Re: Eli and Brian Update [Fwd: [>Htech] "Friendly AI" released for commentary]

From: Jeff Bone (jbone@jump.net)
Date: Fri Apr 20 2001 - 11:00:22 PDT


kents@trajecta.com wrote:

> Jeff, what's this 'evolution works slowly' dogma you're spouting?
>
> It doesn't - not always. Read _Beak of the Finch_ by Jonathon Weiner.

You're right, clearly it doesn't always work slowly--- Darwin's own
observations are enough to illustrate that. I guess I should've been more
specific. Evolution in some contexts works rapidly in terms of generating
positive survival adaptations, and usually works rapidly at eliminating
negative survival adaptations; it's just relatively slow at removing net-zero
adaptations.

> But - language in humans _could_ have occurred in a few generations -
> presuming it takes a critical-mass of brain-size/complexity. An
> inflection-point so to speak.

True.

jb



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