Sapience and the Lack Therof

[David Johnston2]

Originally Posted by Flyndaran

Cannot learn doesn't fit anything alive other than maybe a very few severely brain damaged people, so it has no place in discussing sapience in general.

Why are we limiting sapience to living things again? Particularly in a discussion that grew out of the subject of artificial intelligence?

[Flyndaran]

Originally Posted by Sindri

Nothing alive? Not even plants?

Ooh, caught me with a pedantic fly trap.
Ok, I should have wrote, "multicellular animal life."

[Sindri]

Originally Posted by David Johnston2

Why are we limiting sapience to living things again?

Care to provide an example of a non-living sapient thing?

[Flyndaran]

Originally Posted by David Johnston2

Why are we limiting sapience to living things again?

That's a whole other discussion. We need to define it before we ask whether things like machines can have it.

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by Flyndaran

Cannot learn doesn't fit anything alive other than maybe a very few severely brain damaged people, so it has no place in discussing sapience in general.

You are treating the expression Cannot Learn as if it were a common English phrase meaning—well—"cannot learn." It's not. It's what Kromm calls a "term of art": a phrase that has a defined meaning in the rules of GURPS. That meaning is "cannot spend character points on DX, IQ, skills, techniques, or mental advantages, nor acquire new familiarities of existing skills." I think it is fair to say that a slime mold can do none of those things and therefore Cannot Learn.

Bill Stoddard

[David Johnston2]

Originally Posted by Flyndaran

That's a whole other discussion. We need to define it before we ask whether things like machines can have it.

Tosh. Sapience is humanlike intelligence. That's not an issue. Nor is it an issue whether machines can have humanlike intelligence, because this is a discussion in the gaming area, not general chatter. In GURPS there are a plethora of possible and actual examples of cybernetic intelligences which are humanlike, (also ghosts, walking dead, and particularly talkative swords and rocks). Whether such things are possible within reality is a not especially useful digression.

But the question was raised, "What features could be given to IQ 6+ beings that would keep them from qualifying.". I suggested Bestial and Cannot Learn as examples of things that would create an intelligence too alien to qualify as sapient.

[Sindri]

Originally Posted by David Johnston2

Tosh. Sapience is humanlike intelligence. That's not an issue. Nor is it an issue whether machines can have humanlike intelligence, because this is a discussion in the gaming area, not general chatter. In GURPS there are a plethora of possible and actual examples of cybernetic intelligences which are humanlike, (also ghosts, walking dead, and particularly talkative swords and rocks). Whether such things are possible within reality is a not especially useful digression.

But the question was raised, "What features could be given to IQ 6+ beings that would keep them from qualifying.". I suggested Bestial and Cannot Learn as examples of things that would create an intelligence too alien to qualify as sapient.

It certainly is an issue. Sapience is defined vaguely and differently and must be nailed down to a specific definition. Of course "humanlike intelligence" isn't too bad though without qualification it means intelligence like that of a human in general rather than any specific feature.

[Flyndaran]

Originally Posted by whswhs

You are treating the expression Cannot Learn as if it were a common English phrase meaning—well—"cannot learn." It's not. It's what Kromm calls a "term of art": a phrase that has a defined meaning in the rules of GURPS. That meaning is "cannot spend character points on DX, IQ, skills, techniques, or mental advantages, nor acquire new familiarities of existing skills." I think it is fair to say that a slime mold can do none of those things and therefore Cannot Learn.

Bill Stoddard

Ok again. That just moves up further up in complexity to whatever is the simplest animal that can learn a skill but remain non-sapient... which I'm sure are many.
Cannot learn is well below sapience, so it isn't really pertinent to the minimum handicaps required to qualify as non-sapient.

What is sapience in common speech, so that we can better define it in gurps?

[Flyndaran]

Originally Posted by Sindri

It certainly is an issue. Sapience is defined vaguely and differently and must be nailed down to a specific definition. Of course "humanlike intelligence" isn't too bad though without qualification it means intelligence like that of a human in general rather than any specific feature.

That's one of those things that, while are true, are never the less completely useless information.
Of course, anything just like sapient humans are sapient.

[David Johnston2]

Originally Posted by Sindri

It certainly is an issue. Sapience is defined vaguely and differently and must be nailed down to a specific definition. Of course "humanlike intelligence" isn't too bad though without qualification it means intelligence like that of a human in general rather than any specific feature.

Human intelligence is the default in GURPS (as humanity is the default for everything). The question is not "what is sapience". It is "what is NOT sapience".