...your "cough" link...

Your point wasn't dependent on it so I didn't want to go verbose & waste the reader's time when they've heard those arguments before. My first thought was Eliezer's ERROR: Postulation of group selection detected but I thought a subtle cough would be kinder. Oh well.

There is a tendency...to evaluate higher intelligence as automatically translating to higher chances of survival...assumption all life evolves toward intelligence. But high animal (sub-sapient) intelligence...is not inherently pro-survival.

Ah. Yeah, that wasn't where I was arguing from. I agree with you about this. Do many people (who should know better) still believe this nowadays?

I tend to evaluate the lots of examples as evidence that it doesn't likely lead to runaway selection for intelligence, since it so rarely seems to. It could, of course, instead be understood as there being lots of opportunities for social behavior to cause a runaway selection for intelligence, and so it is almost inevitable that social behavior will eventually do so.

Maybe not inevitable, but I really doubt it's hard enough to be a Great Filter.