= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
wedrifid comments on Open thread, November 2011 - Less Wrong
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
= 783df68a0f980790206b9ea87794c5b6)
Loading…= b715d02e85f7b3b4ae65ca3d3e450868)
Subscribe to RSS Feed
Powered by Reddit
= f037147d6e6c911a85753b9abdedda8d)
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
Comments (209)
The only reason? The lack of creatures with appendages suitable for tool wielding or the evident brain capacity for the task doesn't come into it just a tiny bit?
Do we know that? Iguanodons for example have hands that look not all that terribly far off from hands suitable for tool use, some related species that we didn't find in the fossile record yet evolving proper hands doesn't seem impossible to me.
I have very little idea. Last I heard the brontosaurus doesn't even exist and the triceratops is really just an immature torosaurus. That gives a ballpark for how much confidence I can have in my knowledge of the species in that era.
This is incorrect. The name "brontosaurus" is incorrect. But the nomenclature correction to apatosaurus did not come with any change in our understanding of the species.
While that which was labelled brontosaurus was later subsumed into the previously identified genus apatosaurus the early reconstructed fossil which popularized our image of the brontosourus was also discovered to include a head based of models of camarasaurus skulls. That and it was supposedly forced to live in the water because it was too large to support itself on land. Basically the 'brontosourus' that I read about as a child is mostly bullshit.
Even this much I didn't have anything but the vaguest knowledge of until I read through the wikipedia page. As for possible tool capable appendages or even traces of radioactive isotopes I really have very little confidence in knowing about. It just isn't my area of interest.
Camarasaurus is a close relative, the use of it as a model for reconstructing the skull was deliberate. (Moreover, modern data shows that it was in fact quite a good reconstruction.) The water thing did turn out to be just wrong, but that's not any different than about the scale of change that has happened with a lot of dinosaurs (for example the changing understanding of how T-Rex hunted.) There's certainly been a lot of changes (although most of the brontosaurus stuff was known a very long time ago and just took a lot of time to filter through to popular culture), but none of it amounts to "brontosaurus" not existing.
What? No it doesn't. It was found to be the totally wrong sauropod to pretend was a brontosourus head. Did you read the line in wikipedia backwards? (The wording could be a little more explicit, at a stretch there is ambiguity. The actual journal article is more clear.) Or did you just make that up as a plausible assumption? It should be based off the diplodocus.
Hmm, now looking per your suggestion at the Wikipedia article. They emphasize the degree of difference more than I remember it turning out to be an issue. The source they are using is here (may be a paywall). I don't know enough paleontology to understand all the details of that paper. However, I suspect that to most laypeople a skull that resembles a diplodocus would be close to that of a camarasaurus so the issue may be a function of what one means by a good reconstruction. (I suspect that many 10 year olds could probably see the differences between a diplodocus skull and a torasaurus skull, but it would take more effort to point out the difference between diplodocus and camarasaurus.)
I could totally tell the difference between a camarasaurus and a raptor. That's about my limit. And I know about raptors because they are cool. Also, they feature in fictional math tests.
They wouldn't be able to describe the difference (or know either of those dinosours) but the difference when you look at a new apatosaurus compared to an old picture of a 'brontosourus' is rather stark. ie. The new one looks like a pussy.
Wikipedia is a pretty up-to-date source on dinosaurs, with lots of avid and interested editors on the topic. (The artistic reconstructions come close to being original research, but a reconstruction tends not to be used until it's passed a gamut of severely critical and knowledgeable editors.)
Remember that it's quite an active field, with new discoveries and extrapolations therefrom all the time. It surprises me slightly how much we know from what little evidence we have, and that we nevertheless do actually know quite a bit. (I have a dinosaur-mad small child who critiques the dinosaur books for kids from the library. Anything over a couple of years old is useless.)
I'm not exactly sure how much more or less common fossils are from various time periods but I think its fair to point out we have very few skeletons of certain hominids running around that fit that description in East Africa a few million years back.
Which dosen't change that you are right that it is very very unlikely to be the case that a tool using or very clever undiscovered species (at least to the extent needed to make the argument work) existed then. But we should keep in mind just what a puny fraction of extinct species are known to us.
Is this really important? The crucial point is some means for accumulation of cultural knowledge, which could well be implemented via tradition of scholarship without any support from external tools, and even failing that, ability (or just innate rationality) a couple of levels higher than human could do the trick.
Given runaway evolution of intelligence, it seem like ability to bear tools is irrelevant, and AFAIK evolution of human intelligence wasn't caused by the faculty of tool-making (so the effect isn't strong in either direction).
I find this comment extremely puzzling. How do you suppose an intelligent species could go about building nuclear bombs without the ability to use tools?
The relevant kind of "ability to use tools" is whatever can be used, however inefficiently at the beginning, to start building stuff, if you apply the ingenuity of an international scientific community for 100000 years to the task; not appendages that a chimp-level chimp can use to sharpen sticks in an evening. You seem to underestimate the power of intelligence.
This is directly analogous to AI boxing, with limitations of intelligent creatures' bodies playing the role of the box. I'd expect intelligent tortoises or horses should still be capable of bootstrapping technological civilization (if they get better than humans at rationality to sustain scientific progress in the initial absence of technological benefits, or just individually sufficiently more intelligent to get to the equivalent of the necessary culture's benefit in a lifetime).
There are a lot of species that are almost as smart as humans, and some even engage in tool use. (e.g. many species of corvids). But their tool use is limited, and part of the limit appears to be their lack of useful appendages and comparatively small size. In at least some of these species such as the New Caladonian Crow, tool techniques can be passed on from one generation to the next. This sort of thing suggests that appendages matter a fair bit.
(Obviously they aren't sufficient even when one is fairly smart. Elephants have an extreme flexible appendage, have culture, are pretty brainy, and don't seem to have developed any substantial tool use.)
Elephants or crows don't have scientific communities, so the analogy doesn't work, doesn't suggest anything about the hypothetical I discussed.
Humans developed tool use well before we had anything resembling the scientific method or a scientific community. Humans had already 2000 years ago become the dominant species on the planet and had a substantial enough impact to make easily noticeable changes in the global environment. Whatver is necessary for this sort of thing, a scientific community doesn't seem to be on the list.
You are missing the point still. The question was whether the presence of appendages convenient for tool-making is an important factor in intelligent species' ability to build a technological civilization. In other words, whether creatures intelligent enough to build a technological civilization, but lacking an equivalent of hands, would still manage to build a technological civilization.
Elephants or crows are irrelevant, as they are not smart enough. Human use of tools is irrelevant, as we do have hands. The relevant class of creatures are those that are smart and don't have hands (or similar), for example having bodies of tortoises (or worse).
Hmm, I'm confused now about what you are trying to assert. You are, if I'm now parsing you correctly, asserting that a species with no tool appendage but with some version of the scientific method could reach a high tech level without tool use? If so, that doesn't seem unreasonable, but you seem to be conflating intelligence with having a scientific community. These are not at all the same thing.
In the situation where you have smart folks with no ability to build tools, scientific community is one useful technology they can still build, and that can dramatically improve their capability to solve the no-hands problem. For example, I wouldn't expect humans with no hands (and with hoofs, say) to develop technology if they don't get good enough at science first (and this might fail to happen at our level of rationality in the absence of technology, which would be the case in no-hands hypothetical). As an alternative, I listed sufficiently-greater individual intelligence that doesn't need augmentation by culture to solve the no-hands problem (which might have developed if no-hands humans evolved a bit more, failing to solve the no-hands problem).
Yes (as pedanterrific noted). Unless the dinosours were sufficiently badass that they could chew on uranium ore, enrich it internally and launch the resultant cocktail via high powered, targeted excretion. That is one impressive reptile. Kind of like what you would get if you upgraded a pistol shrimp to an analogous T-Rex variant.
(Other alternatives include an intelligent species capable of synthesizing and excreting nano-factories from their pores.)
Replied to pedanterrific.
In response to that reply I note that I gave two examples of mechanisms by which a species might launch nuclear weapons without any ability to use tools. I could come up with more if necessary and a more intelligent (or merely different) mind could create further workarounds still. But that doesn't preclude acknowledging that the capability to use tools does give significant evidence about whether the species creates technology - particularly in what amount to our genetic kin.
Lack of fossilized evidence of technological artifacts is not the only reason to believe that the extinction of dinosours wasn't due to nuclear war. It is merely one of the stronger reasons.