Ben_Jones comments on Humans in Funny Suits - Less Wrong

22 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 30 July 2008 11:54PM

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

Comments (128)

Sort By: Old

You are viewing a single comment's thread.

Comment author: Ben_Jones 31 July 2008 10:35:48AM 0 points [-]

Surprised you didn't mention DNA here, Eliezer. I imagine that if a truly alien species did a lifeform scan [cringe] of Earth, the first general comment they'd make would be along the lines of 'hey, they're all based on a double-helix self-replicator system'. Although not in English, of course.

So tell us - just how far back do we need to roll our intuitions here? If there's no perfect, blank ghost-in-the-machine intelligence, what common factors would we expect the average evolved intelligence to have? Some sort of visual cortex? A 'brain' that began as an I/O hub but 'evolved' to be the seat of intelligence? A mix of 'organic' and 'technological' elements?