2006, Apr 12
Meta-Intelligence?
Now, what is that?
Easy. Consider managers and workers. Workers work. Managers manage. Workers produce the actual product. Managers do their dumb stuff, and help the workers work. Thus, managers have meta-intelligence. They might not know what the workers work on, or how they do it, but they do what they are supposed to do, and they do it good: manage the workers.
Still lost?
My parents decide to pay me Rs. 100/- for a certain task, which I don’t necessarily want to do. I pay Rs. 80/- to the next door kid to do that very task, and myself earn Rs. 20/- in the deal. I do not know how he did the task, or what the task was really. I only know it’s done. Meta-intelligence? <This example can be improved>
Let’s take one final example.
Board exams. Very crucial, career making point. A student decides to cheat, but in a rather interesting manner. He buys a hearing aid, gets it modded to receive radio signals, buys a pair of glasses, mods them to transmit what they see. On the day of the exam, he uses them, the receiver with his friend, who reads out the answers to him over radio. The student knows nothing of the paper he is writing, and yet, if he does not get caught, he’ll ace it.
Knowing how to achieve results without knowing what exactly makes you achieve them, is the sort of intelligence that I’m driving towards. Purists will hate it, but it exists. And is possibly the need of the hour.
The primary advantage of this meta-intelligence is agility and flexibility. You can do anything. Almost. Because you are building your stuff on top of other stuff. And the biggest disadvantage? The same. Basically, you are abstracting, and abstractions leak.
Anyway, the point was: Who do you rate better? The one who has more meta-intelligence? Or the one with more basic knowledge? Because let’s face it, however one might tell you, it isn’t really possible to know it all. Anyone for meta-meta-intelligence?
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Link Marathon:
The Escapist Magazine: This is exactly how emags should be. I’ve been sold since the first page.
The Reddit Alien Archive: Cute
Infogami: From the creators of Reddit, jhat pat web pages, and only a week old!
Small Oranges: My experiment with Infogami
Joel’s Development Abstraction Layer: One of the better articles around
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>>Jass
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Rohit Bhute
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Nadeem Mohsin
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Varun Rajkumar
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Nadeem Mohsin
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Haridas Dave
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Hrishikesh