On Intelligence (1980-1989)

"Collective intelligence emerges when a group of people work together effectively. Collective intelligence can be additive (each adds his or her part which together form the whole) or it can be synergetic, where the whole is greater than the sum of its parts." (Trudy and Peter Johnson-Lenz, "Groupware: Orchestrating the Emergence of Collective Intelligence", cca. 1980)

"Knowing a great deal is not the same as being smart; intelligence is not information alone but also judgement, the manner in which information is coordinated and used." (Carl Sagan, "Cosmos", 1980)

"The basic idea of cognitive science is that intelligent beings are semantic engines - in other words, automatic formal systems with interpretations under which they consistently make sense. We can now see why this includes psychology and artificial intelligence on a more or less equal footing: people and intelligent computers (if and when there are any) turn out to be merely different manifestations of the same underlying phenomenon. Moreover, with universal hardware, any semantic engine can in principle be formally imitated by a computer if only the right program can be found." (John Haugeland, "Semantic Engines: An introduction to mind design", 1981)

"There is a tendency to mistake data for wisdom, just as there has always been a tendency to confuse logic with values, intelligence with insight. Unobstructed access to facts can produce unlimited good only if it is matched by the desire and ability to find out what they mean and where they lead." (Norman Cousins, "Human Options : An Autobiographical Notebook", 1981) 

"Cybernetic information theory suggests the possibility of assuming that intelligence is a feature of any feedback system that manifests a capacity for learning." (Paul Hawken et al, "Seven Tomorrows", 1982)

"We lose all intelligence by averaging." (John Naisbitt, "Megatrends: Ten New Directions Transforming Our Lives", 1982)

"The digital-computer field defined computers as machines that manipulated numbers. The great thing was, adherents said, that everything could be encoded into numbers, even instructions. In contrast, scientists in AI [artificial intelligence] saw computers as machines that manipulated symbols. The great thing was, they said, that everything could be encoded into symbols, even numbers." (Allen Newell, "Intellectual Issues in the History of Artificial Intelligence", 1983)

"Artificial intelligence is based on the assumption that the mind can be described as some kind of formal system manipulating symbols that stand for things in the world. Thus it doesn't matter what the brain is made of, or what it uses for tokens in the great game of thinking. Using an equivalent set of tokens and rules, we can do thinking with a digital computer, just as we can play chess using cups, salt and pepper shakers, knives, forks, and spoons. Using the right software, one system (the mind) can be mapped onto the other (the computer)." (George Johnson, Machinery of the Mind: Inside the New Science of Artificial Intelligence, 1986)

"Cybernetics is simultaneously the most important science of the age and the least recognized and understood. It is neither robotics nor freezing dead people. It is not limited to computer applications and it has as much to say about human interactions as it does about machine intelligence. Today’s cybernetics is at the root of major revolutions in biology, artificial intelligence, neural modeling, psychology, education, and mathematics. At last there is a unifying framework that suspends long-held differences between science and art, and between external reality and internal belief." (Paul Pangaro, "New Order From Old: The Rise of Second-Order Cybernetics and Its Implications for Machine Intelligence", 1988)

"I have found a universe growing without limit in richness and complexity, a universe of life surviving forever and making itself known to its neighbors across unimaginable gulfs of space and time. Whether the details of my calculations turn out to be correct or not, there are good scientific reasons for taking seriously the possibility that life and intelligence can succeed in molding this universe of ours to their own purposes." (Freeman J Dyson, "Infinite in All Directions", 1988)

"A popular myth says that the invention of the computer diminishes our sense of ourselves, because it shows that rational thought is not special to human beings, but can be carried on by a mere machine. It is a short stop from there to the conclusion that intelligence is mechanical, which many people find to be an affront to all that is most precious and singular about their humanness." (Jeremy Campbell, "The improbable machine", 1989)

"Fuzziness, then, is a concomitant of complexity. This implies that as the complexity of a task, or of a system for performing that task, exceeds a certain threshold, the system must necessarily become fuzzy in nature. Thus, with the rapid increase in the complexity of the information processing tasks which the computers are called upon to perform, we are reaching a point where computers will have to be designed for processing of information in fuzzy form. In fact, it is the capability to manipulate fuzzy concepts that distinguishes human intelligence from the machine intelligence of current generation computers. Without such capability we cannot build machines that can summarize written text, translate well from one natural language to another, or perform many other tasks that humans can do with ease because of their ability to manipulate fuzzy concepts." (Lotfi A Zadeh, "The Birth and Evolution of Fuzzy Logic", 1989)

"Modeling underlies our ability to think and imagine, to use signs and language, to communicate, to generalize from experience, to deal with the unexpected, and to make sense out of the raw bombardment of our sensations. It allows us to see patterns, to appreciate, predict, and manipulate processes and things, and to express meaning and purpose. In short, it is one of the most essential activities of the human mind. It is the foundation of what we call intelligent behavior and is a large part of what makes us human. We are, in a word, modelers: creatures that build and use models routinely, habitually – sometimes even compulsively – to face, understand, and interact with reality."  (Jeff Rothenberg, "The Nature of Modeling. In: Artificial Intelligence, Simulation, and Modeling", 1989)

"We haven't worked on ways to develop a higher social intelligence […] We need this higher intelligence to operate socially or we're not going to survive. […] If we don't manage things socially, individual high intelligence is not going to make much difference. [...] Ordinary thought in society is incoherent - it is going in all sorts of directions, with thoughts conflicting and canceling each other out. But if people were to think together in a coherent way, it would have tremendous power." (David Bohm, "New Age Journal", 1989)