Not really? You can test out pattern-matching or whatnot algorithms but you can't test out anything more generalized or as part of anything more generalized like problem-solving algorithms because those would require you to have an entity within which to run them.
Hm, plausible. To restate: if a mind consists of lots of little components that are useless on their own and only work well on concert, then it'll be hard to optimize any given component without the mind that surrounds it, because it's hard to gather data on which component designs work better. Does that seem accurate?
This is a thread where people can ask questions that they would ordinarily feel embarrassed for not knowing the answer to. The previous "stupid" questions thread is at almost 500 questions in about a month, so I think it's time for a new one.
Also, I have a new "stupid" question.