private_messaging comments on The Octopus, the Dolphin and Us: a Great Filter tale - Less Wrong

48 Post author: Stuart_Armstrong 03 September 2014 09:37PM

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Comment author: private_messaging 14 September 2014 07:37:55PM *  3 points [-]

Go to a prehistoric museum, even the simplest items you see (stones tied to sticks very securely for example) are not at all easy to do with your hands and are going to be so hard to do with just the snouts that they could be deemed impossible (and would be properly impossible if you consider e.g. the rate of decay of your materials combined with the minimum time to build it, or the like. Sufficient difficulty is impossibility). It's not that you can't tie some knot, it's that you can't do so reliably and with high precision in the spot where you need it.

I think we can all agree that the difficulty gap is absolutely immense. Perhaps dolphin bodies, with no magical knowledge, could do it, but at an intelligence level that is utterly, immensely superhuman.