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I'm curious why you are confident they would be more intelligent than a modern toddler? I largely empathize with your point. But, as I can recognize there are

by taeric 2y ago

I'm curious why you are confident they would be more intelligent than a modern toddler? I largely empathize with your point. But, as I can recognize there are some out there far better at problem solving than I am, I am growing ok with the idea that intelligence can be measured. Not to a single number, most likely, but to a variety of different aspects. Similarly, I'd imagine that a human from 2000 years ago is probably more hardy than one from the modern age. If only because of selection effects at play. Obviously, you can't extrapolate a straight line between either measurement and expect it to continue in either direction. But I don't know why you couldn't build up a measurement for it? (And it should go without saying that you shouldn't be judging worth using this sort of measurement.)

ianburrell 2y ago
Adults from 2000 years ago would absolutely be smarter than toddlers. Adults back then watched and out thought their toddlers. Do you think toddlers now are much smarter? Especially when toddlers are from before they get educated. Remember that 2000 years ago is 24AD, the middle of the Roman empire and Han dynasty which covered half of the world population. Nobles would be literate and well educated, artisans and soldiers would be skilled, and I bet there were lots of smart peasants that got ignored. They wouldn't do well on intelligence tests because not used to it, but that is more about tests than their intelligence. I'm sure that the average intelligence is lower than now from lack of education and malnutrition. Smart ones would still be smart. Also, I bet people from now would do poorly in their environment.
- taeric 2y ago
  Ok, fair, 2000 wasn't that long ago. :D I was assuming it was a placeholder for "very distantly old humans." Such that my question mostly still stands? Again, I'm largely inline with the view that this will be difficult to test. However, I'm also comfortable in saying that you can tell intelligence levels between people. Again, with a caveat that I don't think it is reducible to a single number. (Such that I think I also think it is fair to say most views of intelligence, in the colloquial sense, are not transitive.) As an example, as much as I loved my grandparents, I have zero difficulty saying that a few of them would never be able to score as well on some problem solving tests as a few of the kids in the current generation. At the same time I know some people in their 80s that I will never be able to compare with. Again, I don't expect it is a straight line, along the time axis. I also don't know that I agree that every person 2000 years ago just didn't do calculus because they weren't taught it.
  - next_xibalba 2y ago
    You might be conflating knowledge with intelligence. Remember that modern humans benefit from the discovery and dissemination of 100,000 years of human learning. For example, most of us take arithmetic for granted. We might even consider someone who does not know arithmetic to be "dumb". Same goes for algebra, trig, calc, diffeq, etc etc. But those are all "knowledge" (i.e. a trained skill), not necessarily "intelligence". Math was discovered, in fits and starts, over 1000s of years across the globe by 10s or 100s of thousands of individuals, each contributing their drop to the stream whose current carries us along. Same goes for all other areas of human knowledge. To my awareness, there is nothing in the fossil record to suggest that an anatomically modern human (Homo sapiens), which may have first emerged as much as 500,000 years ago, would be distinguishable from currently living humans. Here's a thought experiment: We have a time machine. We travel back 500k years and abduct a pair of Homo sapiens (male and female). We transport them forward in time to our present. We cause them to breed and produce offspring. During gestation, they live in a modern environment (nutrition, shelter, etc.). At birth we take the newborn infant and give it to a modern, contemporaneous couple to raise. Is there is reason to believe it (the infant) would not emerge as a normal, modern adult? If there is no reason, what does that imply about intelligence? Is knowledge separable from it? Or is knowledge a necessary component of it? Or is knowledge itself "intelligence"? For my part, I think it is a distinct attribute, but I assign a low probability to that belief.
    - taeric 2y ago
      Maybe? But I'm asking for reasons to think one or the other. Again, I am largely agreed with the idea. But, evidence is not as clear cut. We had entire civilizations that never utilized wheels. Writing was not universal across all humanity. Would I prefer that it is only access to technology that confers advantages that we see in developing thought? Absolutely. I'm not able to categorically assume it, though.
turbojet1321 2y ago
> I'm curious why you are confident they would be more intelligent than a modern toddler? Because we have intellectual artefacts from that time that show us. Artefacts that underlay much of modern society, and that in many respects still hold up, even though we've built upon them for 20 generations.
next_xibalba 2y ago
In writing that, I thought it was pretty self evident. I ask this in seriousness, not snark: have you spent a lot of time around toddlers? My kid is currently a toddler, and while the intelligence curve she's rapidly climbing is impressive, she is unintelligent relative to an adult. I don't think I've come across any evidence suggesting that the human brain has changed the last 2000 years. After all, the Great Pyramid of Giza was built 4600 years ago. That construction required fairly advanced engineering. That's sort of beside the point though. To go back to my original comment, there is some distinction to be made between knowledge and intelligence. Even those should probably be decomposed into further salient attributes. And modern LLMs seem to capture some of those attributes, but do not yet strike me as "intelligent" in the way the average human is intelligent, but the average dog is not. I don't know, maybe I am conflating sentience or consciousness or embodiment or something else with intelligence.
- taeric 2y ago
  Yes, I have spent time with toddlers. And the problem solving skills of different toddlers can be remarkably different. Not even getting in to how much nutrition impacts developmental abilities. Or the fact that the vast majority of children used to not survive into adulthood. And, I get it, most kids that are "gifted" at super young age all somewhat converge with where others were going to get in a few years time. But I don't think we fully appreciate just how early we are able to get our kids reading across the board. Do we have evidence that you could get a mediocre teacher to prehistoric classrooms and have them get kids reading as well as we do on the regular today? And, quickly, as I say in sibling posts, I was taking "2000" to be a shorthand for absurdly old. My general question, there, is do you not think we are getting smarter? I realize this is a hazard of discussions, as most people seem to think this somehow logically leads to every terrible take it could. I don't agree with those. I do fully think that my children will net be smarter and stronger than me in most every way. I'd expect that my grandchildren will continue that trend. It seems to me that thinking otherwise is to either think that evolution has stopped with us, or that we have stagnated for other reasons?
lovehashbrowns 2y ago
As far as I know, you should be able to take a baby from like 30,000 years ago, put them through k-12, high school, and college, and they should be indistinguishable in terms of intelligence and capability. People mostly only think of humans from “thousands of years ago” as stupid because their lack of technology means their culture and thoughts didn’t survive until today. But their brain structure couldn’t have changed much. It’s just not enough time in terms of evolution. Aristotle was like 2,400 years ago, for context lol
- taeric 2y ago
  I will fully ack that I expect people from only 2000 or so years ago to be largely compatible with us. If not fully. But, I guess I can't bring myself to agree that early proto humans are where evolution stopped? I get that evolution takes generations. But, it actually moves rather fast for some things, no?
  - lovehashbrowns 2y ago
    Aside from knowledge, a lot of what has changed in the last couple thousand years comes down to medicine and nutrition. We’re taller on average than people from the past, for example. But that’s a nutrition thing. Rather fast is like millions of years in evolutionary terms so 2,000 years is nothing. I don’t even think there’s significant evidence to show that Neanderthals were less intelligent than Homo sapiens and they were around from 400,000 years ago to 40,000 years ago or so. Human brains and also brain-body mass ratio wouldn’t have changed enough to make much of a noticeable difference if you teleport a human baby from thousands of years ago to today and put them through our education system. It’s just easier to dismiss them as stupid because very little of their life has survived til today. To the point, I mentioned that Aristotle was 2,400 years ago and you still landed on “largely compatible” lol. The pyramids were built over 4,000 years ago and they’re still a marvel of engineering. You just have a bias against people from thousands of years ago again mostly because a lot of their work didn’t survive to modern day.
    - taeric 2y ago

by taeric 2y ago

ianburrell 2y ago

Adults from 2000 years ago would absolutely be smarter than toddlers. Adults back then watched and out thought their toddlers. Do you think toddlers now are much smarter? Especially when toddlers are from before they get educated. Remember that 2000 years ago is 24AD, the middle of the Roman empire and Han dynasty which covered half of the world population. Nobles would be literate and well educated, artisans and soldiers would be skilled, and I bet there were lots of smart peasants that got ignored. They wouldn't do well on intelligence tests because not used to it, but that is more about tests than their intelligence. I'm sure that the average intelligence is lower than now from lack of education and malnutrition. Smart ones would still be smart. Also, I bet people from now would do poorly in their environment.

taeric 2y ago
Ok, fair, 2000 wasn't that long ago. :D I was assuming it was a placeholder for "very distantly old humans." Such that my question mostly still stands? Again, I'm largely inline with the view that this will be difficult to test. However, I'm also comfortable in saying that you can tell intelligence levels between people. Again, with a caveat that I don't think it is reducible to a single number. (Such that I think I also think it is fair to say most views of intelligence, in the colloquial sense, are not transitive.) As an example, as much as I loved my grandparents, I have zero difficulty saying that a few of them would never be able to score as well on some problem solving tests as a few of the kids in the current generation. At the same time I know some people in their 80s that I will never be able to compare with. Again, I don't expect it is a straight line, along the time axis. I also don't know that I agree that every person 2000 years ago just didn't do calculus because they weren't taught it.
- next_xibalba 2y ago
  You might be conflating knowledge with intelligence. Remember that modern humans benefit from the discovery and dissemination of 100,000 years of human learning. For example, most of us take arithmetic for granted. We might even consider someone who does not know arithmetic to be "dumb". Same goes for algebra, trig, calc, diffeq, etc etc. But those are all "knowledge" (i.e. a trained skill), not necessarily "intelligence". Math was discovered, in fits and starts, over 1000s of years across the globe by 10s or 100s of thousands of individuals, each contributing their drop to the stream whose current carries us along. Same goes for all other areas of human knowledge. To my awareness, there is nothing in the fossil record to suggest that an anatomically modern human (Homo sapiens), which may have first emerged as much as 500,000 years ago, would be distinguishable from currently living humans. Here's a thought experiment: We have a time machine. We travel back 500k years and abduct a pair of Homo sapiens (male and female). We transport them forward in time to our present. We cause them to breed and produce offspring. During gestation, they live in a modern environment (nutrition, shelter, etc.). At birth we take the newborn infant and give it to a modern, contemporaneous couple to raise. Is there is reason to believe it (the infant) would not emerge as a normal, modern adult? If there is no reason, what does that imply about intelligence? Is knowledge separable from it? Or is knowledge a necessary component of it? Or is knowledge itself "intelligence"? For my part, I think it is a distinct attribute, but I assign a low probability to that belief.
  - taeric 2y ago
    Maybe? But I'm asking for reasons to think one or the other. Again, I am largely agreed with the idea. But, evidence is not as clear cut. We had entire civilizations that never utilized wheels. Writing was not universal across all humanity. Would I prefer that it is only access to technology that confers advantages that we see in developing thought? Absolutely. I'm not able to categorically assume it, though.

turbojet1321 2y ago

> I'm curious why you are confident they would be more intelligent than a modern toddler? Because we have intellectual artefacts from that time that show us. Artefacts that underlay much of modern society, and that in many respects still hold up, even though we've built upon them for 20 generations.

next_xibalba 2y ago

In writing that, I thought it was pretty self evident. I ask this in seriousness, not snark: have you spent a lot of time around toddlers? My kid is currently a toddler, and while the intelligence curve she's rapidly climbing is impressive, she is unintelligent relative to an adult. I don't think I've come across any evidence suggesting that the human brain has changed the last 2000 years. After all, the Great Pyramid of Giza was built 4600 years ago. That construction required fairly advanced engineering. That's sort of beside the point though. To go back to my original comment, there is some distinction to be made between knowledge and intelligence. Even those should probably be decomposed into further salient attributes. And modern LLMs seem to capture some of those attributes, but do not yet strike me as "intelligent" in the way the average human is intelligent, but the average dog is not. I don't know, maybe I am conflating sentience or consciousness or embodiment or something else with intelligence.

taeric 2y ago
Yes, I have spent time with toddlers. And the problem solving skills of different toddlers can be remarkably different. Not even getting in to how much nutrition impacts developmental abilities. Or the fact that the vast majority of children used to not survive into adulthood. And, I get it, most kids that are "gifted" at super young age all somewhat converge with where others were going to get in a few years time. But I don't think we fully appreciate just how early we are able to get our kids reading across the board. Do we have evidence that you could get a mediocre teacher to prehistoric classrooms and have them get kids reading as well as we do on the regular today? And, quickly, as I say in sibling posts, I was taking "2000" to be a shorthand for absurdly old. My general question, there, is do you not think we are getting smarter? I realize this is a hazard of discussions, as most people seem to think this somehow logically leads to every terrible take it could. I don't agree with those. I do fully think that my children will net be smarter and stronger than me in most every way. I'd expect that my grandchildren will continue that trend. It seems to me that thinking otherwise is to either think that evolution has stopped with us, or that we have stagnated for other reasons?

lovehashbrowns 2y ago

As far as I know, you should be able to take a baby from like 30,000 years ago, put them through k-12, high school, and college, and they should be indistinguishable in terms of intelligence and capability. People mostly only think of humans from “thousands of years ago” as stupid because their lack of technology means their culture and thoughts didn’t survive until today. But their brain structure couldn’t have changed much. It’s just not enough time in terms of evolution. Aristotle was like 2,400 years ago, for context lol

taeric 2y ago
I will fully ack that I expect people from only 2000 or so years ago to be largely compatible with us. If not fully. But, I guess I can't bring myself to agree that early proto humans are where evolution stopped? I get that evolution takes generations. But, it actually moves rather fast for some things, no?
- lovehashbrowns 2y ago
  Aside from knowledge, a lot of what has changed in the last couple thousand years comes down to medicine and nutrition. We’re taller on average than people from the past, for example. But that’s a nutrition thing. Rather fast is like millions of years in evolutionary terms so 2,000 years is nothing. I don’t even think there’s significant evidence to show that Neanderthals were less intelligent than Homo sapiens and they were around from 400,000 years ago to 40,000 years ago or so. Human brains and also brain-body mass ratio wouldn’t have changed enough to make much of a noticeable difference if you teleport a human baby from thousands of years ago to today and put them through our education system. It’s just easier to dismiss them as stupid because very little of their life has survived til today. To the point, I mentioned that Aristotle was 2,400 years ago and you still landed on “largely compatible” lol. The pyramids were built over 4,000 years ago and they’re still a marvel of engineering. You just have a bias against people from thousands of years ago again mostly because a lot of their work didn’t survive to modern day.
  - taeric 2y ago