Can High Levels of Logical Intelligence Lead to Limit the Evolution of Intelligent Life? [closed]

Question

I have been contemplating a theory about the relationship between high levels of intelligence and existential crises. I've often heard that highly intelligent individuals are more prone to realizing that life might be meaningless, leading to existential crises. In many fields, there seems to be no absolute truth—everything is relative. This realization can be distressing for some. I recall a story about a prodigy who learned to read novels at a very young age, and ultimately struggled with existential issues, leading to his tragic death in his twenties. This makes me wonder if there's a limit to how intelligent a species can become before this intelligence becomes a danger to its own survival.

My theory is that if intelligent extraterrestrial life exists, it might not be more intelligent than humans. The stress of reaching a certain level of logical intelligence might push a species toward existential despair, potentially leading to self-destruction. Furthermore, it seems that individuals who are highly logical often turn to non-logical aspects of life, such as beliefs, love, art, etc, to find meaning and cope with existential questions. Without these coping mechanisms, could a species purely driven by logic survive, or would their heightened intelligence inevitably lead them to existential despair?Adding to this, many people, including Elon Musk, claim that AI will become sentient one day. If AI were to achieve sentience and given its immense power and logical intelligence, wouldn't it be logical for it to self-destruct if it faced the same existential realizations?

I'd love to hear thoughts on this. Do you think there's a threshold of intelligence beyond which life becomes unsustainable due to existential crises? How do you think other intelligent beings or AI might cope with these issues?

Answer 1

If the beings of the earth found out that they had been planted and bred there for a purpose entirely foreign to them, they would make a great deal of trouble. They could in principle even kill themselves and thwart the cosmic plan. Hence a certain contrivance was arranged by the most high angels to keep humans always in delusion. That contrivance is the kundabuffer.

This is a very paraphrased and condensed summary of Beelzebub's Tales to his Grandson by Georgy Gurdjieff. You could think of the kundabuffer as something which would appeal to us moderns for the central ontology the ancients had with different words:

Tradition	Formulation
Islam	Rebellion kufr
Christianity	Sin1
Hinduism	maya/ahankar2
Buddhism	suffering dukha
Taoism	dis-equilibrium wuwei
etc

¹ The original word for sin in Christianity was the archery term for missing the mark hamartia, not having the moral tone it would later take.
² Maya is usually mistranslated as illusion
  Ahankar is usually mistranslated as ego

Answer 2

First of all intelligence is a broad term that covers many concepts, from logic and reasoning to self-awareness and emotional intelligence. It seems that you are mainly focusing in the logic aspect of it.

In psychology and psychotherapy, existential crises are inner conflicts characterized by the impression that life lacks meaning or by confusion about one's personal identity.

The main two points of the definition are meaning of life and personal identity.

It is obvious that in lower-intelligent beings (ex animals) the meaning of life may be reduced to something like survival and personal identity to something like desires and insticts.

More intelligent beings challenge this, by realizing that the world that they live in has a much larger context; so they create complex organizational structures, like the societies we live in, education, religions, etc.

So, the result of this, is that the meaning of life and personal identity are to be found inside these structures. What then follows is that people who do not fit well inside these structures, struggle with both; Some of them challenge these structures, some of them give up.

It is important to understand that these structures are (in a way) the result of these struggles, of the search of the meaning of life and search of the personal identity in a collective level; they are the reflection of this process.

Existential despair, could then be seen as the inabiblity of the collective to accommodate the intelligence = [ logic, understanding, self-awareness, learning, emotional knowledge, reasoning, planning, creativity, critical thinking, and problem-solving ] of its members.

Answer 3

It is a highly speculative hypothesis which can not be tested or discussed conclusively. It is not even clear what does logical intelligence or intelligence means? Is it machine like logical intelligence or human like emotional intelligence? High level of logical intelligence can lead to technical advancements and financial growths but without proper emotional intelligence , empathy and social cohesion it will not be possible to sustain it. Multiple form of intelligence is required for proper evolution of intelligent life.