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  • Humans are proud of a lot of things, from particle accelerators to poetry to Pokemon.

  • All of them made possible because of something humans value extremely highly:

  • Intelligence.

  • We think of intelligence as a trait like height or strength,

  • but when we try to define it, things get fuzzy.

  • In a nutshell, intelligence is a mechanism to solve problems.

  • Especially the problem of staying alive, which involves finding food and shelter,

  • fighting sexual competitors, or fleeing from predators.

  • Intelligence is not a single thing;

  • it includes the ability to gather knowledge, to learn, be creative, form strategies, or engage in critical thinking.

  • It manifests itself in a huge variety of behaviors.

  • From hardwired or instinct like reactions to different degrees of learning, to some sort of awareness.

  • But not all scientists agree where it begins or what even should count as intelligence.

  • To make this even more complicated,

  • intelligence is also connected to consciousness since awareness is helpful for problem-solving.

  • But we're exploring consciousness in other videos, so today we'll leave it aside.

  • Okay,

  • Intelligence isn't exactly clear-cut, so maybe we can think of it as more like a flexible set of skills:

  • A toolbox.

  • Basic tools.

  • The most basic tools in the intelligence toolbox are the ability to gather information, to save it, and to use it to learn.

  • Information about the world is gathered through senses such as vision, sound, smell, touch or taste,

  • and helps us navigate and react to the external world appropriately.

  • But living things also need to keep track of the state of their own bodies,

  • monitoring things like hunger and fatigue.

  • Information is the basis of action for all living things,

  • and without it, you're at the mercy of your surroundings, unable to react appropriately, or flexibly.

  • Information is much more powerful if we can keep and save it, so the second tool is memory.

  • Memory is the ability to save and recall information,

  • so a living being doesn't have to start from scratch every time it perceives something relevant.

  • Memories can be about events, places, and associations, but also behaviors like hunting or foraging methods.

  • Some of these, like flying, have to be repeated over and over until they're mastered.

  • This is what we call learning, the process of putting together a sequence of thoughts or actions.

  • Basically a string of repeatable behaviors that can be varied and adapted.

  • These three tools enable seemingly stupid creatures to act in surprisingly intelligent ways.

  • The acellular slime mold, which is basically just a single huge slimy cell,

  • shows behavior similar to an animal with a simple brain.

  • When put in a maze with food at one end,

  • the slime mold explores its surroundings, and marks its path with slime trails,

  • sort of, smearing memories on the ground.

  • As it continues exploring, it avoids the marked pathways and finds its way to the food.

  • Instead of blindly getting stuck in dead-ends, the slime mold adapts its behavior to save time and effort.

  • This behavior is hardwired, and scientists can't agree if that's intelligent,

  • although it does give the slime mold a certain advantage.

  • Bees are an example of more adaptive smart behavior.

  • Scientists trained bumblebees to move a colored ball into a goal post for a sugar reward.

  • Not only were the bees very skillful at this behaviour, which isn't natural to them,

  • they got more efficient over time.

  • When several balls were available, bees chose the ball that lay closest to the goal,

  • even if it was a different color than the ball they were trained with.

  • For more challenging problems, we need even more flexibility:

  • Fancier tools.

  • Building on the basic tools, more complex animals have a wider range of problems they can solve.

  • They can memorize all kinds of associations, connections, and mechanical tricks.

  • We'll call this toolThe Library of Knowledge”.

  • Take raccoons. Their favorite kind of food is human food.

  • Their approach to getting hold of such treats depends upon an assortment of theoretical and practical skills,

  • that makes them master burglars, able to open windows or pick locks.

  • In a study, raccoons were given boxes secured with different kinds of locks,

  • like latches, bolts, plugs, or push bars.

  • They needed less than 10 attempts to figure out how to open each box.

  • Even when different locks were put together into increasingly difficult combinations that had to be solved in the right order,

  • and with different amounts of strength.

  • A year later, the raccoons still remembered how to open the boxes,

  • and were as fast as when they had first solved the puzzle.

  • Beyond our library of associations and skills, the most impressive tool in our box is creativity,

  • a sort of mental duct tape.

  • Being creative means producing something new and valuable from apparently unrelated things.

  • In the context of intelligence this means making new and unusual connections.

  • Pairing input with memories and skills, to come up with a unique solution to a problem.

  • In another raccoon study, researchers showed the animals that by dropping pebbles into a water tank,

  • they could raise the water level enough to reach a marshmallow floating at the top.

  • One raccoon came up with a much better solution: it tipped the tub over.

  • Another facet of creativity is applying a new resource to a task:

  • Physical tools.

  • Like primates that use sticks to fish for termites in trees, or some octopuses,

  • which assemble collected coconut shells around themselves as a sort of portable armor to hide from enemies.

  • Collecting materials for later use is connected to an even more advanced dimension of problem-solving:

  • Planning.

  • Planning means considering the activities required for a desired goal and putting them together in a plan.

  • When unforeseen circumstances and new possibilities present themselves,

  • they need to be assessed according to whether they match the plan or not.

  • An example of this intelligent behavior is hoarding food to eat it later.

  • This is an instinctive behavior in squirrels.

  • But even though hiding food comes instinctively to them,

  • they still need to use advanced thinking skills to make the best decisions.

  • Squirrels examine every nut and weigh the time and effort it would take to hide it,

  • against the benefits they would get from each one.

  • Damaged or low-fat nuts are eaten right away,

  • while nuts that still need to ripen go on the stockpile.

  • Squirrels also pretend to bury nuts when they feel watched.

  • These empty caches distract rivals from their real treasure.

  • This is pretty advanced strategizing because to make a plan to distract someone else,

  • you first have to be aware that there are others like you that want the same things.

  • The more complex the problem, the more tools are needed in combination to solve it.

  • So the more tools there are, the more flexibility a being has to solve the challenges life throws at them.

  • But even for complex problems, each animal's individual situation is what counts.

  • Squirrels are omnivores that defend their territories fiercely.

  • For them, it makes sense to remember where there's food in different locations

  • and trick their enemies to improve their chances of survival.

  • Sheep don't have any such refined tricks up their sleeve, but they don't need to.

  • They are grazers and live in flocks.

  • The skills relevant to them are social.

  • They recognize and remember many different sheep, and even humans for years; a completely different skill.

  • Evolving and retaining a complex set of mental abilities they might never use would be a waste of resources for them.

  • Humans went the opposite way and invested in an unusually diverse intelligence toolkit.

  • While this was helpful, by accident we added another set of tools on top:

  • Culture.

  • No single person could ever build a space rocket or particle accelerator.

  • But thanks to our ability to work together and to share knowledge across generations,

  • we can overcome challenges beyond any single individual's ability.

  • This allowed us to shape the planet to our liking.

  • We also created new problems in the process: sudoku, tax forms, string theory.

  • But also rapid climate change and antibiotic resistance.

  • To solve these, we'll need to look past short-term survival and think about the distant future.

  • We have the toolbox, we just need to use it.

  • Speaking of tools for learning, we've heard from many teachers that are using our infographic posters in class.

  • So we asked what would help them the most and made an education edition for teachers, students, and everyone else.

  • They're slightly larger posters about various things that we'll expand over time.

  • From a periodic table, to a world map or the human body.

  • You can get them in our shop and support us if you want.

  • And let us know which poster topics you want for your room or classroom.

  • This video was part two of a three-part video series relating to big questions of life and the universe,

  • made possible thanks to a grant from the Templeton World charity foundation.

  • You'll find our sources and further reading in the video description.

  • (Breezy outro music)

Humans are proud of a lot of things, from particle accelerators to poetry to Pokemon.

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