[smoyer]

I agree whole-heartedly ... but 90% of the researchers in any field only want to see studies that strengthen or extend their existing mental frameworks because it's a lot more work to fix the framework of knowledge they've built over the years.

I've seen behaviors that looked intelligent in some very simple algorithms ... why wouldn't biology be able to create chemical versions of those algorithms?

[zxcdw]

Is Conway's Game of Life form of intelligence in the same sense that a plant can be "intelligent" for making seemingly optimal "decisions"?

Whatever the answer is, it's almost certainly a different kind of "intelligence" what we as humans seem to have. But, what if we apply this same "algorithmic intelligence" to a sophisticated enough neural network (or similar algorithmic construct) which simulates a human brain which is something we consider "truly intelligent", is this network intelligent, despite it being "merely" algorithmically intelligent like the Conway's Game of Life? And if not, what is "intelligent", if the output of the network (akin to human brain) shows intelligence?

The bottom line is, that we need to be very rigorous with what we mean by different forms of intelligence -- it seems to me that "intelligence" is merely an umbrella term for various kinds of optimal/meaningful behavior. (I've seen people argue that nature itself is "intelligent" because for example water finds the most optimal course over the shurface which it flows and so forth)