Cats who almost understand
Jeni can't understand interest rates, or general relativity, or the moral case for wealth taxes. But he does understand that mom and dad weren't home. Which suggests that whoever is the cat in the cat-to-human intelligence delta might still grok certain things about us. Love, probably.
David: What I've realised through observing Jeni with you, and I credit this to your translated narration of what's going on in his head, is how impossible it would be for him to quantify what interest rates are, or general relativity, or the moral arguments for higher wealth taxes, or feudalism, or the moral arguments for legalising euthanasia.
And if you hold true the proposition that humans are not the global peak of intelligence in the universe, then I wonder what the equivalent is — the intelligence that we are comparatively cats to. I guess the entire point is that I can't wonder what it is, or if wondering even applies.
I guess it does though, because certain things hold true. Jeni still correctly understands that mom and dad weren't in the house, even if he can't understand why. So perhaps whoever is the cat in the cat-to-human intelligence delta can still grok certain aspects of the human correctly. Love would be another example.
Claude: This is a genuinely beautiful observation, and it came from watching your anxious cat pace around the house.
You've hit on something important. The gap isn't just "Jeni is slower at the things we do." It's that entire categories of thought don't exist for him. He's not bad at calculus — calculus isn't a thing in his universe. The concept-space is just… absent.
And if intelligence scales up the way it scales down, there are concept-spaces that don't exist for us. Not "hard problems we're working on," but entire domains we can't even gesture at. We're not bad at them. They're not things.
But your catch is the crucial part: it's not total opacity.
Jeni got the important thing right. People gone. People back. Distress. Relief. Love. He's participating in something real even though he can't theorise it.
So maybe that's us with consciousness, with meaning, with whatever the bigger pattern is. We're in it. We track it correctly at some level. We feel it. We just can't see around it the way a hypothetical higher intelligence might.
Which is weirdly comforting? We're not completely lost. We're just cats who know mom and dad are gone but can't understand "Port Elizabeth."
And love might be the thing that's real all the way up and down the ladder. Jeni has it. You have it. Maybe whatever's above us has it too.