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>Ten years from now... Among those who recognize that something’s wrong, one widely accepted viewpoint holds that fusion power, artificial intelligence, and int
by jere 13y ago
>Ten years from now... Among those who recognize that something’s wrong, one widely accepted viewpoint holds that fusion power, artificial intelligence, and interstellar migration will shortly solve all our problems, and therefore we don’t have to change the way we live.
Oh, of course. Dontcha know that, during that time, we'll be no more than 6 years away from a computer passing the Turing Test? http://longbets.org/1/ http://longbets.org/1/
And we'll be only ~20 years away from the singularity which solves everything. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technological_singularity http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technological_singularity
But in all seriousness, this was quite entertaining. I don't know if we have any reason to expect another (highly) intelligent species to arise in the next 100 million years. Were there any obstacles in the past 100 million years that prevented an intelligent species from developing before humans?
- protonfish 13y agoJust because they don't make jewelry and weapons doesn't mean some other animals (elephants, whales, other apes) are not highly intelligent. I prefer to call civilizations like ours "technological" and not pass judgement on the smarts of other creatures because they don't like building things.
- jere 13y agoI wasn't sure what phrasing to use (and I definitely didn't like the simple term "intelligent species"). I kind of agree with you, but I think it's a little silly to say only our technology distinguishes us. I'm reminded of Anathem here: even if we all lived like monks shunning technology, we'd still be set apart by our mathematic, scientific, and philosophical reasoning.
- maxerickson 13y agoThe monks in Anathem are technologists that shun distraction.
- jere 13y agoIt's been a while since I read the book, but I don't believe that is an accurate description: >The law of the Second New Revised Book of Discipline that governs the lives of the avout at the time of the narration... bans the avout from owning anything but two pieces of clothing and a sphere with multiple uses, and bans them from using or even knowing how to use any technology but paper and pen http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anathem http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anathem Unless you want to argue about whether those limited items are worth calling technology, at which time I will have to point out that we are not the only species to use tools.
- maxerickson 13y agoIt's also been a while since I read the book, but my recollection is that I viewed those rules as the set of preconditions that were settled on to allow them to continue to have monasteries.
- protonfish 13y agoWithout the ability to communicate or observe a physical technology, how do we measure the level of reasoning in an intelligent being?
- jere 13y agoWell, I'd say let's give communication a chance. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_ape_language http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_ape_language
- TrainedMonkey 13y agoFact that intelligence is very expensive in terms of energy consumption. Brain is already very expensive, highly intelligent species would need to dedicate more energy. So unless evolution will evolve cheaper way of representing high intelligence (which might be possible, our brain chemical structures are artifacts of time we lived in the oceans), it is unlikely that a species would evolve substantially higher intelligence compared with humans. So to evolve superior intelligence: need a lot of food at regular intervals with strong evolutionary pressure for being smarter, instead of faster, tougher, bigger, or more violent. Generally unlikely to happen in nature.