What is human intelligence?

Human intelligence has outgrew our environmental challenges, like the tails of peacocks. Intelligence is common in Nature. It can be define as the behavioural tactics which aim at gaining survival advantages against the competition. As a rule of thumb, we can compare the intellectual level of a species by the probability of mutative behaviours (excluding genetic mutations) under the same matrix of stimulus. The more spontaneous behavioural deviations observed among individuals, the more intellectual the species is. Human intelligence is simply an extension of such intelligence marked by its outstanding capability of making hypothetical projections into the future which in turns enhances the diversity of our behavioural responses. We will call it projective intelligence, in contrast to general intelligence.

All forms of life including viruses acquired different levels of intelligence. Since we have no way of studying non-human consciousness yet, we will put aside the issue of whether these behaviours are conscious or not. Intelligence can be understood as a mechanism which takes in sensations and memories and yields behaviours and more memories. The resulting behaviours must distinguished from Reflexive behaviours which are instinctual, not intellectual. General intelligence inevitably involves a different degree of anticipation of the future. Fight or flight decision-making is a primitive intellectual behaviour which entails an assessment of the “potential” danger encountered. Linguistic abilities were evolved to communicate ,and even preserve, these projections within a community or a species. e.g. bees dance to communicate food source and primates cry to warn incoming threats. The level of linguistic complexity of a species is therefore a very good indicator of its level of intellectual and social sophistication.

For humans, the initial manifestation of intelligence was just a matter of better ambush strategies or better hunting tools, like what we can still find in other primates today. However, for some divine or natural reasons, our projective capacity has grown unproportionally and became so abstractly hypothetical that our intellect can process hypothetical projections in infinite loops, instead of depending on sensations and memories alone. The Game theory is the best example to demonstrate this amazing power of our projective capabilities – what would you do if you knew they knew what you knew that they knew….. Evidently, not other species on Earth could comprehend the complexity involved, let alone solving it with mathematical equations! It has been proven beyond any doubt that primates can manage to communicate symbolically, but it remains that they cannot project as far and abstract as we do. Linguistic capability is driven by the intellectual capacity, not vice versa. The difference between projective intelligence and general intelligence is sheer “intellectual”, not genetic or biological. It is a matter of “how”, not “what”; software instead of hardware. Just like there is no physical evidence to justify the differences between running Linux and Windows on the same PC, neither can we find any distinctive “human” genes in our DNA. Recent studies has found that the RNA is what makes the difference between similar branch of species. RNA is not the building blocks, it is the program to control how DNA data are used, like the same Lego bricks can build endless toys.

With the evolution of our projective intelligence, our linguistic capabilities also co-developed into a complex system of artificial symbols and concepts that allow us to envision a shared hypothetical future and to preserve technology more effectively within a community. The power of Einstein’s thought experiments is no independent act of genius. Instead, it is a fruitful harvest from millions of years of coping with hypothetical situations ever since our ancestors emerged. With this unique capability, we gradually became the supreme ruler on Earth.

Like in the game theory, something perplexing happened when we turn this projective intelligence inward. “I think therefore I am” is also “I think therefore I worry”. The more future-conscious we become, the more we worry. All animals share the instinctive fear for harm, but humans also fear for death and our own wildest intangible projections. Fear for harm is a defence mechanism which triggers a fight or flight decision. Worries are hypothetical and no tangible things can really pacify them. It takes faith. We will remain restless until we can find “peace” by faith. Manic-depressive patients are typical victims of their own unpacified projections. Peace is the worry-killer which enable us to project positively.