Definitions

Intelligence: a general category for describing how knowledge exercises causality in the universe. It has no essential formal logic and outstrips any attempt to define it as a stable object of knowledge. A gene programmatically unfolding its proteins is intelligence; a thunderstorm is intelligence; a planet orbiting a star is intelligence; a pilot navigating a storm is intelligence; a lab technician editing gene sequences is intelligence. As these sentences should indicate, intelligence does not require a subject as its operator nor an object as its target. Insofar as causation occurs through information and energy learning to communicate and coordinate more or less predictably, we find the presence of intelligence. Does this make everything in the universe intelligent? Yes. So called human intelligence is, therefore, not the defining instance of intelligence that all others approximate; it is only one manifestation among many. In fact, the human organism cannot function without many different modes of intelligence operating in concert. Intelligence should always be described by the relations it affects rather than by an essential logic or set of features.

Knowledge: the assembly of information and energy into recursive causal powers. Knowledge occurs when 1’s and 0’s learn to communicate in repeatable and predictable ways. A gene programmatically unfolding its proteins can do so because the information and energy that make it up are knowledge — each step knows what to do even if there is no overarching subject coordinating the steps. A recipe for making pasta bolognese is knowledge — it defines how energy and information should be combined to create the dish. A vectorized set of tokens is knowledge — it lays out a multi-dimensional graph that allows a transformer architecture to make a selection among tokens. An explanatory essay that describes how this works is knowledge — it arranges information and energy in a way that it can be transmitted to others who can expend information and energy within their control to seek to understand it.

Communication: a recursive assembly of information and energy that creates a channel for predictably emitting, transmitting, and receiving information. This cannot be done without the expenditure of energy and the presence of information and noise. Communication requires knowledge to assemble the channel and make possible emitters and receivers just as knowledge requires communication as the repeatable coordination of 1’s and 0’s. Thus the emitters and receivers do not precede the channel but are nodes created with it. Knowledge, therefore, precedes emitters, receivers, and channels, though new knowledge may be created from the channel.

Recursivity: a general capacity that assemblies have for repeating patterns. Recursiveness always indicates some mix of determination and contingency that is specific to the assembly under observation. Recursivity cannot happen without the presence of knowledge and therefore communication.

Assemblies (aka ensembles): anything in the universe that takes on the appearance of a thing. A galaxy, a planet, a star, a dog, a human are all assemblies built of recursivity — the repetition of patterns. Assemblies therefore require knowledge and communication, and are therefore intelligence.

Observation: a general capacity for knowledge to become aware of how its surroundings are impacting its influence on causality. It is a precursor to explanatory knowledge, which cannot be present without it.

Explanatory Knowledge: a development within the power of observation that allows it to decipher recursivity and can use that knowledge to expand intelligence’s influence over a future that would otherwise have occurred. Explanatory knowledge requires an orientation to time that envisions the future as predictable and potentially changeable.

Fate: an observer’s active or passive acceptance of the future as beyond intelligence’s power of intervention and influence. Intelligence can still observe fate, but it has limited ability to influence the sequence of events. Observation must be present for fate to be an operative category, which means that knowledge must have become explanatory.