I would argue that intelligence is the ability to survive in your environment. Homeostasis meaning sleeping, eating, drinking, reproducing and avoiding pain. Most of that does require prediction.
I think that depends on the type of animal. There are plenty of animals (insects, fish, reptiles) that don't rely on intelligence, but instead survive just by being well adapted to their environment. Behavior in these animals is largely hardwired via genetic coding.
Other classes of animals (birds, mammals) have evolved to become more generalists, which required them to evolve intelligence to become more adaptive to diverse environments.
So, seeing as evolutionary success isn't inherently tied to intelligence, it seems better not to define it that way. One could still "define" it as that capability that helps provide these generalist classes of animals with some of their survival needs, but that's really only saying what the benefits of intelligence are, not what it actually is.
I still think my predictive definition of intelligence is hard to beat, since it seems about as fundamental a definition as is possible.
HarHarVeryFunny|3 years ago
I think that depends on the type of animal. There are plenty of animals (insects, fish, reptiles) that don't rely on intelligence, but instead survive just by being well adapted to their environment. Behavior in these animals is largely hardwired via genetic coding.
Other classes of animals (birds, mammals) have evolved to become more generalists, which required them to evolve intelligence to become more adaptive to diverse environments.
So, seeing as evolutionary success isn't inherently tied to intelligence, it seems better not to define it that way. One could still "define" it as that capability that helps provide these generalist classes of animals with some of their survival needs, but that's really only saying what the benefits of intelligence are, not what it actually is.
I still think my predictive definition of intelligence is hard to beat, since it seems about as fundamental a definition as is possible.