> It would be a monumental achievement if computer science ever advances to the point where we have a mathematical way of determining the minimum absolute intelligence required to solve a given problem.

While that would be nice, it's likely a pipe dream :( There's a good chance "intelligence" is really a multi-dimensional thing influenced by a lot of different factors. We like pretending it's one-dimensional so we can sort folks (and money reinforces that one-dimensional thinking), but that means setting ourselves up for failure.

It doesn't help that the tests we currently have (e.g. IQ) are deeply flawed and taint any thinking about the space. (Not least because folks who took a test and scored well are deeply invested in that test being right ;)

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FredPret 7 months ago | parent | next [-]

It might be the hardest problem of them all, because you'd have to understand how all problems work.

But on the other hand, maybe it all comes down to a Turing machine requiring a particular length of tape and runtime.

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nextn 7 months ago | parent | prev [-]

What is a flaw of the IQ test?

	▲	groby_b 7 months ago \| parent [-]
		There is no "the IQ test". The most prominent ones are Stanford-Binet and Wechsler. That, I think is the first problem. There isn't a single agreement what IQ is or how to measure it. There isn't a single one for good reasons, because they all measure slightly different things. But that means that fundamentally any single IQ scale is likely flawed. (Wechsler acknowledges this. SB sorta does as well, but hides it well) But if we're looking for a second at Stanford Binet : It's hard to administer. Scoring requires subjective judgment. It's sexist. It uses language and situations that don't apply to current times. It's highly verbal. The normative sample is questionable (though SB-V has gotten better) And because I've had this discussion before: I'm not saying IQ tests are completely meaningless. Yes, there's some signal there. But it's so deeply flawed signal that building rigorous science on top of it is just hard to impossible.