cabalamat comments on Boksops -- Ancient Superintelligence? - Less Wrong

-2 Post author: MBlume 30 December 2009 11:12AM

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Comment author: cabalamat 05 January 2010 07:39:12AM 0 points [-]

Neanderthals were, in all likelihood, smarter than Homo sapiens

We're here and they're not, which suggests to me they weren't smarter than us.

Comment author: AdeleneDawner 05 January 2010 01:36:08PM 6 points [-]

I don't think it's that simple; we could have out-competed them in a different way - perhaps by maturing faster (highly plausible given the relationship between extended childhoods and intelligence) so that we were better able to 'bounce back' after losing tribe members to conflicts, or by being able to adapt more easily to different types of terrain, allowing us to more easily survive poor weather and climate change. (If humanity were to be wiped out by a plague, would that imply that the relevant virus was smarter than we are?)

Comment author: SilasBarta 05 January 2010 05:05:44PM 1 point [-]

What AdeleneDawner said. Again, Psilon analogy.