About your intuition that evolution made brains optimal... well but then there are people like John von Neumann who clearly demonstrate that the human brain can be orders of magnitude more productive without significantly higher energy costs.
My model of the human brain isn't that it's the most powerful biological information processing organ possible - far from it. In my view of the world we are merely the first species that passed an intelligence treshold allowing it to produce a technological civilisation. As soon as a species passed that treshold ... (read more)
About your intuition that evolution made brains optimal... well but then there are people like John von Neumann who clearly demonstrate that the human brain can be orders of magnitude more productive without significantly higher energy costs.
Optimal is a word one should use with caution and always with respect to some measure, and I use it selectively, usually as 'near-optimal' or some such. The article does not argue that brains are 'optimal' in some generic sense. I referenced JVN just as an example of a mentat - that human brains are capable of lea... (read more)
About your intuition that evolution made brains optimal... well but then there are people like John von Neumann who clearly demonstrate that the human brain can be orders of magnitude more productive without significantly higher energy costs.
My model of the human brain isn't that it's the most powerful biological information processing organ possible - far from it. In my view of the world we are merely the first species that passed an intelligence treshold allowing it to produce a technological civilisation. As soon as a species passed that treshold ... (read more)
Optimal is a word one should use with caution and always with respect to some measure, and I use it selectively, usually as 'near-optimal' or some such. The article does not argue that brains are 'optimal' in some generic sense. I referenced JVN just as an example of a mentat - that human brains are capable of lea... (read more)