Questions tagged [intelligence]

For questions discussing some level of self-awareness.

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59 votes
9 answers
20k views

Could underwater living organism create technology?

Could underwater creatures with the intelligence of human cave men or possibly the intelligence of apes create technology (that is, more complex technology comparable to what we have now rather than ...
user93's user avatar
  • 1,180
50 votes
16 answers
7k views

Could a sedentary organism develop intelligence, or even sentience?

Similar to Could Plants Develop Sentience? but slightly more general: I'm not interested in plants in particular, but want a more general understanding of the effect of motion on intelligence and vice ...
Ash's user avatar
  • 44.8k
44 votes
18 answers
9k views

Why did dragons evolve to be smart?

Before you comment "dragons can't happen", we've been there before. Based on the question linked above, assume dragons are scientifically plausible. You may change what you need about the ...
Zxyrra's user avatar
  • 20.6k
42 votes
16 answers
9k views

What could cause an avian species to become intelligent?

There have been a few questions about an intelligent avian species lately and they have gotten me thinking. It seems to me that it would be hard for an avian species to evolve to be more intelligent ...
overactor's user avatar
  • 5,585
40 votes
11 answers
6k views

A world without natural time measures

An intelligent race evolves on a planet with no moon or axial tilt, which is tidally locked to its star, and has a very hazy atmosphere. So there are no seasons, no day/night cycle, and the stars are ...
Michael Borgwardt's user avatar
38 votes
18 answers
12k views

In a cemetery, what evidence could be found that humans were intelligent and had technology?

So, a group of archeologists from the year 4978 have uncovered something strange. They’ve been searching for the missing link between them and their primordial ancestors, and they seem to have found ...
MindX's user avatar
  • 879
37 votes
17 answers
12k views

Can the number of letters in alphabet suggest how advanced civilization is?

Let's suppose we intercepted a message in an unknown language. We were not able to decipher it, but we were able to decode it. Meaning we know the letters but not the meaning of the words in the text. ...
lsrom's user avatar
  • 566
36 votes
20 answers
12k views

Are there any mathematics that could only be learned by very few people?

I'm worldbuilding a situation where new drug increases IQ when given to preschool children. Unfortunately only 1% of the recipients get the benefits, the rest risk their development being stunted. As ...
Epipihany's user avatar
  • 385
35 votes
16 answers
9k views

Best species to breed to intelligence

I’ve included more background below, but the TL;DR is that you’re a lone immortal who’s decided to breed some species of animal to a human-level intelligence (over the course of hundreds of thousands ...
Kofthefens's user avatar
30 votes
20 answers
8k views

Two or more advanced civilizations aren't even aware of each other

Humans have achieved FTL and have colonized several planets in our greater stellar neighborhood. While we have discovered several planets that harbor life as we know it, we have not yet discovered ...
Adam's user avatar
  • 747
30 votes
7 answers
7k views

How much smarter would bred humans become?

I'm building a setting in a fictional Latin American country which is under military rule. The junta starts a breeding program in the late 40's with help from unscrupulous escaped Nazi scientists. ...
Geonosis's user avatar
  • 327
30 votes
12 answers
5k views

How would you avoid making the ability to join a hive-mind very overpowered?

In a sci-fi setting, suppose there is a species that has a very strong cybernetic enhancement, to the point where they can actually form a kind of pseudo-hive-mind, while still retaining their ...
user1582024's user avatar
30 votes
10 answers
4k views

How could humans recognize another species as sentient / intelligent?

There is this fantasy in fiction that humans meet another species and figure out that it's intelligent. This usually happens with dragons, dolphins, aliens, collectively intelligent plancton... But ...
Sheraff's user avatar
  • 12.4k
27 votes
12 answers
7k views

Why have my intelligent pigeons not taken over the continent?

My story takes place in a post-apocalyptic world where there are no humans. On the island of Manhattan, which has been abandoned for a long time, there are communities of animals with human-level ...
See UnderscoreGee's user avatar
24 votes
11 answers
2k views

How would an intelligent forest control and direct its animal minions?

The Wold (Forest) is one vast, interconnected, possibly digital mind. The mind is primarily built of one cloned individual of a single plant species, but there are over a dozen 'helper' sub-minds and ...
Serban Tanasa's user avatar
24 votes
5 answers
7k views

Could plants develop intelligence?

I know the idea seems a bit far fetched but it's something I believe is common is science fiction and fantasy stories. I remember the talking trees of Zelda: Ocarina of time and of course, Tolkien's ...
Vincent's user avatar
  • 16.8k
23 votes
9 answers
6k views

How fast could a directed breeding program turn another Earth species intelligent?

There is no genetic engineering allowed, just selected breeding and offspring selection. There is no genome sequencing, imagine medieval technology plus mendelian principles. The laws of heredity are ...
Serban Tanasa's user avatar
22 votes
23 answers
5k views

Is there a practical way of making democratic-like system skewed towards competence?

There were here some discussion concerning using IQ or paid taxes as proxy of citizens merit, for purposes of making some a bit more meritocratic system. While some objections I'd consider excessive (...
Shadow1024's user avatar
  • 10.1k
20 votes
12 answers
6k views

Would super-sized humans be super-intelligent?

A mad, egomaniac, scientist has developed a way of extending the natural growth of humans to create an army of 20ft (6 meter) tall soldiers. Physiologically, they are three times the size of normal ...
user avatar
20 votes
10 answers
2k views

Creature with a non-centralized brain

I've always found animal intelligence to be fascinating, particularly that of the cephalopods, some of which show some pretty remarkable talents for tool usage, mimicry, and pattern recognition. ...
apaul's user avatar
  • 10.6k
20 votes
5 answers
748 views

An equilibrium for competing sapient species

What scientifically, socially and logically plausible mechanisms allow two (or more) sapient land-based species (either closely placed on the phylogenetic tree, such as Homo sapiens and Homo ...
rumguff's user avatar
  • 4,198
19 votes
14 answers
4k views

Sapient as juveniles, monstrous as adults

I'm playing around with an idea in my head for a speculative species and I'd appreciate any help with a problem I've encountered trying to make them plausible. Let's say I have a species of animal, X. ...
Other Worlds's user avatar
19 votes
9 answers
3k views

Is intelligence the "natural" product of evolution?

Think about a scenario in which, on a given planet, a complex life form has already evolved. In your opinion, what are the odds, for this complex form, to evolve towards intelligence? With the ...
Trip Tucker's user avatar
19 votes
2 answers
2k views

Could we find a dinosaur civilization in space?

Imagine that humankind finally takes wing and reaches out into the heavens to claim its vast cosmic birthright ... ... only to find that a previous wave of dinosaurs from Earth, who left ~65 million ...
Serban Tanasa's user avatar
18 votes
16 answers
11k views

Everyone gets an IQ of 300. What are the downsides? [closed]

Scientists developed a method to transfer intelligence. However, something went wrong and everyone got an IQ of 300 on the current scale. And that means EVERYONE: Stephen Hawking, Donald Trump, Pamela ...
Nzall's user avatar
  • 8,439
18 votes
4 answers
2k views

Does the inclusion of common non-humanoid alien species make rare humanoid alien species more believable?

In a Sci-Fi setting, if there is a vast amount of non-humanoid intelligent life in the universe, like perhaps 20 or 30 species, would this make 4 or 5 species that look similar to each other, or ...
Connor Dawn's user avatar
18 votes
7 answers
3k views

How Do I Develop a Society of Geniuses?

Goal: Achieve a society where the average person is a creative and/or analytical and/or strategic genius and/or physically phenomenal (as measured by our current standards, of course). Steps: ...
Serban Tanasa's user avatar
18 votes
9 answers
7k views

How would an intelligent civilization evolve in the floor of a deep ocean world?

Defining what is a super intelligent civilization: An industrial civilization that invest on scientific progress and that builds and manipulates computers, robots and nano-machines, has efficient ...
Victor Stafusa - BozoNaCadeia's user avatar
17 votes
14 answers
4k views

How can a sapient species build an advanced civilization, while remaining on one continent?

The world I'm building contains two sapient species; one is about Mesolithic-level in terms of technology, while the other is about as advanced as the ancient Egyptians or Sumerians. However, they're ...
SealBoi's user avatar
  • 14.9k
17 votes
9 answers
3k views

Would Earth's extraterrestrial colonies have a higher average intelligence?

In the MARS series of National Geographic, an organisation is steadily colonizing Mars by sending a handful of people every few months. However, these aren't ordinary people, of course; they are top-...
Thomas Wagenaar's user avatar
16 votes
25 answers
4k views

How could a really intelligent species be stopped from developing?

How could a really intelligent species be kept from developing? For clarification, this species is the only creature of intelligent thought on the planet and they have a population of about 50 million ...
Prime Price's user avatar
16 votes
6 answers
3k views

Plant based lifeforms: brain equivalent?

In lots of science fiction works that visit other planets we are often introduced to intelligent plant based lifeforms, be they humanoid looking or potted plant looking. I'm curious as to what part ...
EveryBitHelps's user avatar
15 votes
16 answers
6k views

How can the intelligence of a super-intelligent person be assessed?

One of the features of my story is a psychological examination of a certain person who lost his memory (found on a bench in a city park with complete amnesia) and after a short examination was taken ...
Frank Thompson 4's user avatar
15 votes
11 answers
4k views

What evolutionary pressure would lead to parrots or crows developing human-tier intelligence?

Several avian species such as African grey parrots or the New Caledonian crow have demonstrated tool use, the ability to use new information in separate contexts, and other types of cognition that ...
Qwokker's user avatar
  • 471
15 votes
8 answers
3k views

Can a lone alien entity develop an internal language?

I'm imagining a hypothetical lone organism on a planet. Something like Avatar, the movie's Eywa. I am envisioning it as a massive organism covering the entire surface of the planet but biologically ...
Aditya Prakash's user avatar
15 votes
6 answers
2k views

Could plants develop sentience?

This question is almost exactly like Could plants develop intelligence, but now I wonder (how) could plant life develop sentience, to the point where it becomes as intelligent as humans? Is a brain ...
Xandar The Zenon's user avatar
14 votes
9 answers
2k views

How would my creatures handle groups without a strong concept of numbers?

I'm thinking about a species that is at the intelligence level of proto-humans. They have limited language but can still discuss concrete things with a little bit of abstraction. For instance, their ...
Michael Stachowsky's user avatar
14 votes
5 answers
3k views

How To Subtly Imply Intelligence

Since a couple of people seem confused, the players are there to purchase tech made by human colonists. The tech was made by exploiting the native alien fauna. The ecosystem of the planet is well ...
Disgusting's user avatar
  • 2,101
13 votes
5 answers
1k views

Could intelligent life on Earth have been seeded by precursor aliens?

This idea comes up quite frequently in science fiction, but there has not been a question about it yet on Worldbuilding.SE. Is it possible that intelligent life was brought to Earth by an alien ...
bazola's user avatar
  • 551
13 votes
7 answers
989 views

Reality Check: Plausibility of a new kind of sentient alien race: Split prehensile tail, quadrupedal, very floofy!

In building an sentient alien that is unique among the sea of humanoids, I aspire to explore quadrupeds. For a quick visual reference, this is what I have: proportions are definitely off, but in ...
Duncan's user avatar
  • 131
12 votes
10 answers
6k views

Would human intelligence evolve if humans had access to infinite food?

In a world with infinite food (each organism had access to an infinite amount of food/energy from another universe), would human intelligence develop through some evolutionary mechanism? If resources ...
Estbot z's user avatar
  • 121
12 votes
8 answers
2k views

How would humans treat dogs that are more intelligent than humans and can speak?

Suppose that there is a species of dogs that are much more intelligent than humans and can speak. The humans know that the animal is smarter too. The only reason these animals can't rule over humans ...
michaelpri's user avatar
  • 1,369
12 votes
4 answers
661 views

How could a climate-protection organization breed sapient, tool-developing cooperating Cephalopoda?

I am working on a scenario where a climate protection organization tries to breed sapient Cephalopoda as a help in their fight against climate change. The breeding goals of the evolving species are as ...
Olga Maria's user avatar
11 votes
4 answers
1k views

Myelination in cephalopods

I am a complete amateur regarding biology, so please forgive me if this question is a little stupid. Could we ever create squids that have human-level intelligence and could serve as a replacement in ...
Qoray's user avatar
  • 1,089
11 votes
4 answers
2k views

Would spacefaring aliens have to be roughly as intelligent as humans?

The idea is simple, our intellegence is so far above a chimp or bonobo as to make us something different. There are things we can do intuitively that no Bonobo or chimp will be able to, and because ...
dsollen's user avatar
  • 33.5k
11 votes
7 answers
741 views

What implications might there be of mycelium being self aware?

This is for a novel I'm writing. The basic premise is that massive networks of mycelium running under the soil combine to form a decentralised intelligence that has been managing life and conditions ...
Sven Carpenter's user avatar
11 votes
2 answers
2k views

Intelligent Animals Integrating into (Western) Human Society

So for the purposes of this question, the following items are already determined by our world: The humans and human society are in very beginning of an Industrial Revolution almost identical to our ...
C. VanHorn's user avatar
  • 2,189
10 votes
3 answers
314 views

Solving the vulnerabilities of a plant-based life-form's civilization: sunlight, roots, and hibernation

Say you are a plant-based life-form (imagine a walking tree). You have roots and leaves. You have two main vulnerabilities: You need sunlight on your leaves for photosynthesis to get energy. You ...
Inbar Rose's user avatar
  • 1,886
9 votes
4 answers
625 views

Stone-Age AI - A Thought Experiment

Suppose superintelligent AI is possible. Is there any reason its code couldn't be executed by stone-age people rather than a computer? E.g., imagine an order of monks reading and executing commands in ...
Dave's user avatar
  • 443
9 votes
3 answers
257 views

Uncovering superhuman cetacean intelligence

My world is as close as possible to contemporary real life under the constraint that orcas (and maybe other cetaceans) are significantly smarter than humans. What is smarts? We define it as ...
Kevin Kostlan's user avatar