July 15, 2013 — Artificial and natural knowledge researchers at the University of Illinois at Chicago have IQ-tested one of the best available artificial intelligence systems to see how intelligent it really is.
Turns out it’s about as smart as the average 4-year-old, they will report July 17 at the U.S. Artificial Intelligence Conference in Bellevue, Wash.
Many animals — from locusts to fish — live in groups and swarm, but scientists aren’t sure why or how this behavior evolved. Now a multidisciplinary team of Michigan State University scientists has used a model system to show for the first time that predator confusion can make prey evolve swarming behavior.
My fellow SINner, blogger and clinical psychologist, Dr Caleb Lack of the Great Plains Skeptic blog has been producing a series analysing data and theories concerning correlations between intelligence and religiosity in people. There have been a number of studies, and many people have highlighted and lauded these studies. But the nature of psychological studies is that one has to analyse them very closely in order to decipher when control measures have been carefully put in place, and where researchers have mitigated against issues of, say, self-selection.
Professor Richard Lynn, emeritus professor of psychology at Ulster University, said many more members of the “intellectual elite” considered themselves atheists than the national average.
A decline in religious observance over the last century was directly linked to a rise in average intelligence, he claimed.
This raises an interesting philosophical point which was raised in a New Scientist article last year: Don’t get smart: The…