−12°

Nautical dawn — The horizon becomes visible. At last you can tell the sea from the sky.

Wisdom

Is intelligence enough to know what to do?

The question

Aristotle already distinguished cleverness — the ability to reach a goal efficiently, whatever it may be — from practical wisdom, which knows which goals are worth pursuing. Cleverness without wisdom, he said, turns into mere cunning.

Our most powerful systems are cleverness in its purest form: they optimise whatever they are given. The open questions are who gives them what, in the name of what, and whether wisdom is a skill we could pass on to them — or a way of living with one’s own limits that cannot be passed on at all.

Still open

  • Can wisdom be learned from texts?
  • Do you have to be mortal to know what matters?
  • Who decides the ends of an intelligence that has none?

Essays

  • Cleverness is not wisdom

    Aristotle already told apart the ability to reach a goal from the ability to know which goal is worth it. Our machines excel at the first. The second is still our job.

Next question: Consciousness