I completely agree with you, which is why I think those who believe there are intelligently chosen goals are missing the point. It sounds like Niven has illustrated this perfectly. You can intelligently choose sub-goals, steps along the way, but the ultimate destination? Has to be instincts and emotions that drive that - there's no rational definition of worth (which doesn't make it, or the label "irrational", necessarily wrong).Darth Wedgius wrote: ↑Tue Aug 04, 2020 5:39 am Yes, yes, exactly that. Niven said, "“Intelligence is just a tool to be used toward a goal, and goals are not always chosen intelligently." I'd go further and say that one's ultimate goals are never chosen intelligently, since those are based on instincts or feelings, but I'm in a minority in that regard.
Personally I go with "intelligent" is whatever makes you happy, with some control over it to avoid the merely immediate appeal (because attempting to satisfy that I believe often backfires in the long run). Since I've not read the book does it really dive into the Protectors' minds? It sounds like they should be intelligent enough to recognise their own drives and instincts (and intelligence also means some degree of control over them).
Creating an alien intelligence is a very hard thing to do. It has to come across as plausible. Being random or unjustifiably weird and handwaving that away with "but it's alien!" is lazy - yes, a true alien intelligence might appear to be that to us but it'll have its own reasons and ways, just like ours, and the author needs to be able to understand it, which is why it's hard. Because it won't be random or arbitrarily weird however much it seems to be. Slightly tweaked humans (or one human aspect exaggerated) seems to be the norm. I've often thought Mass Effect's geth would be a good one to try to explore further, there's a really alien intelligence that makes sense in its context, but the game never really explored the possibility of bits separating and merging all the time and what that actually means.
