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If you want to portray some sort of "next step in human evolution", it's an easy thing to portray that audiences would have some understanding of from other med

If you want to portray some sort of "next step in human evolution", it's an easy thing to portray that audiences would have some understanding of from other media. The more obvious choice of just portraying people as having extremely high intelligence, is unfortunately a bit of a trap. Authors generally fail at creating characters smarter than themselves, for perhaps obvious reasons.

WalterBright 2y ago
> Authors generally fail at creating characters smarter than themselves, for perhaps obvious reasons. Hah, I've noticed that for years. Anderson's "Brain Wave", however, is a decent attempt at what more intelligent people would be like.
jamiek88 2y ago
This makes me wonder about AGI and super intelligences. Why would our brains be able to engineer something more intelligent than our brains? The only room seems to be in emergence from incredible amounts of processing power and data or perhaps many brains working together can overcome the limitations of one brain.
- pixl97 2y ago
  I mean, people working together quite often overcome the limitations of one brain, especially when those working together are driven towards that goal.
- NiloCK 2y ago
  This is a reasonable angle, but recall that some sunlight, dirt, and water managed (with a lot of compute) to emit something smarter than the sum of its parst.
- barfbagginus 2y ago
  Let's generalize the question. Why are our brains able to engineer machines that produce forces greater than a human body? Because they understand the forces, and set them into motion with tiny efforts to build mechanisms that eventually unleash and reform large amounts of energy, creating the force. And what if intelligence is another kind of force that can be created by taking tiny, human efforts, building a machine, then pumping huge amounts of energy into it, outputting the intelligent force? Or let's consider evolution. How could it create intelligent brains from single celled organisms? Incrementally, as the organisms randomly accumulated mechanisms of adaptability and eventually sensing and cognition. In the first view we see ourselves as engineers, building a vast engine that, through its sheer size and energy, and our basic understanding of fundamental laws of intelligence , produces an intelligent force greater than a human mind. In the second view, we see ourselves as blind watchmakers, jamming AI components together at random, until, by accident, we get something smarter.

WalterBright 2y ago

> Authors generally fail at creating characters smarter than themselves, for perhaps obvious reasons. Hah, I've noticed that for years. Anderson's "Brain Wave", however, is a decent attempt at what more intelligent people would be like.

jamiek88 2y ago

This makes me wonder about AGI and super intelligences. Why would our brains be able to engineer something more intelligent than our brains? The only room seems to be in emergence from incredible amounts of processing power and data or perhaps many brains working together can overcome the limitations of one brain.

pixl97 2y ago
I mean, people working together quite often overcome the limitations of one brain, especially when those working together are driven towards that goal.
NiloCK 2y ago
This is a reasonable angle, but recall that some sunlight, dirt, and water managed (with a lot of compute) to emit something smarter than the sum of its parst.
barfbagginus 2y ago
Let's generalize the question. Why are our brains able to engineer machines that produce forces greater than a human body? Because they understand the forces, and set them into motion with tiny efforts to build mechanisms that eventually unleash and reform large amounts of energy, creating the force. And what if intelligence is another kind of force that can be created by taking tiny, human efforts, building a machine, then pumping huge amounts of energy into it, outputting the intelligent force? Or let's consider evolution. How could it create intelligent brains from single celled organisms? Incrementally, as the organisms randomly accumulated mechanisms of adaptability and eventually sensing and cognition. In the first view we see ourselves as engineers, building a vast engine that, through its sheer size and energy, and our basic understanding of fundamental laws of intelligence , produces an intelligent force greater than a human mind. In the second view, we see ourselves as blind watchmakers, jamming AI components together at random, until, by accident, we get something smarter.