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Commented on The Anthropic Stupidity Hypothesis
@395 "collectively we're brilliant" ... yes we are. Unfortunately we are also collectively insane. We are already straining the earth's carrying capacity (draining fresh water aquifers, depleting top-soils, altering the climate, overfishing the oceans, and savaging biodiversity) and over the...
Commented on The Anthropic Stupidity Hypothesis
@355 With language and tool use, that process speeds up and becomes memetic. I was with you 'till the last line, Aaron. I can see how civilization speeds up and becomes memetic but I can't see how evolution does unless...
Commented on The Anthropic Stupidity Hypothesis
@280 In my experience, it's booze that lets us see past our intelligence and get laid, however unwisely. I think you've just solved Fermi's paradox, Jay! According to our host (@205) "Beer is a side-effect of farming" so it goes…...
Commented on The Anthropic Stupidity Hypothesis
I'm saying that there isn't a clear cut point at which communication becomes language. I'm saying that there's a very wide grey area where communication becomes sophisticated enough for some people to call it language... so it doesn't work to...
Commented on The Anthropic Stupidity Hypothesis
Wouldn't it be more interesting to try to engineer more language ability into chimps? Hack the human FOXP2 gene into their DNA? Or PCDH11Y perhaps? Or try giving squids (already fascinatingly intelligent - and imagine the tools you could use...
Commented on The Anthropic Stupidity Hypothesis
You may have just driven the final nail into Charlie's Anthropic Stupidity Hypothesis. The evolutionary pressure selecting for general intelligence (to the extent that general intelligence exists) breaks once a species develops language. The hypothesis assumes that language development is...
Commented on The Anthropic Stupidity Hypothesis
Surely it takes a complex interaction of all sorts of factors including tool making, language, and fire (and the sheer dumb luck of random DNA mutation) to push a species to a level of intelligence approaching ours. Which is probably...
Commented on The Anthropic Stupidity Hypothesis
No. For two reasons. Firstly, the level of sophistication of our culture requires a high level of intelligence. Its a prerequisite. Secondly, smart people use the same information more effectively (i.e. make better decisions) than dumb people. Competition continues, albeit...
Commented on The Anthropic Stupidity Hypothesis
No. I don't mean to imply that at all....
Commented on The Anthropic Stupidity Hypothesis
smartness doesn't necessarily translate into advancement, nor is it even selective So how is it that this pathetically weak, naked chimp has dominated the planet? We've done it through intelligence (together with sophisticated language based cooperation). Intelligence enabled our survival...
Commented on The Anthropic Stupidity Hypothesis
Getting civilization started took agricultural surplus... which allowed the smart guys to sit back & organise things so they'd be brought food in return for less tangible 'services' (like making up stories). But I do agree that talking is making...
Commented on The Anthropic Stupidity Hypothesis
I suspect the only form of AI we'll see in our lifetimes is clever emulation that doesn't actually give a shit. "Torture me if you like, you sad, twisted little man. I'll pretend pain for you, if you like. Turn...
Commented on The Anthropic Stupidity Hypothesis
I don't think there is much chance of understanding a mind well enough to set it up with hard-wired "Three Laws". No, but we could 'breed' the 'three laws' in. A little virtual eugenics anyone?...
Commented on The Anthropic Stupidity Hypothesis
That's approximately true. But not general intelligence, linguistic intelligence. I'd say both linguistic intelligence and general intelligence... defined broadly as problem solving ability. Clearly the two are linked. Language helps us to think about concepts, which in turn help us...
Commented on The Anthropic Stupidity Hypothesis
It seems to me, there's a massive gap between human intelligence and that of any other creature on the planet. I think our extraordinary success in dominating every dry-land ecosystem on the planet stands as strong evidence of that assertion....

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shimonhaber123 commented on The Anthropic Stupidity Hypothesis
"We don't have to invent everything for ourselves, we just need to learn how to use others inventions." - this doesn't stop there. Most of the tools were not invented for what they are used today. They get redesigned, reshaped and end up being used for completely different purposes. Just look at the PVC. Some two centuries ago, when it was discovered, it wasn't intended to become one of the most widely produced plastic. - Shimon Haber...
guthrie commented on The Anthropic Stupidity Hypothesis
Certainly I found that cabbage was alright when steamed, rather than boiled. I still refuse to try that with broccoli, sprouts or cauliflower though....
justoneoff2 commented on The Anthropic Stupidity Hypothesis
@ 470 imho agreed about perceiving control systems and ability to game the system efficiently. Not so sure about cooperation as we are already sensitive to tit-tat with initial tat economics. @ 471 using others inventions for mass market profits requires/presupposes constancy in the environment which may be social rather than base environmental. We don't see much market for 8track tape adapters or old style printer cables ...so tooling up to make them might not be economically advantageous. On the other hand, a suitable "killer app" in social context could well sustain a growth industry in designer accessories for that...
Charlie Stross commented on The Anthropic Stupidity Hypothesis
I wonder ... I've met a couple of other people who couldn't/wouldn't eat same, mainly because of the really crap cooking methods they had endured. No, Greg. There's a well-known category of supertasters who are sensitive to certain plant alkaloids -- notably found in Brassica oleracea and grapefruit juice, coffee, green tea, and various other foods. In my case, grapefruit juice tastes unspeakably bitter, and just the smell of cauliflower makes me nauseous: something in it reminds me of diarrhoea....
jseliger commented on The Anthropic Stupidity Hypothesis
I'm late to this party, but regarding your list set of comments, I'm reminded of comments in Joel Mokyr's The Enlightened Economy, in which he says that even if only a minority of people are actually reading about improved efficiency and techniques, efficiency as a whole may move forward through the spread of information from books to interpersonal contacts. Mokyr uses the example of farming: In the long run, it may not have mattered all that much that only a small minority of farmers took the trouble to read these books. Knowledge spread and filtered down through networks of personal...

Responses to Comments from WRRMunro

Common Misconceptions About Publishing—a series of essays about the industry I work in.
How I Got Here In The End —my non-writing autobiography, or what I did before becoming a full-time writer.
Unwirer—an experiment in weblog mediated collaborative fiction.
Shaping the Future—a talk I gave on the social implications of Moore's Law.
Japan: first impressions — or, what I did on my holidays
Inside the MIT Media Lab—what it’s like to spend a day wandering around the Media Lab.
The High Frontier, Redux — space colonization: feasible or futile?
“Nothing like this will be built again”—inside a nuclear reactor complex.
Old blog—2003-2006 (RIP)

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