Professor Quillibrace was enjoying what promised to be a perfectly ordinary afternoon.
This should have warned him.
The door opened.
Mr Blottisham entered carrying a tape measure.
Professor Quillibrace looked up.
"Oh dear."
"I haven't said anything yet."
"You've brought measuring equipment."
"I have."
"I therefore infer that something invisible is shortly to acquire dimensions."
Miss Stray entered behind him.
She noticed the tape measure.
"Are we measuring intelligence today?"
Professor Quillibrace looked surprised.
"How did you know?"
"Mr Blottisham has written 'INTELLIGENCE' on the side."
Sure enough, a small label was attached to the tape.
OFFICIAL INTELLIGENCE MEASURER
Professor Quillibrace sighed.
"I see."
Blottisham smiled.
"I've come to settle the matter."
"What matter?"
"How much intelligence everyone has."
Professor Quillibrace looked thoughtfully into his teacup.
"I had hoped..."
"...it might be a quieter afternoon."
Blottisham extended the tape measure dramatically across the room.
"There."
Professor Quillibrace looked at it.
"It appears to be approximately five metres."
"Yes."
"How intelligent is that?"
"It isn't."
"Exactly."
Blottisham looked puzzled.
"But people keep saying..."
"'More intelligent.'"
"They do."
"So where is the scale?"
Professor Quillibrace smiled.
"I rather suspected we would arrive there."
Blottisham opened his notebook.
"I've thought of several possibilities."
Possibility One
"Intelligence has units."
"No."
"Centi-brains?"
"No."
"Kiloclevers?"
"No."
"Megawits?"
"No."
Miss Stray smiled.
"I confess I rather like megawits."
Professor Quillibrace nodded.
"It has a certain charm."
Blottisham crossed them out carefully.
Possibility Two
"There is one universal scale."
Professor Quillibrace hesitated.
"That depends."
"On what?"
"What one means by intelligence."
Blottisham looked surprised.
"I thought that was exactly what the scale would tell us."
The room became quiet.
Miss Stray looked thoughtfully at the tape measure.
"I wonder..."
"...whether we have mistaken comparison for measurement."
Professor Quillibrace smiled.
"Go on."
"We compare height."
"Yes."
"We compare weight."
"Yes."
"We compare temperature."
"Indeed."
"But each of those has..."
"...a unit."
Professor Quillibrace nodded.
"And intelligence?"
Miss Stray shrugged gently.
"We compare performances."
"Not intelligence itself."
Blottisham looked genuinely puzzled.
"So..."
"...when someone says..."
"'She is twice as intelligent'..."
"...twice as intelligent at what?"
Professor Quillibrace laughed.
"I fear that sentence has caused more philosophical trouble than grammatical."
The fire crackled quietly.
Blottisham wandered over to the bookshelves.
"I've noticed something."
Professor Quillibrace waited.
"The people I know who are very good at mathematics..."
"Yes?"
"...are not always very good at explaining mathematics."
"Quite."
"And people who explain beautifully..."
"...are not always the greatest researchers."
"Indeed."
"And the wisest people I know..."
"...are sometimes not especially academic."
Professor Quillibrace looked at him with interest.
"A remarkably perceptive observation."
Blottisham frowned.
"So..."
"...which one was the intelligence?"
Silence.
Miss Stray looked out of the window.
"Perhaps..."
she said quietly,
"...we have bundled together many different excellences..."
"...and attached one label."
Professor Quillibrace nodded.
"Rather as one might label an entire toolbox..."
"...'tool.'"
"But that tells us remarkably little."
Blottisham brightened.
"So intelligence may be more like a toolbox."
Professor Quillibrace smiled.
"I rather think it might."
"A spanner isn't a screwdriver."
"No."
"Neither is inferior."
"No."
"They simply solve different problems."
Miss Stray laughed.
"And Mr Blottisham has just rehabilitated the adjustable wrench."
The discussion wandered pleasantly for some time.
Finally Blottisham returned to his tape measure.
"I think I've discovered the difficulty."
Professor Quillibrace waited.
"I've been trying to measure a capacity..."
"...by pretending it was a length."
Professor Quillibrace looked delighted.
"Exactly."
"But we do this constantly."
"We do."
"We say..."
"'higher intelligence.'"
"'greater intelligence.'"
"'levels of intelligence.'"
"'more intelligence.'"
"And every one of those quietly borrows..."
"...the metaphor of measurement."
Miss Stray nodded.
"As though intelligence were stacked vertically."
Professor Quillibrace walked to the blackboard.
He wrote:
HIGHER
LOWER
MORE
LESS
LEVELS
SCALE
Then beneath them he wrote:
WHAT IF NONE OF THESE ARE LITERAL?
The room fell silent.
Blottisham looked at the board for a long time.
"So perhaps..."
"...the metaphor is doing more work than we realised."
Professor Quillibrace smiled.
"It usually is."
Blottisham carefully rewound the tape measure.
"I've one final question."
Professor Quillibrace laughed.
"Only one?"
"If intelligence cannot simply be measured..."
"Yes?"
"...why are people so confident about saying that one future machine will become more intelligent than another?"
Professor Quillibrace thought for a long time.
Finally he replied.
"Because predictions often inherit the assumptions of the language in which they are made."
Miss Stray added softly,
"And language is sometimes more certain than reality."
The college clock struck five.
Blottisham picked up the tape measure.
"I shan't need this again."
Professor Quillibrace looked sceptical.
"I sincerely hope not."
"Oh, I shall."
Professor Quillibrace paused.
"For what?"
"I'm thinking of measuring consciousness next."
A long silence.
Miss Stray quietly reached for the teapot.
Professor Quillibrace looked heavenwards.
"My dear Blottisham..."
"Yes?"
"If consciousness turns out to be exactly seven and a half metres..."
"...I should be very interested to know where you started."
The tape measure disappeared back into Blottisham's pocket.
The afternoon's investigation had failed to produce a single unit of intelligence.
Oddly enough, everyone left feeling rather wiser.
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