What is intelligence?
It seems obvious: it is taking input from an external source and using reason to test the consistency of it and building knowledge based on those tests.
It is surprising that there is an assumption that the human species is intelligent. All this evolution we stand atop with a smug air of “here we are, the crowning achievement of it all.” Using random mutation the chances against evolving a cow from a fish is more than the number of fundamental particles in the observable universe. How on earth did evolution manage to find its way blindly to so many viable life forms? Yes, if natural selection explained anything it would make the evolutionary story of any microbe the ultimate triumph over entropy. So what the fuck is human intelligence if our best theories lack any understanding of the universe we live in.
I will skip the philosophically rudimentary unraveling of reason. I will also assume no confidence in any attempt to judge the externality of a source. Add to that the concept of consistency which might as well be a creation of reason in its blindly circular game of knowledge that only serves to prop up its own solipsistic validity.
Any serious claim at intelligence is insanity. Anyone, be she scientist or priest, who claims to be intelligent is mentally ill by any standard you chose. To even claim ignorance is an aspiration beyond the attainment of all but the mad genius.
