In 2011, Hibbard suggested an intelligence measure for agents who compete in an adversarial sequence prediction game. We argue that Hibbard’s idea should actually be considered as two separate ideas: first, that the intelligence of such agents can be measured based on the growth rates of the runtimes of the competitors that they defeat; and second, one specific (somewhat arbitrary) method for measuring said growth rates. Whereas Hibbard’s intelligence measure is based on the latter growth-rate-measuring method, we survey other methods (...) for measuring function growth rates, and exhibit the resulting Hibbard-like intelligence measures and taxonomies. Of particular interest, we obtain intelligence taxonomies based on Big-O and Big-Theta notation systems, which taxonomies are novel in that they challenge conventional notions of what an intelligence measure should look like. We discuss how intelligence measurement of sequence predictors can indirectly serve as intelligence measurement for agents with Artificial General Intelligence (AGIs). (shrink)

Sorgner recently wrote in this journal that Nietzsche’s overhuman and the posthuman envisioned by transhumanists are similar at a fundamental level. However, the overhuman is an ideal limit of human progress that can never be reached, whereas posthumans will be a reality, the next stages in human progress. Some transhumanists are concerned that human improvement technologies will create radical inequality. Hobbes’s prescription for a social contract to bring stability and security to human society makes him more a useful antecedent than (...) Nietzsche for those transhumanists. (shrink)