How would the dynamics of discourse change if your interlocutor were a superintelligent being?

Question

The problems I see here:

The super-smart being might know so much more that humans feel they can't add anything useful to the talk. This being might find it hard to explain things simply, making it tough for humans to get what they're saying. We might feel unimportant next to someone so smart, which could make us worry about our place in the world. The super-smart being might accidentally or on purpose lead humans to think in certain ways, which isn't fair.

The talks might be about things that don't matter to humans, ignoring what's important in our lives. If the super-smart being knows everything, humans might stop trying to help figure things out. Humans might just ask the super-smart being for all the answers instead of thinking for themselves.

So my question is - in a scenario where you argue or discuss stuff with a superintelligent entity, what approaches would you employ to ensure meaningful dialogue? How would you address some of the problems I described?

Answer 1

This somehow confuses intelligence with knowledge. Afaik there still isn't a great unified definition of what intelligence even is, but broadly speaking it's more about the capacity of the thinker. So you might grasp things faster, more efficient, more thorough, with more details and plan more steps ahead or stuff like that.

So picture yourself talking to a baby. As we all know these things are pretty much super intelligent beings that can grasp a whole lot of skills very quick yet they KNOW very little upfront.

Now intelligence might imply that you can learn faster and on your own and with fewer data, but you nonetheless need input and experience from which to draw conclusions and verify them with more experience.

Also depending on your definition of intelligence, your ability to transmit an idea by realizing similarities and differences and by building a language of concepts through analogues of domains where you share knowledge and experience might as well be part of intelligence.

So again picture an adult talking to a baby, just that this time you are the baby and the super intelligent being trying to communicate with you. Is that possible? Or if you think a child and an adult is cheating as one basically morph into the other, picture talking to a puppy. Would the intelligent being be able to find a way to communicate their ideas, would they find a way to do so without being patronizing and manipulative?

Or maybe the puppy is the super intelligent being and we are too dumb to communicate with them or to understand them, would that mean we would subjugate them without ever even realizing how smart they are?

Also are they generally friendly or hostile? Aim to manipulate, even just to teach or deliberately trying to avoid that? There are so many more questions to that, so to make the entire question unanswerable.

Answer 2

Welcome to the world of every college freshman in their first days of class. Professors are skilled: they not only know more than freshman, but think about things in clearer and more sophisticated ways. This leaves the freshman with (at least) three options:

1. Try to 'catch up' to and hopefully surpass their professors (compete)
2. Coast along, blindly doing what they are told (conform)
3. Reject the skill differential as a mere power differential (reject or rebel)

Each option has its advantages and disadvantages, and different freshmen will choose differently, sometimes to their advantage, sometimes not. Why should that be different for adults who face beings with superior intellectual skills? Look at human religions. Some people try to better themselves, to become like divine entities; some people humble themselves and conform to the rules of the faith; some discard God and religion alike and strike out on their own. Yes, some people do lose heart because they feel they just can't match the wisdom of a god. But mostly those who believe in a god find comfort its knowledge and strength, while those who don't are confident in their own strengths and abilities.