Hello all,
Here I am living in the Netherlands, 2019 AD. In my perception there is no two-way explicit communication with non-human intelligence, no space travel. Artifical intelligence is in it’s infancy (at least, as seen by the general public). All my evidence to today tells me I this current objective reality is certain.
But now I am asking myself from a rationality perspective: How is this perception of reality is bounded by my intelligence (in whatever way my biological system has implemented this intelligence) and (unaware) filtering of evidence?
If I were able to enhance my intelligence by just 1 bit, changing some personal absolute certainty into something probabilistic, what would be the effect on my objective reality? What would be the effect on our shared objective reality? What experiment could be designed to find out?
Reality is first, our perceptions of it only come later. So, if whatever you currently believe to be true, already is true, adding extra intelligence should not change it.
But if, whatever you currently believe to be true, already is false, there is likely some evidence, and the increased intelligence could give you more ideas where to look for that possible evidence.
For example, if aliens don’t exist, increasing your IQ to 500 will not magically conjure them. It can only allow you to better evaluate the existing knowledge, and design smarter experiments… but at the end, the conclusion will be the same. Only now you will know that you believe what you believe for better reasons than previously, because now you also checked X, Y, and Z.