While you're adding a bunch of eastern philosophy to it, we need to take a step back from 'human' intelligence and go to animal and plant intelligence to get a better idea of the massive variation in what covers thought. In animal/insects we can see that thinking is not some binary function of on or off. It is an immense range of different electrical and chemical processes that involve everything from the brain and the nerves along with chemical signaling from cells. In things like plants and molds 'thinking' doesn't even involve nerves, it's a chemical process.
A good example of this at the human level is a reflex. Your hand didn't go back to your brain to ask for instructions on how to get away from the fire. That's encoded in the meat and nerves of your arm by systems that are much older than higher intelligence. All the systems for breath, drink, eat, procreate were in place long before high level intelligence existed. Intelligence just happens to be a new floor stacked hastily on top of these legacy systems that happened to be beneficial enough it didn't go extinct.
Awareness is another one of those very deep rabbit hole questions. There are 'intelligent' animals without self awareness, but with awareness of the world around them. And they obviously have agency. Of course this is where the AI existentialists come in and say wrapping up agency, awareness, and superintelligence may not work out for humans as well as we expect.
> A good example of this at the human level is a reflex. Your hand didn't go back to your brain to ask for instructions on how to get away from the fire.
Is this actually true? I thought it just involved a different part of the brain. Is there actually no brain involvement? Sure it does not need your awareness or decision making, but no brain? I find that hard to believe.
>A reflex arc is a neural pathway that controls a reflex. In vertebrates, most sensory neurons do not pass directly into the brain, but synapse in the spinal cord. This allows for faster reflex actions to occur by activating spinal motor neurons without the delay of routing signals through the brain. The brain will receive the input while the reflex is being carried out and the analysis of the signal takes place after the reflex action.
One way of seeing a subset of reflex behavior is speculative execution - as in, you'll start executing on stimulus before the brain has a chance to evaluate it, but when it eventually does, it may cancel the reflexive action. This is absurdly efficient if your reflexes are well-calibrated.
While you're adding a bunch of eastern philosophy to it, we need to take a step back from 'human' intelligence and go to animal and plant intelligence to get a better idea of the massive variation in what covers thought. In animal/insects we can see that thinking is not some binary function of on or off. It is an immense range of different electrical and chemical processes that involve everything from the brain and the nerves along with chemical signaling from cells. In things like plants and molds 'thinking' doesn't even involve nerves, it's a chemical process.
A good example of this at the human level is a reflex. Your hand didn't go back to your brain to ask for instructions on how to get away from the fire. That's encoded in the meat and nerves of your arm by systems that are much older than higher intelligence. All the systems for breath, drink, eat, procreate were in place long before high level intelligence existed. Intelligence just happens to be a new floor stacked hastily on top of these legacy systems that happened to be beneficial enough it didn't go extinct.
Awareness is another one of those very deep rabbit hole questions. There are 'intelligent' animals without self awareness, but with awareness of the world around them. And they obviously have agency. Of course this is where the AI existentialists come in and say wrapping up agency, awareness, and superintelligence may not work out for humans as well as we expect.