Through the fire, to the limit, to the wall
For a chance to be with you, I’d gladly risk it all
Through the fire, through whatever, come what may
For a chance at loving you, I’d take it all the way
Right down to the wire, even through the fire
— Chaka Khan
At school, we are primed to believe the intelligent are the ones who score As in every exam or test.
Synonyms abound — clever, brilliant, genius, smart. They all circle the sun of intelligence.
From an early age, it becomes difficult to reason ourselves out of what we were not reasoned into. This idea of intelligence can be recorded, graphed, and used as evidence. But is it true intelligence?
We may not have a universally acceptable idea of what truth is, but we have means of eliminating falsities. Take tests, for example. In a true-false test, random chance alone can get you past the 50% threshold. Independently analysing the results does not mean that the one who answered the question paper is average in intelligence.
What it means is we have not found a better way to capture intelligence other than using tests. Once tests have been standardized and nationally accepted, it is used as a metric to validate why some students should go to college and others shouldn’t. A reward system sewn from this structure strongarms every parent and child to be on the favourable side of this intelligence spectrum without questioning whether the process itself accurately captures intelligence.
Teachers already ride the wave of the bright students. Upscaling instruction from individual tutors to teacher-led classes diluted the impact of learning. Along with it came a force-fed tool to measure intelligence that has been so ingrained in societies the world over. Tests and examinations are not accurate measures of intelligence.
IQ tests are also not accurate measures of intelligence. I can practise on IQ tests this whole month, and by the time I’m sitting for one in the coming month, the marks I get will rank me among the world’s geniuses. IQ tests are flawed in multiple ways, and intelligence is one of them.
Tests make the implicit assumption that intelligence pre-existed. It means intelligence lurks in the absence of a net, such as a test, to capture it. This net has large holes. It is a poor screen. Despite being intelligent, not all organisms can sit down to do tests.
What, then, is true intelligence?
Getting what you want
I believe the test of true intelligence is getting what you want. Let’s go back to school to observe other forms of intelligence that were not included in last term’s exam.
Consider those who cheat in exams. Since their invention, cheats have existed and will continue to persist. The reason being not all of them will be caught. The ones who succeed will not publicly announce that they cheated because their goal was to score highly or avoid scoring poorly. Achieving either or both of these goals is evidence of their intelligence. They are so smart as to sidestep ongoing supervision during exam period. This kind of intelligence not only bypasses the exam system; it undermines it.
What about parents who wish their children would pass exams? Loaded with money, they can bribe teachers, access the exams from the overall governing body, or even insist that the level of difficulty of the exams be reduced. That is another form of intelligence that belittles exams as a test of intelligence.
The worst one, the kind that spits at the idea of examination, has to do with parents who don’t care what their kids get, because they know they will still live an envious and prosperous life. Parents with wealth to last generations may not be at all interested in the education of their children, and as a result, the kids will achieve the goals of the one who works tirelessly to be at the top of the class, without breaking a sweat. That is true intelligence, which extends from the parents to their kids.
Within the school environment, some principals will pull strings to ensure the school remains at the top regardless of any ranking system used. They will get what they want, even if it means breaking a few rules. Provided they don’t get caught. That is the catch. How do you get what you want without getting caught?
At first blush, two primary options: Follow the standard procedure or find ways to achieve the same goal without following the standard procedure. Campuses may be notorious for this last example. A student may not show their face in any exam, but their name will be on the dean’s list or the graduation list. Money speaks and makes names appear where they ideally shouldn’t.
And there will be those who will hire extra help to complete assignments. I know of someone who would make Ksh10,000 every week from completing the assignments of his classmates. These students win, the one doing the assignments wins, and the teacher is pleased that everyone is doing their assignments as intended. True intelligence.
This idea trickles further to those who are indeed intellectually gifted. They will hardly read in the course of the semester, but will blow through the paper as if they were tutorial assistants. Meanwhile, they will party hard, participate in sports, travel, and enjoy their life. That is someone who flexes true intelligence, because they can get what they want in whichever domain they wish to pursue.
Once this idea sinks in, you begin to see it everywhere. So let’s take it all the way back, to the very first organism.
The firsts
But I’m a champion, so I turned tragedy to triumph
Make music that’s fire, spit my soul through the wire— Kanye West
We have no idea what the first organism looked like with appreciable precision. We can make clever guesses, such as the existence of a cell membrane, an organizationally closed structure surrounding a thermodynamically open system. What we do know is that it survived for some time. It may have died, and another reappeared. These details will forever be obscure to us.
What we also know is that for it to survive, it needs to get what it wants. For any living organism, it is to persist in a universe of ever-increasing disorder. Bear in mind that living organisms are dynamic systems existing at the edge of chaos. By this measure, all organisms are intelligent. I would call baseline intelligence active persistence despite alternative forces intent on destroying the bearer of this intelligence.
Any other organism following from the first one is, by virtue of existence, intelligent. It runs counter to our classifications of intelligence, where some people may be labelled moronic and others geniuses. That might not be true intelligence, because even geniuses falter.
Newton succeeded in taming nature’s laws of motion into simple laws. He, however, failed at alchemy. Is Newton intelligent? Brits believe he is one of the most revered minds in English history. This conclusion follows from an idea of intelligence that supports what we see in class and from scientific contributions. But did he get what he wanted with alchemy? Newton, it turns out, was just a man.
Or better yet, the household name of what we may call a genius — Albert Einstein. He got what he wanted by revising the laws of gravity. He did not get what he wanted by trying to create a theory of everything. To date, physicists toss and turn in a race to find this theory that will seal the deal. Many geniuses have come and gone. Since they did not get what they wanted, it does not belittle their achievements, but it does remind us that they are no different from everyone else.
That some of them discovered solutions previously unknown ranks them as humans with above-average intelligence, only because they got what others wanted but could never get. However, they also want to get what others wish for but cannot.
Darwin got what he wanted by trying to understand evolution. Exactly how much one wanted is the other question we cannot answer accurately, as our analysis is from secondary evidence. That someone solved a mystery does not mean they achieved what they intended. This solution, it turns out, is usually surrounded by other wants, such as recognition for their achievement.
Consider Ludwig Boltzmann. He was a bona fide genius. Regardless, we are made to believe he committed suicide because the scientific world did not accept his statistical interpretation of thermodynamics. How does the idea of true intelligence apply in such a historic case? They did achieve one facet of what they wanted, but not another. A solution to the problem of thermodynamics, but the absence of recognition. Indeed, the bar of true intelligence is a powerful reminder that geniuses are as human as the commoner.
The firsts are those who are recognized for their achievements. Even in sports. Currently, Usain Bolt holds the record for the 100m dash. Every other male athlete who qualifies for the 100m final tries to beat Bolt’s record, but so far, none of them have been successful. Yet, the first one to cross the finish line still celebrates.
Whatever people want follows a spectrum that is serially ranked. Justin Gatlin may include breaking Bolt’s record at the top of his want list, then defeating Bolt in a race as his second, and then becoming the first to cross that finish line as the third. You can get what you want, in graded measures, as an indirect measure of one’s intelligence.
It further shows that one can use whatever resources they have at their disposal to achieve their goals. Enter cheating.
Cheating
I have already highlighted cheating among students. I also previously discussed the cheating that teachers do, but which parents don’t quite notice. There is also the cheating that goes on inside families.
Catching your spouse cheating can be painful. You vowed to be faithful. But what led your spouse to cheat? The common reasons are a dime a dozen. All of them, however, fall under the set that they intended to have a conjugal exploit without being noticed.
True intelligence can guide us to see the motives. A spouse can feel that they can cheat without being recognized. Those who do so successfully can be regarded as intelligent. They get what they want — a spouse and an occasional fling. Now, the one who gets caught repeatedly is not truly intelligent, as far as this example goes.
An interesting perspective on this is the positioning of sexual organs. Males have their penises as a phallic extension from their pelvises, while for women, it is hidden. One of the theories highlights that females had to hide their vulvas to prevent any man from knowing when they are sexually active. Usually, the vulva can engorge with blood, hinting to the male counterpart that they are ripe for mating. Hiding the vulva limits this intelligence strictly to females. This is one of the highest forms of true intelligence I know.
It extends further to ovulation. Other primates, other than humans, spontaneously ovulate. One cannot accurately tell when they have ovulated, but they can sense it. Other women even have a sharp pain on one side of their lower abdomen, a condition known as Mittelschmerz. Hidden from both the man and the woman, ovulation can prevent the males from knowing the ideal time to mate.
Humans can therefore concoct ways of mating regularly, hoping that one of those sessions becomes successful. The best way to achieve these regular adventurous exploits is by making sex fun and pleasurable. Women have taken it a notch by lacking a refractory period after they orgasm. Sex thus becomes fun, in favour of the female gender. If that is not true intelligence, then what is?
Menstrual flow can then counter each of these strategies. Sanitary pads are a recent innovation. In the past, a woman during her period was evident. A male partner or men could then know that a particular lady was not pregnant even after having several sexual encounters with her.
Recall, however, that true intelligence is getting what you want. Women have used menstruation to avoid sleeping with men they don’t like. Some wouldn’t even mind having sex while on their period just because they really like someone and wouldn’t want to pass up the chance. True intelligence is getting what you want, even when it means the bedsheets will be a tad stained.
Cheating, therefore, could be argued from a point of sex evolving into an act of pleasure among humans and eventually a partner planning to have sex outside a couple’s pact, hoping they don’t get caught.
Sexual autonomy
Cheating is an extension of the bigger subject of sexual autonomy.
Healthy sexual habits and behaviour involve consensually agreeing to partake in the act. A man can say no just as well as a woman. No is another way to get what you want. That is, you don’t want to have sex with someone.
While this goal is somewhat straightforward among humans, it is not in other species. The birds of paradise teem with examples. The female long-tailed manakin, for instance, will unlikely give a male a chance at mating if their dance does not involve other males. Sexual selection, a strong force in evolution, underpins the importance of sexual autonomy.
In this example, the female wants to ensure that the male she chooses is the one who has taken time to prepare a dance and includes other males. In a word, the male should be cooperative with other males. That is true intelligence for the female long-tailed manakins.
The club-winged manakin takes the concept further by reverting millions of years of evolution. Their bones are solid, through and through, without any pneumatization. Among bird species, pneumatization of bones aids in aerial movement, facilitating flight. Male club-winged manakins reversed this morphology to convert their bones into solid ones to appease females by the act of flapping their wings to produce sharp sounds. Their wings have clubs that rub across their feathers like a xylophone, an act that appeals to the female club-winged manakin.
Male club-winged manakins get what they want by changing their bone form. Notably, female club-winged manakins still have pneumatized bones. What is that if not true intelligence among male club-winged manakins?
It is also an extension of preference among the female club-winged manakins, where they prefer males who produce that sound. They, too, get what they want.
As for the avian species, they have to develop ways of avoiding forced copulation, the human equivalent of rape. Ducks are arguably the best example. Unlike other birds, ducks have penises. It also means female ducks have vaginas.
Whenever ducks share common territory, they are bound to encounter hostility. Females may prefer one male over the rest. Even among humans, skewed preference for a particular type of male sews envy and discord. The neglected drakes then plan to attack the hens and force their way on her.
As this can be painful and injurious to the hens, they have developed mechanisms to reduce successful fertilization among these raunchy drakes. The female duck vagina of these types of hens is usually convoluted, with various cul-de-sacs. In turn, drake penises are also coiled, in an effort to navigate these turns inside the duck vagina.
These are examples of two sexes of ducks trying to get what they want. Males by elongating their penises in multiple loops, and females by altering their vaginal anatomy. Of note is that once a hen likes a drake, they also relax some of its mechanisms to improve the chances of successful fertilization. These are all ways of trying to get what each wants — true intelligence.
Ducks may be a tad of a stretch, but domestic hens are not. The cockerel will chase down a hen for that cloacal kiss. Hens, however, can extrude male gametes. Sexual autonomy per excellence. Cockerels may get what they want by spilling their seed, but in most instances, the hen will get the final say.
Amazon mollies are a species of fish named after the DC world island that hosted only females. Amazon mollies are an all-female species. They reproduce through a process known as sperm-dependent parthenogenesis. By copulating with their relative species, they have the sperm deposited into their sexual pouch, but they don’t fertilize the eggs. All that is needed is the presence of sperm to trigger the division process of the egg. The sperm are then extruded.
Aside from achieving this phenomenal feat, they continue to persist for generations, longer than what evolutionists predict. Asexual reproduction in complex species can result in irreversible mutations, which should be easily handled by sexual reproduction. Sexual reproduction permits the mixing of genes, neutralizing the lethal ones. In the absence of sexual reproduction, Muller’s ratchet follows. However, Amazon mollies have managed to survive despite this prediction.
The intelligence of evolutionary biologists runs into a halt as far as Amazon mollies are concerned. Amazon mollies 1, humans 0. Getting what they want despite humanity’s powerful theories. What is that if not true intelligence?
Human history
Human history is another record of true intelligence in different pockets.
Jared Diamond gave a brilliant treatise in Guns, Germs, and Steel, showcasing true intelligence that was later converted into divine ideology. Conquistadors did not win because God was on their side, but because of guns, germs, and steel. Guns could kill at far ranges, efficiently, compared to spears and shields. Previously unexposed to smallpox, civilizations were wiped out in a single sweep.
The goal of various colonising entities was to spread their rule into other lands. Guns and steel were used to achieve this goal, but germs were an unprecedented ally. Maybe not really true intelligence in this regard, but the upper hand of a superior military arsenal aided in their goals.
Fighting to obtain independence, colonized territories also acted from a point of true intelligence. Neither of the colonising countries thought rebellions could escalate to the point of granting countries independence and internal self-rule. The leaders of these countries used all forms they could think of: legal channels, diplomacy, conferences, guerrilla war tactics, mass murder, raids. Also, in their aid, infections within the tropics, such as malaria, helped. Thus, they achieved independence with the aid of “germs” similar to how the colonising countries achieved their colonial rule.
The agrarian, industrial, and scientific revolutions were also hallmarks of true intelligence. Organisms, like societies, have implicit goals of persisting. One of the best ways to persist is to increase in size and number. Agrarian, industrial, and scientific revolutions were key catalysts towards humanity’s persistence and thriving. We are now suffering the consequences through climate change and the impact of our industrial endeavours on Gaia.
Gaia, therefore, expresses an intelligence that cannot be ignored. James Lovelock was the first to document that our planet behaved like an organism through its self-regulative mechanisms. If we’re to assume that it has a level of agency, then it could be argued that Gaia is truly intelligent. Consider that since life began on Earth, the solar energy output has increased by 25–30%, and yet, Earth has preserved its stable temperatures. We can anthropomorphize to drive a point, which is that an organism will intend to preserve its physiology, just as Gaia will execute measures to preserve its global physiology.
Humans are truly intelligent because they have tried to get whatever they want from Earth and its surroundings. The ultimate test will be which of the two is the truly intelligent one? I place my bet on Gaia, which has managed to keep itself going for years, long before humans emerged. If our goal is to continue existing, the guiding principle of true intelligence avers that we should side with Gaia to find symbiotic solutions.
More recently, humans have developed online platforms to keep most of the world preoccupied on their phones. The creators of these platforms are truly intelligent because the goal of having the whole world at their control is consistent with their goals.
Among us exist those who wouldn’t wish a few people to hold such extremes of power, but they are not as successful in their efforts. Thus, on a relative basis, the platform owners are superior in true intelligence by preserving their goal, thus far. Intelligence, however, evolves. Father Time tells the outcome of each of these opposite sides regarding the effects of social media.
An adjunct to social media is AI. The leaders have convinced so many people that AI is going to change the world. LLMs have persistently sold heaven, and delivered Middle-earth at best. And yet, we cannot stop talking about it. Massive funding continues to be channelled to AI platforms, while economists and human-centric movements continue to lag in the control of information. From a point of view of true intelligence, the ones who peddle the idea of a brighter future using AI are at the forefront, while those who constantly warn trail behind.
Its full name, artificial intelligence (AI), works from an objective point of view. If the goal is to defeat an opponent in chess, then working out formulae to achieve this goal is true intelligence. We did that already. It gets more interesting and potentially dangerous because LLMs execute ruthlessly. Consider this possibility: The goal is to preserve humanity. An intelligent entity will even consider the option of placing humans inside cryopreservation chambers, keeping us sedated and asleep, feeding stimuli in our brains, but without waking, so as to never experience true reality. In the process, humans cannot harm themselves as we so often do. Machines will pull the strings and ruthlessly achieve this goal. The Matrix series comes to mind. That is true intelligence. But is it the kind of life we would wish to lead?
An intelligent universe?
Before I finish, I would wish to explore the possibility of an intelligent universe.
A universe that contains intelligent beings is one that can intrinsically be intelligent. It can also remain intelligent in the absence of intelligent beings. What then would this universe want to achieve?
Physicists tell us that disorder is the universal gradient. Maximising entropy. Again, at the risk of anthropomorphizing, why would a universe want to increase death? That is, death from the point of view of living organisms. The universe will still exist even during that much dreaded state of heat death. Which begs the question, what is the universe’s goal?
It can be difficult to tell, because it would mean the universe is agentic. Arguing that it is may be a difficult position to hold and conclusively defend. If at all it is, then one of the goals it would have would be to preserve itself, just like any other organism.
But if the death of living organisms is the goal of the universe, then it has been ruthlessly effective in achieving it. By this standard, the universe contains true intelligence. Ours are mere mimics.
If at all expansion is the goal of the universe, then it has also been excellent. Our understanding of our universe is that it is accelerating in its expansion. True intelligence.
If it is agentic, maybe it does not want us to discover other universes. So our machines cannot extend past our visible capabilities. It has also been effective at achieving this.
Perhaps one of the goals we should have, as living organisms, is understanding why our shared universe behaves as it does, because then, if indeed our universe is teeming with intelligence, we would evolve our version of true intelligence to match that of the universe.
But if the universe is not intelligent, it would be a moot journey. Presently, we have no way of knowing the goal of an agentic universe, if at all our universe is agentic.
What I’m trying to say is…
It helps that wants are graded, varied, pluralistic, and in some cases, intangible. Consequently, this suggests there are different ways of achieving goals, which means intelligence is multidimensional.
Say what you wish, but Kanye has repeatedly shown that he can get what he wants, especially when he has locked onto a certain goal. When he starts his classic song by asking, “Yo, Gee, they can’t stop me from rappin’, can they?” he demonstrates that he can still rap through the wire, after his tragic accident and jaw fracture.
No single measuring tool can be used to capture all forms of intelligence. We can, however, use a guiding principle by asking: Did an entity get what it wanted to achieve? If it did, then it has figments of true intelligence.
This song inspired some of the lines used in this essay. Source — YouTube