Todor's answer to:
Why do some intelligent people believe intelligence equates power?
Not only is it not true in general, it's not even true within human societies.
The people with the most power are not the most intelligent.
The most intelligent people generally stay away from the levers of power.
Funnily, the intelligent people who believe intelligence equates power are not particularly powerful themselves.
They are the ones who believe artificial superintelligence is going to dominate humanity simply because of its intelligence.
This relies on a bunch of wrong assumptions.
1. Intelligence is a scalar metric: it's not. One entity can be smart about some things and not so smart about others. A tiger can be smart enough to eat a human.
2. The complexity of the real world is irrelevant: then explain why a simple virus can kill you.
3. Intelligent beings necessarily want to dominate. The desire to dominate only exists among some social species. Non-social intelligent species have no desire to dominate others (e.g. Orangutans, octopuses...). That's not even true within the human species.
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28.9.2026: Todor: They do, for example for two reasons: first, because they may "understand", observe, feel correctly that "Power overrides intelligence", and second: because they are *APES*, i.e."social animals" (see below), they are inclined to connect and conflate power, especially over other individuals, "agents" from the group and [cognitive] intelligence; and also they do not really understand that cognitive aspect of intelligence - cognition, including the reflective thought as well, self-knowledge; they also make the common error: confusing *subordination*, submissiveness, sometimes "adaptability" with intelligence*. This is the "intelligence" of a dog - dogs are considered "intelligent", because they can be trained to follow commands by their masters; cats are harder or they cannot be trained at all, "therefore, they are less intelligent" - in fact they are *less obedient*.
You are right in the message, however "ideas are worth "dime a dozen"" (your words), and yet again these ideas are already well explained in the AGI literature, at least starting up to 25 years ago by the "Prodigy of AGI". A recent take on that is the paper called:* "Power Overrides Intelligence", SIGI-2025 (& AGI List 2025),
(PDF) Power Overrides Intelligence: Answers to Matt Mahoney's summary of LessWrong's "The Problem" regarding the so called existential risks of Artificial General Intelligence and Superintelligence in August 2025. Available from:
* https://www.researchgate.net/publication/407308848_Power_Overrides_Intelligence_Answers_to_Matt_Mahoney's_summary_of_LessWrong's_The_Problem_regarding_the_so_called_existential_risks_of_Artificial_General_Intelligence_and_Superintelligence_in_August_2
It was an answer to MIRI/"Lesswrong"/Yudkowski, "John" Connor from Eleuther etc. and their followers.
Some times later Gary Marcus rediscovered it and repeated the title, answering a question that the danger is not intelligence, it is "Power". Others follow.
This paper was a recent answer extension of explanations in the letter to one Oxford's institute, February 2012:
* Philosophical and Interdisciplinary Discussion on General Intelligence, AGI and Superintelligence Safety and Human Moral | Cognitive Origins of the Concepts of Human Soul and its Immortality | Free Will and How it Originates Cognitively | Animate Being and Soul and the Cognitive Reason for the Believe that "Thinking Machines can't have a Soul and Consciousness" | Technology Making us more Humane | The Egoism of Humanity | And more, 2.2012
https://artificial-mind.blogspot.com/2012/02/philosophical-and-interdisciplinary.html
(...)
Some of the points, e.g. the Terminator's real message (expressed in T2's conclusion) is explained even in the foundational works from the Theory of Universe and Mind from 2001-2002.
...
However:
"Yann: 1. Intelligence is a scalar metric: it's not. One entity can be smart about some things and not so smart about others. A tiger can be smart enough to eat a human."
The entity can, but the "superintelligence" and AGI is supposed to cover enough domains, e.g. have enough input and output modalities and possess the "general" intermodal capability over them.
It is true that average *humans* and some "talented" ones general intelligence have severe resource limitations and their generalization hits walls quickly (seethe mentioned TOUM, 2001-2004, and early 2010s publications up to now), but that doesn't mean that "there is no general intelligence" ~ general algorithms and methods, given value-free raw data - one of the keys of general intelligence is the capability to predict, and also to do it *in a progressive* manner (to predict better), if this GI involves "learning". Regarding your work, "Path to autonomous" ("dime a dozen") you seem to agree, and it is already demonstrated.
However, there could be limitations in data and memory, and the connection between different modalities, which prevent the agent from going higher (also, there are "swarms" and accumulation and tools - human's intelligence is outsourced as well).
The general cognitive algorithms still may be similar, but if one brain or system doesn't have enough resources, steps, levels of processing, memory, speed (given an allowed range) and harsh early "interrupts" are issued, it cannot reach to particular structures and generalizations - the residual data loses all its detail and features, the higher level cannot discriminate or make more precise or more broad classification etc. , the actuators are not precise enough etc., or even it just cannot *remember* the data - human's phonological loop is about 1.5-2 s for normal people. Their low-level auditory processing or "microphones" in the ears may be not fine enough to detect the patterns for proper "musical intelligence" or their neocortical areas for fine motor skills, motor, premotor, supplementary motor, cerebellum may have too few neurons, be not myelinated properly at young age etc.; their visual areas may be also lacking proper volume and connections in the associative areas etc. - that is why they cannot "understand" drawing etc. However this is not a principled limitation of "intelligence", the principles of processing and generalization are the same as all these modalities are just data, motor outputs are also just data which maps or reconstructs the inputs.
"Yann: 2. The complexity of the real world is irrelevant: then explain why a simple virus can kill you."
Not only this, and the complexity applies for different ranges and spaces.
"Power Overrides intelligence", August 2025:
"""... The bacteria and viruses are supposedly "dumber" than humans in human measures, or say gamma radiation or temperature, but at low level at molecular scale, they are more powerful and "more intelligent" by the given definition, they have "higher predictive" (and more importantly CAUSAL) power over molecules in their locality than the molecules of the human body, so they can kill humans and humanity with 0 points on the LLM tests."""
Viruses are "simple" in *some* scale, however they have higher causal power and in some other scale, involving the general measure of prediction, they actually could be viewed as "more intelligent" than the cells when they "out-predict" them, but the dangerous part is the "out-causing" and "over-causing" them, overriding the cell's will.
This case is also an example of the long chain of transfers of the Will through the scales - the Mind or "brain" cannot control directly at molecular level, no matter how "smart" it is at macro level. In order to do, a huge amount of auxiliary "by-effect" technologies have to be developed, involving an enormous amount of other humans and machines - the whole ecosystem.
"""Yann: 3. Intelligent beings necessarily want to dominate. The desire to dominate only exists among some social species. Non-social intelligent species have no desire to dominate others (e.g. Orangutans, octopuses...). That's not even true within the human species."
Right, this is a projection of the "aligners", they reflect what their type and their masters type of beings are, and project it to every "AI", "SAI" or potential "aliens".
Another point, extending the "domination", explained in another letter to AGI List, 2026 (but this point is not understand by many of the so called "intelligent" people about which you talk also - "social ANIMAL" or species actually mean hierarchies of *subordination*. Humans are selected, trained and forced to *subordinate* and the ones who climb the hierarchies are of that type, they are the preferred for the "stable" operation of the swarm: two roles: either tyrants or submissive and instrumental to the will of the tyrants (the "alphas").
See also Stanislaw Lem's "Golem XIV" - an LLM-like superintelligence and the appendix volume on Science Fiction, Futurology, Cybernetics and Transhumanism from The Prophets of the Thinking Machines. #sf #tosh1 #prophets
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