Smart as a Rock

Crikey

3 years ago

Making friends with infinite intelligence

This post is not a compilation of inspirational quotes about the human intellect. That means you will not be tricked into reading observations by the Austrian-British philosopher, Ludwig Wittgenstein, who once said, “Philosophy is a battle against the bewitchment of our intelligence by means of language.”

What does Wittgenstein mean by this statement? Language sabotages our highest thoughts? Words undermine our best thinking? Eloquence seduces our deepest intuition?

What Wittgenstein might have enjoyed knowing is that neuroscientists recently discovered some people can reason without words. In other words, they can solve certain logic problems without lighting up the language factory, or Wernicke’s area, in their cerebral cortexes.

Maybe a different question could focus on the operator doing all this thinking with or without words. Somebody might suggest a separate original thinker is simply a product of the thinking process. As it happens, Jiddu Krishnamurti, the world teacher not-wannabe, once said, “The thinker is thought.”

That statement might as well lead us to a different perspective. If we can’t pinpoint, much less nail down the thinker, how can we say our intelligence—mammoth, minuscule, or mediocre—actually belongs to us? In other thoughts, how can we claim human beings are any smarter than rocks?

“Fuck sharp edges and salvation. I am the razor.” 😬
— Anonymous

Every last thought lives and dies stone broke

As luck shakes out, river pebbles are often made of granite, a very common form of igneous rock. Pebbles are larger than granules, smaller than cobbles, and dumber than dirt. Few people are stepping up to enroll the smartest river pebble in Mensa International.

Bring on humankind’s top genius, Molly Dacquoise, a 22-year-old, French-born chemical engineer with a €17 million ($19 million) research grant at the Universite Paris Saclay. Experts have clocked Molly’s IQ at several substantial points above 300.

Escape to the Bughouse recently invited her to square off against a random river pebble (IQ: 0) in an unusual duel—and she accepted the challenge.

Imagine Molly as the world’s tallest skyscraper, the Burj Khalifa (2,700 feet tall), and the pebble as the world’s shortest nanoscale house (10 microns tall). The duel is straightforward: Be the first to create and deploy existence itself.

“Whatever the fuck this world is I am.” 🧡
— Rudraji, Himalayan wereleopard assassin from The Endarkened Series

Molly soon throws up her hands. “This is so stupid,” she says in delightfully mangled English. “Existence is a notion that exists only in our minds. In fact, everything we experience or perceive or encounter emanates from our minds. Anyone knows that.”

The river pebble just sits there, but seems to agree.

“What is it these yogis say?” Molly asks her surroundings. “Neti neti…not this, not that.”

“Pas ceci, pas cela,” the pebble seems to say.

“Why do we dash around trying to figure out all these mysteries?” Molly continues. “When you’re in a dream do you stop and ask, ‘How does slime mold think without a brain?’ or ‘What in these hells is ball lightning?'”

“No, I don’t remember doing that,” the pebble seems to say.

“In the crucible of infinity all things melt into the exact same inconceivable silence.” 😶
— Crikey, the hardest working goon quoll in Moonbow

Molly flings a brilliant smile in the pebble’s direction. “Of course, you don’t. You know you’re in a dream so you don’t bother. You don’t stop to ponder moral luck or divine hiddenness or counterfactuals or scientific realism. You either run with the dream—which is okay, I suppose, that’s what most everybody does—or you try to wake up.”

“I would like to wake up,” the pebble seems to say.

“Wittgenstein would question whether authentic philosophical problems truly exist,” Chris Lux Hayes decides to interject.

Molly winks at the pebble before turning to face the author. “Why did you bring me here?” she inquires, dimming her mood, but somehow adding more sparkle to her eyes. “Philosophers and various other thought farmers are not defending a battle line, much less fighting a war. They are simply figments of their minds along with their worlds and their words and, of course, their very minds.”

“Get used to the idea, Dear Leader, your children are playing strip poker with God.” 👻
— Frost, genius daughter in Where My Stories Go to Die

The author tries with little luck to look intelligent and finds himself asking, “But what if we are awake and this is it?”

Molly ignores the question, switching her gaze back to the pebble. “Oh, you are such a clever little gem,” she giggles. “I will put you in my pocket.”

Before the author can concoct a sensible response, Molly snatches up the pebble and strolls away. She goes on talking, though, her bewitching voice trailing behind her and glowing with mirth.

“My pebble, your pebble, everybody’s pebble shows up without explaining how it is or why it is or even what it is,” she calls. “That does not matter. We are the owners of this impossible rock and always will be. Thought-free reality, awareness, and ecstasy make it so. How smart is that?”