Comprehensivist Wednesdays: Why Intelligence Is Not Understanding

In this meetup, we’ll continue our exploration by asking a simple question with big implications: what should count as intelligence?

We often treat intelligence as a single scale with more speed, more data, and more capability. John von Neumann draws a sharper distinction. He shows what intelligence can do and what it does not become through scaling alone.

We will look at intelligence as a layered structure that is often collapsed into one word:

1. Data: Raw differences and signals, sensitivity without interpretation.
2. Information: Structured data that reduces uncertainty. Patterns emerge, but meaning does not.
3. Competence: Skillful, reliable performance shaped by feedback. Behavior works.
4. Intelligence: Flexible competence across contexts including generalization, adaptation, and strategy.

Learning operates within the lower stack: it is derived from data to information, from information to competence, and from competence to intelligence by improving pattern detection, performance, and generalization. It improves reliability, efficiency, and flexibility, but it does not establish justification or responsibility.

This stack explains much of what we call intelligence today, but it also reveals a limit. Even at its highest level, intelligence remains performance based. It tells us what works, not why it is right.

For clarity, this discussion intentionally stops at intelligence. It does not include understanding, knowledge, or wisdom. Understanding involves giving reasons. Knowledge requires truth and justification. Wisdom concerns values, ends, and judgment. These are not higher degrees of intelligence but different kinds of capacity altogether, which we will continue to explore at a later date.

This conversation is part of a broader inquiry into judgment, decision making, and what it means to be human. If we equate intelligence with performance alone, we risk losing the distinction between success and understanding, output and responsibility.

We will be focusing on only a very small and specific portion of The Computer and the Brain. There is no need to read the book in advance to participate meaningfully in the meetup.

Source:
Von Neumann
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ubxiqkZEoBcRBWJdqakYbKY5IhXNtsvO/view?usp=sharing
Relevant pages: page 58 and page 133–136
Hinton - Limits and Potential
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n4IQOBka8bc
Relevant segment: 8:00 min –13:00 min mark only
Chomsky - The False Promise
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Io3r27m059HoImUK9xxYYtjBKTpIVsL3/edit
R.L. Ackoff - From Data to Wisdom
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1sVrGzQtLsLOKx2a3mOQJN5Cju9DsKKKE/view
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CJ Fearnley's book "Collaborating for Comprehensivity," is a unique exploration of comprehensive thinking, inquiry, and collaboration, is now available on Amazon in paperback, Kindle, and free PDF formats.

1. The free PDF version can be downloaded here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1bapsUhFtRDSPdAW6zRBe7omBlcghz-yi/
2. Available on Amazon Kindle for the lowest price Amazon allows of $0.99 here: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CW1K18B5/
3. Available as a paperback on Amazon for the lowest price Amazon allows of $8.31 here: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0D11GHC9V/

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Welcome to the series "Comprehensivist Wednesdays." Transdisciplinarity, Renaissance humanism, homo universalis, and Polymathy are some of the ways of describing this approach which Buckminster Fuller called Comprehensivity and described as “macro-comprehensive and micro-incisive.”

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