KatjaGrace comments on Superintelligence 18: Life in an algorithmic economy - Less Wrong

4 Post author: KatjaGrace 13 January 2015 02:00AM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Comments (51)

You are viewing a single comment's thread.

Comment author: KatjaGrace 13 January 2015 02:09:06AM *  0 points [-]

Bostrom says many human behaviors are for 'signaling', and that some of these may not be the best way to signal in the future. But it seems many are not even the most effective way to signal now. What is going on? (this was brought up last time)

Comment author: Sebastian_Hagen 14 January 2015 01:19:22AM *  2 points [-]

Adaption executers, not fitness maximizers. Humans probably have specific hard-coded adaptations for the appreciation of some forms of art and play. It's entirely plausible that these are no longer adaptive in our world, and are now selected against, but that this has not been the case for long enough for them to be eliminated by evolution.

This would not make these adaptations particularly unusual in our world; modern humans do many other things that are clearly unadaptive from a genetic fitness perspective, like using contraceptives.