asr comments on Hanson Debating Yudkowsky, Jun 2011 - Less Wrong

14 Post author: XiXiDu 03 July 2011 04:59PM

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Comment author: asr 04 July 2011 02:22:35PM *  4 points [-]

The first creatures to develop human-level intelligence came to dominate all other creatures.

I am not so confident of this. There were a bunch of early hominids, other than H. Sap, whose intelligence is not well established. Suppose, say, it turns out that Neanderthals were 7% smarter on average than modern humans, but lost out evolutionarily because they had too much body hair. What would that imply about the importance of intelligence?

Comment author: Vaniver 05 July 2011 03:27:48AM 0 points [-]

Actually, we have strong reason to suspect Neanderthals were smarter than Cro-Magnon man, and lost out because Cro-Magnon man traded and Neanderthals didn't.