Intelligence

If someone could help me it would be appreciated. Oh by the way I’ve been up for about 24 hours so this is probably going to suck

The first idea has to do with good and bad. The basic idea is that if you could look at a situation from multiple perspectives then how can something be good or bad?

So does that mean if there is no good or bad then there is no right or wrong? I think writing this out this is where my problem is. Maybe I’m mixing meaning.

Some how I came to the conclusion that intelligence is totally trivial. But then I saw a bug repeatedly fly into a spinning fan blade. Then I thought “what a stupid thing” and got myself all confused.

If there’s no good or bad, then there’s no reason for the fly not to hit a fan blade.

Well, again it depends on from which point u consider it.
f.e. if two guys have a quarrel and each of them will be sure that he is not the one to blame … here we go again!
And about wrong and right:
imo these are norms which are set in every society. And it’s naturally that you know that something can be seen as “wrong” if you do it. The way you act depends on what society expects of you. For example if you talked to your teacher like you talk to your mates. It would be extra-ordinary, but in some countries it’s surely “normal”. So there is no wrong or right nor normal!
That’s just my opinion!

Don’t confuse being smart with being intelligent.

One can be intelligent without being smart, from what I noticed.
A similar example, to the one with the bug, could be pointed out from what I saw at a friend’s house.

A parrot was flying through the house, and my friend has a big mirror. So from a point of view it may seem that the room is actually bigger. So the bird flies around, hitting the mirror a few times… so I was wondering… not why the bird was so… gracefully… heading towards the mirror hurting his head everytime… but I actually wondered, why he wasn’t turning away to avoid the other parrot (his reflection).

I think “good” and “bad” are too different relative things.
For instance… if someone did something horrible… he may get the death penalty… which from our point of view is good… but from another it may not be, as the 10 commandments say “Thou shall not kill”…

So in the end, what is good or right anyway ?
And is everything that is “bad” actually wrong ?

It’s bad to steal… but is it wrong to take a piece of bread if you are really hungry and have nothing to eat ?

About “right” and “wrong”… “good” and “bad”… “fair” and “unfair”.

Some may say, that if God truly exists, he would not let evil come about his chidlren… but there really such a thing as “evil”, therefore, God does not exist. But we all know, that God does, indeed, exist. So why does he permit such horrible things to happen ?

If I’m not mistakin’ Einstein said something like “I want to know what God is thinking… everything else are just details…”

so many questions, yet so few answers…

I think the real distinction is between “intellectual” and “smart”, a very interesting communications professor said something to one of his students, he told her that she was intellectual but not smart. I think he expressed the matter beautifully.

As for life in general, I think that if god did not allow for evil, we would not have to overcome evil and life would be generally without meaning. There has to be some sort of struggle, suffering and tension for life to have meaning. Thats why they say that “no one said life would be easy.”

Maybe I was a bit unclear. I’m still trying to remember exactly what I was thinking. It was a long day things were fuzzy so it’s kinda difficult.

Basically I’m pretty set in the belief that there is no such thing as good or bad. There is just reality. Good or bad is a matter of opinion. It could be good to you but bad to someone else. Society develops standards though. Death is bad because the gain isn’t received by humans.

Somehow I mixed that with this.

Opinions are trivial (aka intelligence is trivial). If good and bad don’t exist then why do opinions matter? We see death as a bad thing but to a parasite it’s a good thing. But do parasites have a sense of good or bad? I think my question is more of what is the logic of a living organism that isn’t ‘intelligent’. If they don’t have a sense of good or bad then flying into a fan becomes trivial. It doesn’t matter to them. But that goes against the idea that creatures are out to live. If they aren’t really trying to survive what exactly are they doing? Flying into a fan isn’t the most productive survival tactic so I’m assuming that the way bugs think isn’t helpful to themselves.

I don’t know what I’m asking exactly I’m just trying to figure out if this makes any sense. Maybe if someone else could clarify the thought through some previous reading or something.

— — Although it is not possible to view every perspective simultaneously (the act of knowing is always the act of excluding), Is it possible to view multiple perspectives as a totality? i believe that to be the crux of the matter. For instance in the prisoner’s dilemma:

Two guys go to prison. They are in separate cells and can not communicate.

1. If neither confesses both get out in two weeks, presumably because the police can’t prove anything.

2. If one confesses, the confessor gets released immediately and the other gets 6 monthes.

3. if both confess, both do time for 2 years.

— If you view the situation from the perspective of either prisoner, you may be tempted to confess; But if you consider BOTH prisoner’s perspective and the TOTAL payout it makes sense not to confess. A lot of utilitarianism may belong here.

— Rene Descartes looked at a fly on the ceiling and came up with the idea of Cartesian coordinates, but he probably had had more sleep.

“Good” and “Bad” may not exist… maybe we created “them” so we can malke a distinction between acts and know consequences…

For instance some animals may not have the terms “good” or “bad”. A dog may attack another dog… or a human… or even his master for no reason whatsoever…

People invented “good” and “bad” as part of rules… to help society evolve… although most rules are broken, because of matters of opinions and different perspectives.

The fact that there is actually no good or bad shows you that bugs as such silly creatures just fly into the fan and get hit by a fan blade, because they don’t know if it is any good for them or not. They don’t know if they will die and what death actually is. Considering the size of such bug, can you imagine how “much” brains it has?!

Most people are tempted to divide the society in this case in two categories: “bad” and “good” … pathic enough though. People as intellegent beings (whose intellegence separates them from animals, because they have the responsibility for their actions) seem to set limits and to know what is good or what is bad and if something is unknown or unexplored it’s always something else, but good.
Example: American scholars devided the world into “zones of peace” and “zones of tumoil” (in the end of the Cold War)…

About death: I have a tendency to believe that death is not bad at all. Just because people don’t know what happens after you die doesn’t mean that it’s horrible. This thought is caused by the pain which someone feels by losing a close person or a relative.

— A lot of what TheNomad said reminded me of Nietzsche’s Beyond Good and Evil. I.E. that good and evil may not be opposites but just points on a continuum, that good and evil is a noble lie, a useful error.
— Nietzsche was of the opinion that creatures did not act for their own survival, but acted for more, to increase their own power.
— I still do not necessarily accept the original thesis that a perspectival analysis involving several perspectives precludes moral judgement. In my own experience i have found that several perspectives act to increase my level of knowledge and understanding. Are we really saying that a man convicted by ONE judge is a moral sentence, but the same man convicted by a JURY of his peers has no moral import?

Thank you Marshall

Well, IMO Both “good” and “evil” are required… without one, the other could not exist… such as a positive and negative charge… light and dark… every contrast that exists is based on this.

But intelligence is “something” you learn by yourself. You cannot gain inteligence from books… as far as I noticed, I am intelligent because of experience in different cases. Being smart has nothing to do with it. I cannot tell an atom from a tennis ball but I can be intelligent. Not that I can’t tell an atom from a tennis ball of course

Intelligence is rather soemthing based on experience and things you learn from other encounters and events in certian conditions. The result of this is what we call “the right thing to do”…

And because Intelligence can be both objective and subjective, again based on eprspectives… we may all be right on this… or we may all be wrong as there is no clear definition on good, bad, intelligence, kindness and so on…

— Welcome to our campfire Nomad.

—Yes both are required… Like you say Intelligence has a lot to do with how you cope with your environment, but aren’t books, the internet, etc, other perspectives? (granted Cicero’s “experience is the best teacher.”) And many times in life knowledge AND experience are required, i don’t believe neither the rationalist, nor the empiricist has cornered the philosophical market yet, rather each is due a slice of the pie.