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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 5679113" data-attributes="member: 4937">Yes, but I would argue that an ant (or a bee) is smarter than a golem.  If you want golems to exhibit ant or bee  level memory, planning, and problem solving, then I feel you need to give up on the idea that they are mindless.  And I'm ok with that.  I'm not above applying an Awakened template to a golem and giving it some intelligence.  I'm even ok with, "In my campaign, all golems have some basic intelligence."  I'm just saying that that isn't default, and that following the default and being coherent implies giving golems behaviors that are obviously more limited than that of an ant.Sure, but its not at all clear that that path change is particularly goal driven.  Instead, it often appears that the insect simply is running an algorithm that says, "In the absense of a strong chemical trigger, pick a direction and keep moving in it."  You wouldn't expect a beetle to be able to run a maze, although I'd expect its path finding algorithm (keep pushing on an obstacle and sliding until I find an opening) approximates putting its body on one wall and following it.  Nonetheless, that's the reason you find flies dead at the bottom of a window pane.  Now sure, if the beetle has some sensory cue - usually scent - its combination of "keep pushing on an obstacle and sliding until I find an opening" and "go in the general direction of the chemical cue" is going to be pretty effective at finding a path.  I would imagine the golem with a similar means of getting to its goal, but I would not imagine the golem to have the equilevant of a planning algorithm that allowed it to reason spatially, plan a path, and stick to its goals in the absense of continuing sensory input.  This is especially true because Janx is right about the sophistication level of many of the Golem's subruetines; they are clearly much more advanced than many things that we wouldn't consider completely mindless.  Therefore, if the golem isn't in fact intelligent, it must be the case that in other areas it is at least as limited if not more so than say an earthworm.My disagreement with Janx isn't over the methodology of his reasoning, but ultimately comes down to the question of 'what is thinking'.  Janx argues that, because he knows the scripted AI's of a modern first person shooter inside a game system aren't thinking that equally complex behavior in the real world isn't thinking either.  But at some point, I adopt a more Turing perspective on thought.  That is to say, at some point anything that demonstrates sufficiently appropriate behavior is thinking because we don't actually know what thinking is (for all we know our minds are just more sophisticated scripting engines) and the behavior is indistinguishable from thing.  In other words, if its indistinguishable in behavior from an ant, then its as smart as an ant and hense thinking to the same degree.</blockquote>

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