wedrifid comments on Intelligence Amplification Open Thread - Less Wrong
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
Comments (339)
Does the same reasoning apply to cancer treatment and antibiotics?
"If God wanted us to fly he would have given us wings!"
All else being equal we can expect our evolutionary heritage to be reasonably well optimised. But all else isn't equal. I don't have the same goals that the selection for my allelles in the ancestral environment implicitly optimised for. Evolution couldn't optimise for my specific needs at specific times which is one of the reasons we evolved general intelligence to handle that sort of thing.
Interventions, chemical or otherwise that we would consider using are not selected by random. They are created (often) by intelligent design and then selected for via a process of cultural evolution and empirical study.