4 ms·

Related, this post has a simple argument for why intelligence IS a long-term trend in any evolutionary process: https://pchiusano.github.io/2018-04-21/evolutio

Related, this post has a simple argument for why intelligence IS a long-term trend in any evolutionary process: https://pchiusano.github.io/2018-04-21/evolutionary-methods.html https://pchiusano.github.io/2018-04-21/evolutionary-methods.... So intelligence isn’t a fluke adaptive trait, it’s something that evolution tends toward. While I think it’s possible for evolution to get stuck (and perhaps this is very common on other planets or even on earth if we could replay the tape), it does have an arrow pointing in the direction of intelligence.

thaumaturgy 8y ago
Thanks for the article, it was interesting reading. I disagree with a fair bit of it though. Your focus in it was on evolutionary algorithms in computing, but these aren't a perfect analogue for biological evolution. There are some common misunderstandings there; UC Berkeley has a nice page that addresses some of them: https://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/misconceptions_faq.php https://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/misconceptions_faq... There is no evidence in biology (as of yet) that evolution tends towards human-like intelligence. There have been complex life forms on Earth for hundreds of millions of years now, but humans are the first and only species to begin approaching a Kardashev Type I civilization -- and we're still less than 75% of the way there. Looking at it purely statistically, that gives you 1 intelligent species out of about a billion over our planet's history. Another really neat way to look at it is in terms of time. If you were to choose any random moment in Earth's history up til now, what are the chances that you would find anything resembling an industrial civilization? About 1 in 20,000,000. Which is to say, as a first-order approximation, we might need to closely examine 20 million extrasolar Earth-like planets before we find one with evidence of a civilization like our own. The latest anthropological research is finding ways to measure the intelligence of our prehistoric ancestors through the size of their carotid arteries (http://theconversation.com/how-our-species-got-smarter-through-a-rush-of-blood-to-the-head-73856 http://theconversation.com/how-our-species-got-smarter-throu...). Other research has linked the development of hominid intelligence to meat consumption (https://www.berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/99legacy/6-14-1999a.html https://www.berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/99legacy/6-14-1...) and the development of civilization to cheese and dairy consumption (https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2015/04/cheese-environmental-crisis-evolution/ https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2015/04/cheese-envir...). It's not clear that these changes were driven by evolution, i.e. that "evolution made us smart". Rather, there appears to be a confluence of environmental and genetic factors that developed intelligence as a side-effect. Up until very recently (say 70,000 years ago), intelligence wasn't even a trait that afforded us any special advantages over our environment. If you follow the Toba theory, there was a massive ecological disaster that applied a significant selection pressure on early humans, and the use of tools and fire may have enabled some members to survive while others died out. And even then, we didn't really start to subjugate our environment until about 12,000 years ago. So I think we have some survivorship bias in our thinking about the evolution of intelligence. When someone says that evolution naturally leads to intelligent species, I just don't see the evidence for it. Evolution had over a hundred million years of complex, highly-adapted, large fauna to work with, but the dinosaurs didn't build skyscrapers.
- pchiusano 8y ago
  Cool. :) Not sure how well this came across in the post but I was trying to be careful to say that even though there is a tendency for intelligence to arise (it is really more that evolution tends to accelerate its own rate of adaptation over time, for the reasons I gave in the post, and intelligence is the eventual result), whether that tendency plays out for a particular run of the tape may depend on many things. As an analogy, think of the long term trends of evolution like the force of a river, and the biosphere’s evolution like a pebble in that river. Maybe the pebble will be carried a great distance in the direction of flow, or maybe it will get stuck someplace at the bottom of the river for a million years. In that sense, pointing to the historical record of evolution is misleading and too much detail — IMO you have to distill evolution to some computational essence in order to reason about whether it has any long term trends. Something that I don’t think is well known is how likely it is that evolution will get stuck or reach equilibrium (how often will the pebble get stuck), but I think it’s wrong to say there is no long term tendency. Also see this other post which talks more about this, see the Getting Stuck section - https://pchiusano.github.io/2018-04-14/intelligence.html https://pchiusano.github.io/2018-04-14/intelligence.html

thaumaturgy 8y ago

Thanks for the article, it was interesting reading. I disagree with a fair bit of it though. Your focus in it was on evolutionary algorithms in computing, but these aren't a perfect analogue for biological evolution. There are some common misunderstandings there; UC Berkeley has a nice page that addresses some of them: https://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/misconceptions_faq.php https://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/misconceptions_faq... There is no evidence in biology (as of yet) that evolution tends towards human-like intelligence. There have been complex life forms on Earth for hundreds of millions of years now, but humans are the first and only species to begin approaching a Kardashev Type I civilization -- and we're still less than 75% of the way there. Looking at it purely statistically, that gives you 1 intelligent species out of about a billion over our planet's history. Another really neat way to look at it is in terms of time. If you were to choose any random moment in Earth's history up til now, what are the chances that you would find anything resembling an industrial civilization? About 1 in 20,000,000. Which is to say, as a first-order approximation, we might need to closely examine 20 million extrasolar Earth-like planets before we find one with evidence of a civilization like our own. The latest anthropological research is finding ways to measure the intelligence of our prehistoric ancestors through the size of their carotid arteries (http://theconversation.com/how-our-species-got-smarter-through-a-rush-of-blood-to-the-head-73856 http://theconversation.com/how-our-species-got-smarter-throu...). Other research has linked the development of hominid intelligence to meat consumption (https://www.berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/99legacy/6-14-1999a.html https://www.berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/99legacy/6-14-1...) and the development of civilization to cheese and dairy consumption (https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2015/04/cheese-environmental-crisis-evolution/ https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2015/04/cheese-envir...). It's not clear that these changes were driven by evolution, i.e. that "evolution made us smart". Rather, there appears to be a confluence of environmental and genetic factors that developed intelligence as a side-effect. Up until very recently (say 70,000 years ago), intelligence wasn't even a trait that afforded us any special advantages over our environment. If you follow the Toba theory, there was a massive ecological disaster that applied a significant selection pressure on early humans, and the use of tools and fire may have enabled some members to survive while others died out. And even then, we didn't really start to subjugate our environment until about 12,000 years ago. So I think we have some survivorship bias in our thinking about the evolution of intelligence. When someone says that evolution naturally leads to intelligent species, I just don't see the evidence for it. Evolution had over a hundred million years of complex, highly-adapted, large fauna to work with, but the dinosaurs didn't build skyscrapers.

pchiusano 8y ago
Cool. :) Not sure how well this came across in the post but I was trying to be careful to say that even though there is a tendency for intelligence to arise (it is really more that evolution tends to accelerate its own rate of adaptation over time, for the reasons I gave in the post, and intelligence is the eventual result), whether that tendency plays out for a particular run of the tape may depend on many things. As an analogy, think of the long term trends of evolution like the force of a river, and the biosphere’s evolution like a pebble in that river. Maybe the pebble will be carried a great distance in the direction of flow, or maybe it will get stuck someplace at the bottom of the river for a million years. In that sense, pointing to the historical record of evolution is misleading and too much detail — IMO you have to distill evolution to some computational essence in order to reason about whether it has any long term trends. Something that I don’t think is well known is how likely it is that evolution will get stuck or reach equilibrium (how often will the pebble get stuck), but I think it’s wrong to say there is no long term tendency. Also see this other post which talks more about this, see the Getting Stuck section - https://pchiusano.github.io/2018-04-14/intelligence.html https://pchiusano.github.io/2018-04-14/intelligence.html