Editor’s note: We have been delighted to present a series by William Dembski, adapted from his Substack. This is the 19th and final post. Find the full series so far here, “My Personal History with Information.”
To round out my personal history with information, I need to include my recent work on intelligence metrics.
In 2023, I was invited to speak at the CELS (Conference on Engineering in Living Systems, 2023) outside Dallas, Texas. There I presented a PowerPoint presentation on intelligence metrics. These intelligence metrics assign numerical degrees of intelligence via probability and information measures. This September I published a long paper (36,000 words) arising from my presentation at that conference. It is titled “A Theory of Intelligence Metrics: Measuring the Degree of Intelligence in Search.” It is currently undergoing peer review. Here is the abstract, which for readers of this history will by now touch many familiar themes:
The study of intelligence raises two key questions: (1) How can intelligence be detected or inferred from its effects, and (2) how can the degree of intelligence in effects be measured? To date, the first of these questions has received the bulk of scholarly attention. Thus, a standardized inferential method has emerged for SETI, archaeology, forensic science, and the historical sciences generally in which some trace, signal, or pattern is observed and the question then becomes whether it is best explained as the result of intelligence. This paper focuses on the second of these questions. It develops a general theory of intelligence metrics based on information theory. The proposed metrics assign numbers to the intelligence exhibited in successful search. This paper therefore treats search as the universal paradigm for intelligence. By framing the measurement of intelligence in terms of search, this paper avoids presupposing any particular view of intelligent causation. Instead, the theory presented here applies across diverse causal settings, including human problem solving, large language models, and evolutionary processes. It thus provides an overarching informational framework for comparing forms of intelligence, for assessing the efficacy with which intelligences use informational resources, and specifically for determining how much intelligence is manifested in successful search.
And that brings my personal history with information up to date.