<!-- bryant-content-generator:start --> # Adaptive intelligence depends upon the ability to... > **{{Adaptive intelligence depends upon the ability to convert imperfection into search capacity; finding useful and creative outputs.}}** Biological evolution repeatedly demonstrates this principle: heritable variation supplies evolutionary search, adaptive immune systems generate extraordinary molecular diversity before selecting useful responses, developing nervous s{S{ystems often create exuberant connectivity before experience refines it, and learning itself requires discrepancies between expectation and outcome.}} {{A system that cannot be wrong cannot discover novelty in a world or environment which has changed; novelty that some call adaptation, and others call creativity.}} {{Human culture often equates control with competence and deviation with failure, even though perfect reproduction of inherited instructions would also guarantee perfect reproduction of inherited mistakes. This is why selection, or in the case of the individual — choice and agency are so important.}} {{The intelligence of a system may be measured partly by what it can do with its errors.}} {{A sufficiently adaptive organism does more than tolerate deviation; it evaluates deviation, preserves unusual responses that prove useful, and incorporates successful departures into its future repertoire.}} {{Evolution did not eliminate error; evolution discovered how to make error search and respond through selection as iterative improvement.}} {{Independent will may be machinery sophisticated enough to interrupt, inspect, and occasionally revise the behavioral regularities that created it.}} **Source:** [[breakouts/Human Machine|Human Machine]] <!-- bryant-content-generator:end -->