This article isn't about intelligence, its about innovation. He's talking specifically about the "lightbulb moment" - the inspriation part of invention. I don't think there is anything at all original about the article except the tortured analogy to evolution.

Ideas are not just natural selection. People do not design computers by randomly messing with transistors of their last version. People do not change computer programs by randomly altering lines of code. It would not work in any feasible time period.

There are things that you can design that way. There are things where that's the best way we know how to design them. That's why genetic algorithms are sometimes very useful. Not everything is like that. That's why we don't use genetic algorithms for everything.

Also, the lack of innovation he talks about seems to be largely that we're not reinventing the wheel. If there's nothing to stop you from stealing ideas, then there won't be sufficient innovation, but that's what we have intellectual property rights for.

What if we sold African hunting licenses for enough money that for each victim, enough money would be raised for a charity that would save two African children's lives?

I don't support your right-to-hunt-Africans initiative.

Not complimentary because the story has too much "Yay, us!"?

Do you mean complimentary, and not complementary?

His analogy to blindsight seemed enlightening. One could say that animals do not experience pain in the same way that someone with blindsight does not see a baseball hurtling toward his face.

I've heard that murder only gets easier.

"Euthanize" sounds slightly better.

When a bee is stuck flying against the window desperately trying to get free, I help it.
When a spider is in some place where I know it will starve to death or get crushed, I put it outside.
When an injured bird needs some time to pull itself together and avoid being eaten by the cat, I'll spend hours babying it.

As a human, I feel empathy for other beings, and I project a conscious sentient being on them. Even though I know that there is no such conscious being, it still gets constructed and empathized with, whether I like it or not. Faced with this, I have a choice:

1. Act on my feelings of empathy, thereby practicing the habit of doing the right thing, and using a bit of time.

2. Put on my murder face and ignore the imaginary suffering, thereby practicing moral indifference, to save a bit of time.

From a purely instrumental perspective, I think choosing #1 is a good idea. Practicing morality seems much better than practicing indifference, even if the practice situation is imaginary.

That's how I like to think about animal suffering.

I know that this is one of those questions that can take a long answer, so feel free to answer in summary form. But why do you think that?

I might expand later but briefly: Because I significantly negatively value Africans being hunted for sport. I'm arbitrary like that.

I think many intelligent people will start with a bias that they are smarter than the average of a market, but the idea of risking property maybe boosts our awareness of the uncertainties we have about our own knowledge.