Ben, Being one of those big-headed children myself.. I have just a peculiar comment. You probably know this but human intelligence is not limited to the size of the human skull. That is why communication and social skills are such important keys to intelligence. An individual by himself can do very little in society or in this world. Even the most brilliant people wouldn't have achieved what they have achieved without great teachers, great disciples, followers and loved ones. Groups of people can achieve great things. That is why talking about intelligence in terms of a single human brain makes little sense to me.
Valentina > > This is one of those misleading half-truths... > > Evolution sometimes winds up solving optimization problems effectively, but > it solves each one given constraints that are posed by its prior solutions > to other problems ... > > For instance, it seems one of the reasons we're not smarter than we are is > that evolution couldn't figure out how to make our heads bigger without > having too many of us get stuck coming out the vaginal canal during birth. > Heads got bigger, hips got wider ... up to a point ... but then the process > stopped so we're the dipshits that we are. Evolution was solving an > optimization problem (balancing maximization of intelligence and > minimization of infant and mother mortality during birth) but within a > context set up by its previous choices ... it's not as though it achieved > the maximum possible intelligence for any humanoid, let alone for any being. > > Similarly, it's hard for me to believe that human teeth are optimal in any > strong sense. No, no, no. They may have resulted as the solution to some > optimization problem based on the materials and energy supply and food > supply at hand at some period of evolutionary history ... but I refused to > believe that in any useful sense they are an ideal chewing implement, or > that they embody some amazingly wise evolutionary insight into the nature of > chewing. > > Is the clitoris optimal? There is a huge and silly literature on this, but > (as much of the literature agrees) it seems obvious that it's not. > > The human immune system is an intelligent pattern recognition system, but > if it were a little cleverer, we wouldn't need vaccines and we wouldn't have > AIDS... > > We don't understand every part of the human brain/body, but those parts we > do understand do NOT convey the message that you suggest. They reflect a > reality that the human brain/body is a mess combining loads of elegant > solutions with loads of semi-random hacks. Not surprisingly, this is also > what we see in the problem-solutions produced by evolutionary algorithms in > computer science simulations. > > -- Ben G > > > <http://www.listbox.com> > ------------------------------------------- agi Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244&id_secret=111637683-c8fa51 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
