<< The Age of Open Letters >>

Earth, 12 April, 2023

Dear H.S. Sapien,

Since the dawn of our species we wanted to be the knowing type. Intelligent. Wise. We are trying so hard to forgot our ignorance. 

This urge might have been one to control and impose our individual or communal agency. Agency, as if an act of increasing embodiment of the lived world, and of they who be-live it. I do not know. I imagine.

Thousands of years later we still have little idea and try to label, or ostracize, our fellow companions as lesser in areas we claim authority. In doing so we increase our own agency by implying we versus them know, we versus them are intelligent, we are the wise, they are not. We silence by ignoring.

Ignorance is then the severance of relations from the other: the not-wise, the not-intelligent, the not-knowing. We prefer to do so by the bling bling of our words, our artifacts and our utopian or dystopian prophecies. We dichotomize, and with it, lobotomize humanity by targeting the anonymized other.

In this process it seems as if, to some, that ‘intelligence’ is the antithesis of care, compassion, nuance, context, consideration, acknowledgment and relation. A lack of nuance seems to be introducing a lack of diversity, and therefore possibly a lack of inclusion.

This reduction, could well be functioning as a little tea bag. It is soaked into our glorification of machined representations and of mechanized representations of us. Or rather, of how a happy and certified-intelligent few envision us in their image. This occurs, and yet not consistently, as a questionably scientific or rigorous observation. This letter could be perceived as one such example. Though it would not be the most urgent nor most important example. Let us not get fixated.

This letter, as call to action (perhaps slightly biased through a leftish-libertarian communal lens), is not a new one. It is a repeated call to ever so slightly begin to increase doing the reverse: include compassion, care and nuance. Especially invest consideration into those voices that are not in our comfort-zone of our knowing, from our assigned wise, nor from our designated intelligent. Again, let us not get fixated on staring onto one belly-button.

We relate too often by diminishing the other. We too often engage in this Spiel with fallacious rhetoric. Yes, this letter –as any letter– too suffers from it. Across the ages of eagerly grasping at knowing, intelligence, wisdom, some now also hide behind the dominion of one techno-narrative to rule them and us all.

Dominion is a diminuet. We then wish to pour this overlord-story into one tightly controlled story and ask ourselves “what is intelligence ?” That process seems as a rigged game-play.

We could do this. We could collectively submit to this. And yet, we could also diversify our narratives and ventures. We probably do not wish to be manipulated into only one answer to the question on intelligence. It’s way too early for that. It feels way too simplistic.

Moreover, besides the question of intelligence(s), other, urgent and pressing matters too might need attention with tools, aptitudes and attitudes we are maintaining and creating.

In rigging ourselves and others we have been using models which are inherently reductionist and inherently flawed. As dragnets we apply these models, across the proverbial sea floor of what it means to be(come) human. This is then somewhat blindly engaged into, while grabbing and clawing around and about ourselves. The models can be; the manner of use or of celebration might need nuancing.

There is one field of study, I shall not name it, that has especially taken it upon itself to exclude the uninitiated and yet, simultaneously has some of its prominent voices express expertise on almost everything and all. That is, in the least, a double standard. 

This self-imposed reverence goes from labeling and containing of what it means to be human, to how to replace humans or the activities humans (“should”) care about, and activities we humans (“should”) not care for. One could think about work. One could think about processes of creativity and expression. This meaning of human (or the dismissal of meaning and understanding as important attributes in the human becoming) happens to become narrated in one, or very few, and yet rather unnuanced story-telling sweepstakes.

Remarkably, at present, the field implied here is especially strongly condemning and that via its output, its exclusion, and its practice against any human who is interested in areas of the Arts and Humanities. This goes at times also for they who are interested in Biology, Chemistry and Physics. Though, some might argue that a disdain is especially noticeable toward humans who relate through, or to, the Arts and Humanities, and then back to that one unnamed field here in question. With the exception of a coopted few (whom among themselves are also bickering and ignoring), this latter set of humans get fired, debased, mocked or ignored. 

Some members in this unnamed field will pay lip service to the importance of some areas within the Arts and Humanities. Though, in some sort of double speak their acts and their lack of entering in debate or dialog with the “commoner” shows a different reality-building. As long as the rebuttals towards the in-grouped are not too critical, the outside voices can offer their awe and pay their undying gratitudes. These dynamics too make up human “intelligence” and “intelligentsia.”

While decisions are made on intelligence –which afflicts all life– it might feel, to some, as if it is not life itself deciding. Machine and their bell curves seem to be taking on that role of decision. This is then augmented by “life” seemingly bestowed onto machine and its curved output. In this exciting, and yes, creative human storm, we then argue that soon only some of us have to discuss (our) intelligence. 

No. 

We have already been discussing intelligence and related constructs. We have done so via scientific or other models, and we know we still know very little. We do know more than I know, or you individually know. We still know too little. To some it is even questioned whether we could or even should know. Others then dismiss these voices even more. In considering intelligence, we should continue the consideration by means of transdisciplinary exchanges, inclusive of they who might not know, not be as intelligent as you (perceive yourself), or not be the wise whom you revere.

What could, additionally, be discussed is how our lack of insights (from Biology, Chemistry, Physics, Humanities, the Arts,…insights which are already limited in these segregated fields) are being hyped and contorted even further through one field, as if answers from that one field are set and done. They are not.

Let us not be too blasé. It does not take a non-insider too much effort to notice –without perhaps being able to put a finger on the accurate pain-point– that something might be amiss. (Algorithmically, systemically, and culturally) amplifying voices, while attenuating others, does not make this disappear. It makes for arrogance and readiness for a trip up. True, as this letter, anyone who puts their work out there exposes oneself to trip ups. It is ok, until it is too scaled, too urgent and too (hyped to be) consequential.

Moreover, this narrative-monoculture could be diminishing the diverse collections of human stories. This could thus also diminish scientific methodological rigor.  This could, thirdly, diminish and disempower innovation to be constraint into a very narrow stratum. 

Yes. 

Yes, we will have to discuss the intelligence of how that is being done by a select group in name of all individuals (i.e., human or other forms of life and other degrees and nuances of non-human forms of *biological* intelligence). 

Perhaps we might want to add some humbleness and inclusivity to those “voices” who are less-to-not-initiated in the realm which some call exclusively their own, yet which output is bragged to be spreading like a wild fire across all fields; across all of humanity; over and across all life. 

Is the intelligence, of the stakeholders in this one unnamed field, sufficiently justified for outside-others to only remain “beautiful yet quiet?” Is it intelligent to speak of an attribute that belongs to all (i.e., the complex of intelligence), while the majority sits by quietly and simply accepts a verdict?

Do you remember being a child and being talked about, yet having no say, no voice, no enablement and no empowerment? Try to go back in your memory. Try to sense that feeling it created in you then. Extrapolate this feeling, beyond this one demographic niche of “justified” (?) patronization (i.e., parent-teacher onto child). It is not stimulatingly intelligent. Stimulate this awareness. Stimulate this not only for technical or mathematical processes (which could indeed be “cool!”) while mimicking our intelligence (and not only yours) with a model, as a slither of what might be imagined as one (mimicry) of intelligence for and to all. 

As some, in this unnamed field, have stated: if you don’t know the difference between x or y, you should not talk about our  field. To those who claim this: I am not mentioning your field here, and yet I will not retire from learning about yours as I embrace it as part of our shared, human journey. You claim to know, but have you listened and learned outside your niche? If not, then what is intelligence? What is wisdom? What is knowledge?

Perhaps it might be intelligent and wise for that unnamed field to also embraces  humans, the humane and the Humanities –as well as Biology, Chemistry and Physics– while the field seems to be set on its appropriation of intelligence, and what it tells us intelligence to be and what human is to be. What life is to be. If the unnamed field were to continue as the sole backer of financially viable form of intelligence, could it intelligently become as a field filled with unnamed soldiers who were in pursuit of humanity’s freedoms?

Sincerely,

The Other Kind of (Tech-loving) Human.