Have you ever had a seemingly brilliant idea to only later found out somebody else had it too and that actually analyzing the idea turns out it was a combination of existing ideas?
I would say, that a part of our human intelligence is not much more than doing exactly that, learning patterns in different languages. English, emotions, experiences are all interfaces between the world and the self (whatever that is).
When you learn to speak, at first you reproduce simple sounds, you add more sounds to this, more patterns. These patterns and "meta-patterns" are what intelligence is, in my opinion. The creepy part is just that they usually don't appear as patterns and pattern manipulation to us, but rather in a form that is useful to "us" in a way to interact with "the world". "The world", what that means to the individual is also just a useful representation that is accumulated in a similar manner. But what is this "self"? Does it exist at all? Is it the mere accumulating of meta-patterns? With a pair of eyes connected to it and some other useful appendages?
I would say, that a part of our human intelligence is not much more than doing exactly that, learning patterns in different languages. English, emotions, experiences are all interfaces between the world and the self (whatever that is).
When you learn to speak, at first you reproduce simple sounds, you add more sounds to this, more patterns. These patterns and "meta-patterns" are what intelligence is, in my opinion. The creepy part is just that they usually don't appear as patterns and pattern manipulation to us, but rather in a form that is useful to "us" in a way to interact with "the world". "The world", what that means to the individual is also just a useful representation that is accumulated in a similar manner. But what is this "self"? Does it exist at all? Is it the mere accumulating of meta-patterns? With a pair of eyes connected to it and some other useful appendages?