Essays, Analyses and Meditations


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The World's Intelligence

  • We think of ourselves as clever animals in a stupid world, but maybe we should think of ourselves as stupid animals in a clever world.
  • We are "clever" only in the way we exploit the intelligence of the world.
  • We parasite on the higher intelligence that surrounds us.
  • We constantly enhance that intelligence by populating our surroundings with tools.
  • Writing allowed us to thinking longer and better organized thoughts, and to calculate longer and more complex formulas (try to multiply 17 times 23 without pen and paper).
  • Every subsequent tool has provided us with a neighbor on which we can parasite, a neighbor equipped with a higher form of intelligence.
  • But the proper way to express this symbiotic relationship between the human race and their world is that the world has created a human race such that this race would keep inventing more and more intelligent tools and thus increase the intelligence of the world, not the intelligence of that race.
  • In fact, every tool makes us a little dumber, as far as general intelligence goes, although a little smarter at building the next generation of tools.
  • The human race is helping the world get more intelligent, while sacrificing its own intelligence.