We can communicate well about pretty much anything (we think, at least). That doesn't mean we possess the intellectual tool kit to handle basically any intellec

We can communicate well about pretty much anything (we think, at least). That doesn't mean we possess the intellectual tool kit to handle basically any intellectual task. I think it's easy to think that we do, but that is just as easily explained by the fact that we've evolved for millions of years to be well suited to the environments we usually find ourselves in. We wouldn't refer to our bodies as general purpose bodies. They may seem that way, at times, since they've also been tuned by millions of years of evolution to be well suited to most of the environments we find ourselves in. But put our bodies in a different environment (like the ocean, or the desert, or really high altitudes) and it becomes immediately obvious that they're not general purpose, but instead a collection of various adaptations. Similarly, when you put humans in novel intellectual environments, it seems pretty clear that we're not general intelligences. After all, the math involved in balancing a checkbook is much simpler than the math involved in recognizing 3D objects, yet we do the simple task only with great difficulty, while the difficult task is done without struggle.