Lipdorn_1 comments on The Wonder of Evolution - Less Wrong

34 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 02 November 2007 08:49PM

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Comment author: Nick_Tarleton 03 November 2007 02:48:39AM 11 points [-]

What evolutionary algorithm, operating over a non-immense period of time, even comes close to what a talented human is capable of? It wasn't evolution that built your computer, although small parts of it (that humans are unusually bad at designing) may have been constructed by evolutionary algorithms.

Humans are also functions of reality, unless you're a dualist. We have imperfect models, but evolution doesn't have a model at all, which is why it's stupid. Even if it did inerrantly respond to the immediate environment (and it doesn't - look at the effect of a sense of taste adapted to a very different environment, for instance), it necessarily can't plan for the future. You really sound like you're genuflecting at a sacred mystery, not being rational.

Re specialness: it's annoying to smugly point out things that people are already perfectly aware of.