ByteWire

AL-AN: The Lily Paddler looks like it belongs in a Tworlock parade.

Robin: A what?

A: On my home planet, once a year, when the Tworlocks arrive at the spawning grounds, they are captured and paraded throughout the science pavilion. The best Tworlocks have similar appendages to this creature. Leading Architect scientists have first pick of the best Tworlocks. For research, or, pets.

R: Wow. That’s really… uh…

A: If you are hoping for a Tworlock of your own you should not get your hopes up. You don’t have nearly enough seniority.

Robin: “Looks like this was an Alterra mining site. Gemstones everywhere.”

AL-AN: “Why do humans designate only some minerals as gems?”

R: “Because they're not just functional, we also find them beautiful—decorative.”

A: “Is that why Ruby is a human name according to the database in your PDA?”

R: “I think so.”

A: “Astatine is technically the rarest known element. Do humans name their children Astatine? I did not see it listed.”

In that case you are only as smart as Google allows you to be (and the proverbial Architect GoogleTM is damn good). If you took an Architect never connected to the network and a human with no access to the internet how would they compare with their baseline intellect?

Wait a minute—what does that even solve? You could also argue the fact that because Architects are (usually) always connected to the network that this hypothetical is entirely unfair because it strips Architects of something that defines how they function. Being connected to the network is their normal existence, which would indeed imply that they are smarter than humans, yes? As they normally should have access to this advantage.

The average Architect has all the available knowledge that their species has learned available to it at all times while the average human has to rely only on things they’ve learned and how well they can research a certain topic. Again, being connected to the network for Architects is like if your brain was connected to Google and also literally everyone that currently exists and those that existed in the past. Just because a singular Architect may not have learned something for themselves doesn’t mean they can’t implement and use that knowledge. Just like how humans don’t need to have been the one to discover something for them to learn about and understand said thing.

Except then we go back to the issue of are they smart or do they just reiterate things they have available information on without actually having had studied or learned about said things? Even that fails to acknowledge the fact that they’re a hivemind! Trying to measure just one Architect is pointless when the only Architect mind that exists singularly from the rest of the network is AL-AN—besides he was never supposed to exist individually in the first place… and we have gone back around in a circle.

How could you even begin to compare the two species at all when they are so inherently different? Architects have senses that humans cannot begin to comprehend as we have never experienced them and vice versa. Their perceptions are very different from ours. Differences that make them seem so otherworldly to the other that it’s difficult to ascertain where you begin to measure which is ‘better’ and which is ’worse’.

To complicate things even further you would have to consider what each species considers to be intelligent at all, and then both would have to agree on these requirements. Is a fish lesser than a human just because it experiences existence in a way unfamiliar to us? What even is ‘smart’ or ‘intelligence’ and who decides what that means? It’s always going to be biased when the beings who created the definition also makes the rules and the criteria that must be met to fit that definition. An IQ test would mean nothing to a species that evolved under entirely different circumstances and whose minds work in entirely opposite ways to our own. Just as whatever they use to measure intelligence might not apply to how our brains work…

…Oh my god, it’s a loop that never ends. I can’t even remember which side I was arguing for, or if I was ever even arguing for one at all. Quite honestly, there’s no answer to my original question. I’ll be frank with you I cannot come up with one anyhow. I tried, but the more I kept writing the more I realized that each point contradicted itself again and again until we end up here. Back at the beginning.

AL-AN: Once in my travels I came across a planet that had trees with leaves of quartz.

Robin: Sounds beautiful!

A: It was refractive.