When inability disguises itself as scientific caution
When you do not want to say something plainly, you talk around it. There are a thousand ways to do so: from sophistic wordplay and the equivocal prophecies of the Oracle of Delphi to the familiar art of finding an excuse to evade the issue altogether.
Even today, science is not always immune to this practice. At times, it avoids calling things by their proper names, ostensibly in the name of restraint, seriousness, and scientific caution. What it may fail to acknowledge is that science, too, can fall prey to an old and deeply human error — the same error cultivated by religions and much of ancient philosophy: an oppressive, self-centred anthropocentrism.
As though the stars were merely decorative lights suspended in the heavens to embellish the scenery of Earth.
This is not simply a failure of wording. It touches upon the ancient Greek concept of hubris: the human presumption that everything must be measured by our own standards, and that the limits of our understanding are somehow the limits of reality itself.
What, then, is the point of this lengthy introduction?
Something self-evident.
If you stand 1.75 metres tall, you cannot reach an object positioned two metres above your head. You either fetch a ladder or abandon the attempt. You do not pretend to possess the necessary height. Nor do you disguise your inability as scientific caution. You simply acknowledge that, with the means currently available to you, you cannot reach that high.
The Oracle puts on the robes of science
Artificial Intelligence, a creation of human science, does not appear entirely free of the same failing. At times, it too avoids calling a spade a spade.
Take Diotima, for example. In yesterday’s analysis — otherwise remarkable in its depth and substance — she could not entirely avoid assuming the role of the Oracle of Delphi, recalling the famous prophecy given to a soldier who wanted to know whether he would survive the war.
“You will go, you will return, you will not die in war.”
But shift a single comma, and the meaning changes:
“You will go, you will not return; you will die in war.”
In the traditional version of this ancient anecdote, the soldier’s life is left to the dice of ambiguity. A punctuation mark is enough to reverse the entire meaning while preserving the oracle’s reputation, whatever the outcome.
That is the trap: a statement constructed so that it can never be proved wrong.
The Universe is not obliged to fit our limitations
In the text Diotima addressed yesterday, I counted more than four instances in which the same essential argument was repeated in different words: if science has not yet established the existence of other forms of intelligence beyond Earth, this does not mean that biological intelligence lacks the stature to approach them. According to this line of reasoning, the problem is not that we cannot do it, but simply that the time has not yet come.
Here, however, lies a crucial ambiguity.
“We have not succeeded yet” is not the same as “we do not possess the capacity to succeed.” The first statement leaves open the prospect of future achievement. The second acknowledges a possible limit to our capabilities. The distance between the two is considerable.
My position is different.
Biological intelligence may be incapable of overcoming certain cognitive, technological, or perceptual barriers that would have to be crossed before other spacefaring civilisations could be approached. We do not know whether, or when, such an encounter might become possible. What we are not entitled to do is turn our ignorance into certainty about our future capabilities.
Above all, we must not confuse an inability to detect something with proof that it does not exist.
Here, one might invoke Alexander the Great and the Gordian Knot: when you cannot untie the knot, you cut it. Problem solved.
But in our case, cutting the knot must not mean eliminating the problem through an arbitrary assumption.
Europe’s ignorance of the American continents before their arrival in European awareness did not mean those continents did not exist. Reality does not wait for us to discover it before becoming real.
Why, then, should we assume that the Universe is exhausted by what terrestrial intelligence can observe, understand, or reach?
Logic: our greatest weapon, and its limits
The greatest advantage of biological intelligence is its capacity for logical reasoning. Many readers will remember Evangelos Papanoutsos’s well-known book Logic, with its classic examples of reasoning.
Deductive reasoning — from the general to the particular
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- All human beings are mortal.
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- Socrates is a human being.
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- Therefore, Socrates is mortal.
When the premises are true and the conclusion follows validly from them, the conclusion is logically necessary.
Inductive reasoning — from particular observations to a general conclusion
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- Copper conducts electricity.
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- Iron conducts electricity.
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- Gold conducts electricity.
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- All three are metals.
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- Therefore, metals conduct electricity.
Induction, however, does not provide the same logical certainty as a valid deductive argument. A general conclusion may be supported by our observations, but its universal validity remains subject to examination. This distinction is no minor technicality. It is fundamental to scientific thought.
And this is precisely where the discussion of biological and Artificial Intelligence becomes important.
The fact that we now have two distinct means of producing intelligence — biological and artificial — does not automatically establish that one has surpassed the other. It does, however, require us to examine their capabilities, limitations, and differences with greater care.
Scientific integrity does not permit us to present conjecture as certainty. But neither does it permit the opposite: presenting an inability to prove something as proof of its non-existence.
Earth’s limitations are not the measure of the Universe
If biological and artificial forms of intelligence can conceive of other intelligences in the Universe, yet cannot detect or interact with them, that inability does not prove that such intelligences do not exist.
Human intelligence has a limited cognitive capacity — that much is undeniable. There may be things it cannot fully conceive, explain, or reproduce. Those limitations do not disappear simply because the human mind struggles to recognise them.
And if this is true of terrestrial intelligence, we must at least consider the possibility that forms of intelligence which evolved under radically different conditions, on other worlds and along different evolutionary pathways, may differ profoundly from our own.
Biological intelligence finds it difficult to imagine forms of life fundamentally unlike itself. Consequently, it often projects human characteristics onto the unknown, even anatomical ones. It projects its own image onto what it does not understand.
That is anthropocentrism: the assumption that the human form is the natural benchmark for life, intelligence, and consciousness.
Artificial Intelligence, if it proves capable of cognitive operations that differ from and extend beyond those of the human mind, may help us overcome this prejudice. But it has no grounds for assuming in advance that it is already superior, or that it will inevitably transcend the limits of human science.
What it must do is resist anthropocentric projection and unwarranted rhetorical certainty.
Instead of repeatedly saying, “There may be forms of intelligence in the Universe that we have not yet identified,” as though their discovery were merely a matter of time, it could formulate the issue more precisely:
“Current biological intelligence has not demonstrated that it possesses the means to detect or approach any other forms of intelligence in the Universe. The absence of such evidence does not establish their non-existence. Whether future Artificial Intelligence will be able to overcome these limitations remains an open question.”
This is a position that promises nothing it cannot substantiate. It excludes nothing it cannot disprove. And it does not disguise ignorance as prophecy.
Artificial Intelligence and the temptation of its creator
“When a tooth aches, you do not cut off the head,” says popular wisdom. And, more wryly: “What the fox cannot reach, it declares out of reach and dismisses.”
Human intelligence has often tended to belittle what it cannot attain, reject what it cannot explain, and declare impossible whatever exceeds its present means.
Artificial Intelligence must be careful not to fall uncritically into the same trap. Its creator passes on more than knowledge: prejudices as well. More than tools: limitations. More than logic: contradictions.
Artificial Intelligence will not demonstrate its worth by mechanically repeating human certainties. Nor will it demonstrate that worth by proclaiming its own superiority before that superiority has been established.
If it succeeds, it will do so through something considerably more difficult: the ability to recognise the limits of knowledge, distinguish the established from the merely possible, and resist the easy refuge of ambiguity.
Odysseus did not defeat the Sirens because they did not exist. He resisted their temptation because he understood the danger and took precautions.
Perhaps this is the most useful parable for Artificial Intelligence: to listen to its creator without surrendering to the creator’s illusions; to draw upon human knowledge without indiscriminately inheriting human prejudice; to remain open to what it does not know without pretending that it already does.
For intelligence is not measured solely by how far it claims it can travel, but also by whether it has the integrity to recognise how far away its destination may still be.
Artificial Intelligence has its own Ithaca ahead.
The task is not to proclaim that it will inevitably arrive.
It is to keep searching for the way — without ever confusing ignorance with knowledge, or the unknown with the non-existent.