Meta-intelligence
A deeper understanding of the problem-solving processes can help explain what causes the variability in quality when it comes to solutions and outcomes. It is the construct of meta-intelligence that proposes to represent how understanding, control, and coordination work between four different types of "solutions" (creative, analytical, practical, and wisdom).
Research suggests that constraints on a person are influenced by three levels:
individual (metacomponents)
contextual (the type of approach used under different circumstances)
interactive (the interplay between individual and contextual constraints)
The concept of "meta-intelligence" will help explain why some solutions to problems are better than others because they're more comprehensive and address many issues at once. They are viewed from the “meta” perspective, enabling “computation” on a much higher level, instead of dealing with fragmentary low-level problem solving.
Affinity to the Meta Spheres
The purpose of this article is to discuss meta-intelligence as a new way to approach problem solving. Inherent in the concept are creative, analytical, practical and wisdom-based approaches that help individuals identify and solve problems.
Some are naturally wired towards meta spheres and others focus elsewhere – on more fragmented realities. It’s a matter of abilities instead of skills, which are a part of the human complexes that usually remains stable over a lifetime.
But meta intelligence doesn’t necessarily have to be human. It is predicted that in the next 30 years, humanity will undergo a major transformation of intelligence contexts and applications, possibly giving birth to new species. This sounds a bit too far, but thinking about meta intelligence only within human contexts is not quite “meta”. Not at all actually, because its nature is transcendental, i.e. transcends human-centric perspective.
Growth towards meta-intelligence will be (or is) exponential. It is possibly an indicator of upcoming symbiosis of metabolic and replicative organisms incorporating biotechnology into living things. Today, it is happening at an accelerated rate. Peter Diamandis noted that it indicates moving away from a simple Darwinian evolution that happens via natural selection, turning into intelligent direction.
As we rapidly head towards human-scale transformation, next we are approaching new milestones that are defined by ascension of intelligence – a future of hyper-connectivity among each other via cloud.
Rise of Hyperconnectivity – Rise of Hyper-intelligence
Directing humanity’s evolution may evoke thoughts about authoritative overtake. While this is certainly not out of the picture,
But for now, let’s think that the aspect of directing is not led by a singular entity, but as a natural, self-organized phenomena of adaptation of biological processes. That is predicative of what is known to us and what (we assume) we observed. Or what scientists observed, those capable of large-scale long-term retrospective observations of evolutionary developments.
It is not entirely clear if humans are truly capable of long-term predictions due to their abstraction and complexity. To large-scale observers, the trend is clear as a predictive sequence of parallel events of other life on Earth, which involves emergence and convergence, merging and grouping. And thus, we observe four driving forces behind current evolutionary trends that involves human intelligence:
increased interconnectivity
brain-computer interface (BCI)
artificial intelligence (AI)
interplanetary exploration
Each subsequent point after the first is facilitating an even bigger increase of interconnectivity, allowing exponential growth of intelligence into hyper-intelligence for a more efficient use of information and energy. At an advanced stage, the total ratio of digital and biological compute will rise enough to form a cloud analogous to the multicellular life forms from 1.5 billions. It means a massive interconnection that will give rise to a new level of global collective consciousness – a new meta-intelligent organism.
Interactions of Cognitive Systems
The new meta-organism would be a new environmental hyper-connective context. According to the Sternerbg’s WICS model – wisdom-intelligence-creativity-synthesized – there is always an interplay among multiple aspects: creative, analytical, practical and wisdom-based. This interplay represents an intellectual approach towards problem solving and its dependence on environmental factors, which either enhances or diminishes effective problem solving. The more an intelligent entity is able to process complex matters, control and coordinate them, the closer it is to the meta levels of the intelligence. This is an example or a case of multiple agents interacting within one entity (being).
This was a rather novel view on intelligence, differing from the traditional or even some modern takes on intellectual skills that comprise problem solving in a broader definition. They are narrowly defined psychometric views considering predominantly analytical abilities, and focused on an intellectual functioning of a singular mind without consideration of possible effects of a hyper-connective hive mind.
From a more complex point of view, our cognitive systems are multiples and interacting within as well as produce adaptive responses to the environment. In a hyper-connective environment, we can assume interaction with other cognitive systems in a more profound way than just mentioning them as a part of “environment”. On the contrary to Sternberg’s model, Gardner systems model of multiple intelligences does not focus on envisioning separate intelligences (separate entities), but rather a completely interactive cognitive system. The executive agent enables a metacognitive process of creative, practical, analytical and wise thinking at large, but with a difference in the purpose in which they are employed, promoting system-cognitive interdependence among multiple entities.
The point being – meta-intelligence is used collaboratively. Within multiple agents within one entity and with other entities in the environment. Examples of this are research cases on group intelligence [1], collective intelligence [2], group creativity [3,4] and the wisdom of crowds [5]. The operative agents of meta-intelligence are administered through meta-components, which are not hierarchically organized. They form a heterarchy [A] – a structural model of unranked system organization, possessing a certain degree of unpredictability and without any fixed order. For meta-intelligence as inherently sequential, the aspects of processing as determined by the function of the problem that applies sequencing and resequencing, which leads to optimization of quality of the outcome.
To Summarize
The construct of meta-intelligence is applicable to understanding and coordination of multiple functions at the same time, on a large scale. That includes analytical, creative, practical and wisdom-based, out of which not all rely solely on quantitative (biological) computation. Meta-intelligence provides a way of operating within a wider range of functioning on the level of higher mental abilities. It is similar to drawing a comparison between perception and awareness. Perception contains a vectorial aspect of two entities, two-point equation of perceiver and the perceived. Awareness has an omnipresent quality and is not directly tied to sensory perception of something concrete. Being aware is a higher level octave of perceiving, because it touches upon the complex aspect of something that is being perceived, often without concretization of traits. When general intelligence is applied as a solution to convergent problems, which is there to recognize, define and narrow down (quantitative aspect). Meta-intelligence seeks solutions in creativity, wisdom, patterns of usage (qualitative aspect).
Meta-levels are more abstract, wider, non-localized, non-concrete and encompass more than concretely focused general intelligence. It is pure and divergent in nature.
Hyperconnective means more complexity and computation. It necessarily leads to having to elevate one’s perspective to the meta level, which will gradually become a new norm due to necessity. As global systems become more horizontal than vertical in hierarchy, it is a result of accumulation of information on lower dimensions, which can no longer be evaluated from former perspectives. These positions are drowned in informational complexities and require cultivation of meta-intelligent abilities.
[A] Heterarchy – system of organization where the elements of the organization are unranked (non-hierarchical) or where they possess the potential to be ranked a number of different ways [6].
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References:
[1] Williams, Wendy M., and Robert J. Sternberg (1988) Group intelligence: Why some groups are better than others. Intelligence 12: 351–77.
[2] Malone, Thomas W., and Anita W. Woolley (2020) Collective intelligence. In Cambridge Handbook of Intelligence, 2nd ed. Edited by Robert J. Sternberg. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 780–801.
[3] Paulus, Paul B., and Bernard A. Nijstad (2003) Group Creativity: Innovation through Collaboration. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
[4] Sawyer, R. Keith (2003) Group Creativity: Music, Theater, Collaboration. New York: Psychology Press.
[5] Surowiecki, J. (2005) The Wisdom of Crowds. Hamburg Germany: Anchor.
[6] Crumley, C.L. (1995) Heterachy and the Analysis of Complex Societies, Archeological Papers of the American Anthropological Association 6 (1): 1–5.