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Viliam comments on Open Thread, Jun. 15 - Jun. 21, 2015 - Less Wrong Discussion

5 Post author: Gondolinian 15 June 2015 12:02AM

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Comment author: Viliam 17 June 2015 07:30:27AM 0 points [-]

Specifically, since parents don't invest in their offspring they don't tell them what they've learned. Thus no matter how smart individuals are, knowledge doesn't pass to the next generation.

Maybe the alien species has some other form of sharing information. For example the parents may share the knowledge with anyone, and later someone else will tell their children.

Comment author: Cariyaga 17 June 2015 10:10:17PM 1 point [-]

Why would they? That would increase the evolutionary fitness of their competitors.

Comment author: Viliam 18 June 2015 01:48:35PM 0 points [-]

They could trade the information.

I am not suggesting a specific mechanism here, rather objecting against the generalization that alien species will have no way to pass knowledge to the next generation unless they do it like we do. There can be other ways.