Contenuti
Multimediali
We said it from the very beginning: the investigation into intelligence is still open—but your visit to the exhibition is coming to an end. In front of you is the investigators’ board as we would have built it if this case had been assigned to us: you’ll find many questions, some of the works we studied, and the key words we felt were essential.
But you will also find many faces—the faces of those who have worked on this case in the past, helping us get to where we are today. This, too, is a form of collective intelligence: those who work on the case of intelligence today start from here. Humanity stopped starting from scratch a long time ago.
What does that mean?
According to neuroscientist Joshua Greene, we learn by trial and error—but in three very different ways.
Some things we learned firsthand, like when, as children, we discovered—after getting burned—that you shouldn’t touch a boiling pot.
Other things we learned without direct experience: they were already in our genes from the moment of conception. In a sense, we learned them from the fatal mistakes made by ancestors who, for that very reason, did not survive long enough to pass on their genes.
And then there are things we learned from the trials and errors of those who came before us—and who told us about them. Perhaps this storytelling began around a fire, tens of thousands of years ago. That’s how culture was born, and with it a new form of collective intelligence—one that has even allowed us to build this board.
Knowledge is built together, so we’d like you to leave your own contribution on this board: write the title of a book you think is missing, a question, a doubt, or simply what struck you most along the way. Add your own clue to this case.
It is time to say goodbye.
We hope this exhibition has given you a chance to step back and reflect on intelligence. According to Joshua Greene, being intelligent is not only about learning from experience, our own or others’, but also about observing the mind with the mind—not just understanding, but understanding how we came to understand.
We hope you were able to follow—and to lose—the thread, and to enjoy this journey through one of the most fascinating mysteries of knowledge.
We hope you leave this exhibition not with answers, but with better questions.
Speaking of questions, as you leave, take another look at the four videos that welcomed you at the entrance: in which situations would you speak of intelligence? Has your answer changed since the beginning? What is intelligence?
Thank you for visiting this exhibition.