Inquire about purchasing the book | Table of Contents | Annotated Bibliography | Class on Nature of Mind
These are excerpts and elaborations from my book "The Nature of Consciousness"
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Stupidity Artificial Intelligence has
been researching human intelligence and machine intelligence, possibly abusing
the term intelligence from the beginning. It can be educational to focus for
a few minutes on the opposite quantity, stupidity. Common sense seems to have a
perfectly clear understanding of what stupidity is. Most people would agree at
once that some statements are stupid. Which is the shortest river
in the world? There is no shortest river, because one can always find a
shorter stream of water, all the way down to the leak in your bath tub and to a
single drop of water in the kitchen sink. While it makes sense to ask which is
the longest river in the world, it makes no sense to ask which is the shortest
one. As the length gets shorter, the number of rivers increases exponentially. Is everybody here? The
question is stupid because if somebody is missing she wont be able to answer
the question. Does everybody understand English? exhibits the same type of
stupidity. What do these questions have
in common? Back to the beginning of the chapter "Common Sense" | Back to the index of all chapters |
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