I also have to say that intelligence is an opinion not a factual data. What one person may think is incredibly stupid in one person's eyes is a good idea in anothers... like the kamikazi. It proved very useful for the japaneese, but it wouldn't have been for the americans.
This kinda follows the one mans trash is another man's treasure belief.

the will to survive

You guys are saying its an opinion and a degree... intelligence is a degree of what? If you say something is more intelligent than another thing... there must be a definition of that degree. You see i know its kind of a vague definition, but even vague stuff has a certain domain in which your degrees of intelligence apply. So we are set with a certain finite number of definitions with infinite variations. This is very interesting. How about if we try and define this domain in which intelligence is valid? And try and see where our intelligence relies.

Because intelligence might not rely on conciousness, rather conciousness rely on intelligence. Or viceversa. So we could end up with a domain where AI is and where it should go.

AI.

The one thing that defines intelligence is the ability to choose based on previous experience and the ability to change based on this. Growth and Evolution.

Intelligence is the ability to pass a turing test.

IMO,

Intelligence is no more than thinking in terms of simple algorythms, storage and computational power is the problem.

Quote: Original post by UnshavenBastard
viruses are not living organisms.

they solely contain of a hull and their DNA inside, nothing more. they do nothing a living organism does. they don't reproduce themselves on their own, a virus puts its DNA into other cells that then breed new copies of that virus.
they don't even eat :D (bacteries do "eat")

Correct. A virus is not an organism, however it is a life-form. Generally speaking a virus is alive because it exhibits metabolism, motion, reproduction, response to stimuli. The only key function of life that it does not exhibit is growth, however this is because it can be accepted that the virus is a form of seed. The capsid protects the DNA/RNA stored within the virus, which provides the means for the virion to attach to a host and begin its active life cycle.

Just because a virus is not an organism does not mean its not alive. And now back to the original posters topic.

Quote: Original post by Agony
I think that the problem with defining "intelligence" is that it isn't black and white. It's a matter of degree. "How intelligent is something?" is a much more appropriate question. Is X more or less intelligent than the average human. Of course, that implies that intelligence is a one-dimensional measurement. But intelligence could be defined to be multi-dimensional. Some people have math related intelligence. Some people have artistic intelligence. Some have every-day-practical intelligence. And in each of these categories, you aren't either intelligent or not intelligent. You have a degree of intelligence of each type.

If I were to assume just one single category of intelligence, then I would say that pretty much anything and everything that does something according to some ruleset is intelligent, to some degree or another. More specifically, the degree of intelligence is determined by the complexity of the rules which an entity follows. Under this definition, even a hydrogen atom has a very very limited level of knowledge. Relative to that, a virus is much more intelligent. And relative to a virus, humans are incredibly more intelligent still. And if you wanna call the entire earth an "entity", then I'd say that it is unbelievably intelligent. Maybe the definition is too broad, but I kinda like it (although I do have my reservations regarding it).

intelligence is to understand the phrase "less than 20".... [razz]

Google define:intelligence

People have made this interesting question, is conciousness needy to make intelligence. And what if i tell you, your subconcious does all this intelligent actions without you needing being concious about it?.

I mean you think of some problem and leave it, and sometimes the answer just pops out! Who did this? A non concious part of you! So i think we can create true intelligence in a non organic being without it being concious about things to the level we perceive our own conciousness.