune away the badness, and to know that, even though it may look like a prickly bare root, if you invest time in a joyous outlook, gorgeous things will bloom, even in the harshest conditions."

- Dr. Jan Gurley
___

"'Solutions' exist only in mathematics."

- Karen Martin
___

"The issue of how to regulate clinical software is, in the long run, indistinguishable from the issue of how to regulate medicine. The only difference is that medicine is practiced in the open, without secrecy, subject to peer review, and under a merit-based state license."

- Adrian Gropper, MD
___

"Economist, rope, tree: some assembly required."

- Source unknown

DISCLAIMER:

I write this blog wholly on my own time and my own dime. The views proffered are expressly my own as a concerned and active citizen/taxpayer (in addition to being the result of my substantive experience in the various IT fields), and in no way reflect any policy views of my former employer, notwithstanding that some of the thinking has indeed obviously been spurred by the implications of the work with which I have been doing for them.

FAIR USE POLICY
I cite a ton of news and web sources spanning the breadth of relevant technical and policy domains, sometimes at substantial length. I believe I remain well within the bounds of "Fair Use," as [1] I am not doing any of this for profit, [2] I always provide attribution and links -- which, [3] far from negatively impacting any copyright holders' commercial interests, might actually increase traffic to and interest in their offerings.

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Tuesday, November 19, 2019

"Peak human intelligence?" Are we nearing it? Have we passed it?

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