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Comment by infinite_spin | Hacker News Reader

> Those are distillations of existing knowledge.

Definitions are "formal statements of the meaning or significance of a word, phrase, idiom, etc" (https://www.dictionary.com/browse/definition)

> They are necessarily behind the status quo.

The existing state or condition would be what is written in the dictionary, not whatever personal definitions you've constructed.

> "You can't call this newfangled contraption a computer, because a computer is a person!"

Seems like a straw man. A computer is not a mammal, no matter how much you twist a set of definitions.

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> A computer is not a mammal, no matter how much you twist a set of definitions.

I’m not the person you replied to, but I believe they’re referring to the occupation of “computer”:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_(occupation)

So yes, at one time all computers were mammals.

The people who write dictionaries generally take a descriptivist approach, that’s why slang terms enter the dictionary after they start to become popular.

The state of the art of human knowledge would be another step ahead of the common use of any language.

That's an interesting take, and I can see how "computer" could refer to a human a hundred years ago, but they also mentioned "status quo", which should indicate that a reasonable person should use a modern definition.

Again I’m not the person who wrote the comment, but I think they were exaggerating for effect and maybe lost the audience in doing so. While “computer” has meant the same thing for many decades now, the term “intelligence” really does seem like a moving goalpost?

I think it's only a moving goalpost if you can show that the goalpost has moved with a new definition that fits our current usage of it. The people saying "this isn't intelligence", and then claim "we don't even know what intelligence is", are encouraged to offer such a definition.

Several decades ago, "computer" was a moving goalpost due to the invention of the electronic computer, and then the digital computer.

yet those movements came with clear definitions. If you have a new definition for intelligence, which isn't just designed as a definitional dodge, then please provide one

Imagine you're the first one to invent a digital electronic computer. You call it a computer, and I go on Tinkerer News and post (by carrier pigeon) "ummm akshully computers are people????" - which one of us would be adding value and which one subtracting it?

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