Hilfitaa

 Paradoctor wrote:

 

Hilfitaa n; hill-fit-ah;

a Highly Intelligent Life Form, If There Are Any.

This is to be used as ironic praise from a skeptic.

 

 

GDNordley wrote:

 

Cryptomensoid  adj., noun (from crypt and MENSA)

  Def.:  Hidden high intelligence

  Example: Perhaps Ivanka is the Donald's cryptomensoid foreign policy ace.

  The cryptomensoid "zoo hypothesis" posits that absence of evidence is not evidence of absense.

 

 

Paradoctor wrote:

 

I like it.

Both "hilfitaa" and "cryptomensoid" suggest solutions to the Fermi Paradox. "Hilfitaa" questions that there is any intelligent life in the universe, including planet Earth; "cryptomensoid" suggests that if there is any, then it is hiding. Now it seems to me that questioning the existence of high intelligence is itself highly intelligent; and for life forms to hide would be a highly intelligent thing for those life forms to do. But that's only according to me, and I myself cannot rigorously prove that I myself am highly intelligent. Sure, I could brag about diplomas, but that's not highly intelligent.

Are there cryptomensoids on Earth? Mutant humans smart enough to play as dumb as the rest of us? Or more distant relatives? Smart mice? Smart bugs? Smart microbes? Are we bright enough to recognize them?

Eric Frank Russell, in "Into Your Tent I'll Creep", claimed that dogs are superintelligent sycophants, playing at worshipful/dumb. It's a living.

Ursula LeGuin used the word 'hilf', meaning highly intelligent life form. This has an agreeable rhyme with elf; but unfortunately it rhymes even better with milf. If high intelligence turns you on, then for you a female hilf would be a milf.