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Surprised by Brains — LessWrong

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Imagine two agents who've never seen an intelligence - including, somehow, themselves - but who've seen the rest of the universe up until now, arguing about what these newfangled "humans" with their "language" might be able to do... Believer: Previously, evolution has taken hundreds of thousands of years to create new complex adaptations with many working parts. I believe that, thanks to brains and language, we may see a new era, an era of intelligent design. In this era, complex causal systems - with many interdependent parts that collectively serve a definite function - will be created by the cumulative work of many brains building upon each others' efforts. Skeptic: I see - you think that brains might have something like a 50% speed advantage over natural selection? So it might take a while for brains to catch up, but after another eight billion years, brains will be in the lead. But this planet's Sun will swell up by then, so - Believer: Thirty percent? I was thinking more l

x Surprised by Brains — LessWrong AI Takeoff Dialogue (format) General intelligence Personal Blog 63 Surprised by Brains by Eliezer Yudkowsky 23rd Nov 2008 9 min read 28 63 Followup to : Life's Story Continues Imagine two agents who've never seen an intelligence - including, somehow, themselves - but who've seen the rest of the universe up until now, arguing about what these newfangled "humans" with their "language" might be able to do... Believer: Previously, evolution has taken hundreds of thousands of years to create new complex adaptations with many working parts . I believe that, thanks t

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