General Intelligence in the Everyday Human World

Abstract

Intelligence is not just about what happens inside a system, but also about what happens outside that system, and how the system interacts with its environment. Real-world general intelligence is about intelligence relative to some particular class of environments, and human-like general intelligence is about intelligence relative to the particular class of environments that humans evolved in (which in recent millennia has included environments humans have created using their intelligence). In Chap. 4, we reviewed some specific capabilities characterizing human-like general intelligence; to connect these with the general theory of general intelligence from the last few chapters, we need to explain what aspects of human-relevant environments correspond to these human-like intelligent capabilities. We begin with aspects of the environment related to communication, which turn out to tie in closely with cognitive synergy. Then we turn to physical aspects of the environment, which we suspect also connect closely with various human cognitive capabilities. Finally we turn to physical aspects of the human body and their relevance to the human mind. In the following chapter we present a deeper, more abstract theoretical framework encompassing these ideas.