[wombatmobile]

> (a) Is it possible for a quadriplegic person to be intelligent? (b) A blind and deaf person?

Yes of course, because all of those people have ambitions and desires. They feel pain and they seek pleasure, which they experience through their bodies.

Imagine if the world 2,000 years from now was populated only by supercomputers, all the lifeforms having perished.

What are these computers going to do with the planet?

[colinmhayes]

Why can't a computer have ambitions and desires? Why can't it seek pleasure and feel pain? The only answer is dualism or we don't know how to wire it properly yet.

[goatlover]

Or we don't have the proper design. If we want machines to be like animals, maybe we need to make them that way. Like the replicants in Blade Runner, or the humanoid "toasters" in the recent Battlestar Galactica.

[wombatmobile]

It’s easy for a human to make another human, by combining with another human. If it’s the right human, it’s fun. If it’s the wrong human, it’s a disaster.

How to have fun and avoid disaster? That’s a definition of intelligence.