One perspective I’m circling right now about this topic is that maybe we’re coming to realize as a society that what we considered intelligence (or symbolic intelligence whatever you wanna call that thing that we measure with traditional IQ tests, verbal fluency, etc) is actually a far less essential cognitive aspect to us as humans then we had previously assumed and is in fact, far more mechanical in nature than we had formerly believed.

This ties with how I sometimes describe current generation AI as a form of mechanized intelligence: like Babbage’s calculating machine, but scaled up to be able to represent all kinds of classes of things.

And in this perspective that I’m circling these days where I’m currently coming down on it is maybe the effect of this realization will be something like the dichotomy outlined in the Dune series: namely, that between mechanized intelligence embodied by mentats and the more intuitive and prescient aspects of cognition embodied by the Benni Jessarit and Paul’s lineage.

A simple but direct way to describe this transition in perspective may be that we come to see what we formally thought of as intelligence in the West/reductive tradition as a form of mechanized calculation that it’s possible to outsource to automatic non-biological processes, and we start to lean in more deeply to the more intuitive and prescient aspects of cognition.

One thing I’m reminded of is how Indian yogic texts describe various aspects of mind.

I’m not sure if it’s a one-to-one mapping because I’m not across that material but merely the idea of distinguishing between different aspects of mind is something with precedent; and central to that is the idea of removing association between self identity and the aspects of mind.

And so maybe one of the effects for us as a society will be something akin to that.