Prudentia

AI is at the forefront of many people’s minds these days. Most, have absolutely no idea what it is, and probably do not care. Some, and I’ve encountered a few of these lately, are deeply disturbed by it and believe it to somehow indicate, cheating. When I was young, no this is not some I told you so story; the hand held calculator was introduced. I recall some of the remarks, especially from the pedantic type teacher. The one that is still salient is what I might call; the square root of two . Oh my God, you would here, this generation will not be able to compute the square root of a number. What will we do? Honestly, unless pressed on the matter, I need to look it up. I know some methods, decimal and binary methods, for instance, Heron’s and Newton’s method without looking anything up. However, they are time consuming. So, why not pull out a calculator and press a button? Really!? And now, today, we have AI. And many are freaking out just like they did with the square root calculator....

A Little HRIQ Psychology I wanted to talk a bit more about the differences of intelligence or IQ and metaintelligence or metaIQ. Namely, consider a line of ever increasing complexity in a game like, chess. That is, what separates a grand master from a novice. Well, it is one of ever increasing ability to handle the complexity of the domain of chess. That is, of ever increasing “tests” of intelligence along the singular domain of chess. Notice, we do not change the domain, that being chess and its rules. However, what we see changing is a line of ever increasing complexity, constrained of course, along a single dimension constituting the game of chess. And this is exactly my point. There exists within this domain no arbitrary redefinition of the game. If so, we call it a new game, like Kriegspiel, a variant of chess and we understand the rules, explicitly . Still, though, within the hypernym of chess. Now let us return to the metaIQ tests, or HRIQ tests in existence today. They, like I ...

Definition WARNING : All high range IQ tests are bad. What do I mean by this statement? Well, for one, I am not being derogatory. They are all, in fact, bad. However, in what sense? They are not, for one, stupid. Nor are they boring. Well?! They are not silly. However, they do not measure what they purport to measure, that is, intelligence. Still, like their psychological brethren, the official IQ test, they are flawed, better still, wobbly but wobblier still. Since they are not measuring intelligence, what exactly are they measuring? Commonsense might dictate that HRIQ tests are measuring intelligence. In fact, commonsense would be wrong. What HRIQ tests measure are people already defined by the system as intelligent, people that is, with IQs measuring at or above 130. So, what HRIQ tests are measuring is, to turn a phrase, metaintelligence . Now, we do not even begin to understand what intelligence is, artificial or otherwise, and here you go throwing metaintelligence into the mix. L...

For several centuries, Western societies have operated under an implicit anthropology: the human being is justified through work. This assumption is so deeply ingrained that we rarely recognize it as theological in origin. Yet its roots lie in the Protestant Reformation — and its cultural crystallization was famously analyzed by Max Weber in The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism . Now artificial intelligence — especially large language models — confronts this anthropology with an unprecedented challenge. The question is no longer economic. It is anthropological. 1. What Is “Protestant Anthropology”? To understand what may be ending, we must clarify what emerged. With Martin Luther and later John Calvin , the concept of Beruf (calling) underwent a radical transformation. In medieval Christianity: Monastic life was spiritually superior. Contemplation ranked above labor. In Protestant thought: Every profession became a divine calling. Ordinary work becam...

It occurred to me (Claus D. Volko) today that LLMs could be combined with 3D printing to create objects that correspond to one's own ideas. So far, I haven't read anything about this in the media. ChatGPT: <<This is a super exciting idea - and researchers and developers are already working on exactly such concepts, even if it hasn't really hit the mainstream media yet. Combining large language models (LLMs) with 3D printing tech opens up a bunch of creative and practical uses. There are AI tools that generate "3D-like" assets from text. Although these models are often still rough or "playful", the trend is clearly moving toward increasingly high-quality 3D objects. These approaches are already being used in mechanical engineering, aviation, and medical technology - but often still as "generative design", not generally visible to the public. AI-powered assistants already exist in well-known 3D modeling programs. Your idea is not only new i...

Encounter Is there a human subspecies existing right under our noses? I first encountered the concept of this possible subspecies of human existing in the wider field of humanity in Michael Ferguson’s piece on a possible variety or branch of Homo known as H. macrocephalus, or “big–headed human.” [1] Pathography My brain capacity is 1813cc or just above the average 1750cc criterion that Mr. Ferguson equates with mean H. macrocephalus cranial capacity. My honestly assessed IQ equates roughly to 150 standard deviation 15, that being from official and not official sources (the average of some 40+ tests of all varieties), making me an average macrocephalic as Mr. Ferguson describes it. My expected IQ, according to his formula; IQ = 0.2 x CC – 181 is roughly 180. As this represents a ratio IQ, which actually follows a natural deviation of 24, not 16, that would make my deviation IQ (sd=15), roughly 150, that estimate statistically matching my actual IQ. My scores on autism tests like the AQ ...

Throughout my life as an adult, my primary focus has been the quest for solutions to problems shared by many people. So I haven't cared about money, but about ideas. I seem to be a rare species. With Dr. Uwe Rohr, I elucidated a mechanism to fight stress and boost immunity. Afterwards, I invented "symbiont conversion", a method to solve the problem of antimicrobial resistance. While you can easily implement an idea if it is for profit, nobody seems to care about ideas that would help the entire mankind. Who should I contact about my idea with "symbiont conversion"? All I could do was write my idea down and get it published. Now it has been published for a year, but nobody seems to care about it. It is quite frustrating. Claus D. Volko

I've decided to slightly change the concept and design of this blog. Now I've branded it "A Blog on Science and Technology in the 21st Century" and renamed the former list of members of Prudentia High IQ Society to "Genius Directory". This does not mean that Prudentia is no longer a high IQ society. But my intention is that I want to open the blog for a broader audience. Basically nothing has really changed, everything just looks a bit different. If you want to be listed in the "Genius Directory", which is equivalent to joining the high IQ society, you can still send me an email. Claus D. Volko