1) I wonder if comparisons with computers would be apt? As Ted Chiang recently (and others for a good long while) have argued, we're leading ourselves into traps comparing computers and brains.

I'm abstracting this from biology — most likely unhelpfully — but I find myself thinking about machine learning and the situations to which it is applied.

2) And on another level, I'm thinking about the way things like eye-hand coordination work . . . things that if we thought about them consciously they would be harder, I imagine. Thinking about the concept of muscle memory.

I'm groping in the dark here, but I find myself wondering if those two avenues of discussion would be useful.

Post edited 3:00 pm – April 10, 2012 by Andrea_A

Lanius said:

I think Watts is wrong here…

Sure, non-cognition works really well.. but for an organism or society to truly progress, it needs to have a model of itself.

Does evolution really mean "progress", not rather "adaptation"?

For the Sea Squirts it even makes sense to consume their brain after becoming sessile …

And what about society? Maybe you know about the history of the Vikings in Greenland. Their colonies dwindled as the Little Ice Age began. But the technically less advanced, but better adapted Inuit could survive there …

And having such a model increases the danger or the likelihood of self-awareness. 

In Bernard Werber's "Empire of the Ants" (rather Fantasy than hard Science Fiction) only a few ants develop self-awareness. It gets considered to be a mental disease. I don't like Werber's allegoric writing-style too much, but I think here he's getting the point.

I doubt any mammal mind could have a working model of itself and not be self-aware to a degree. 

Oh, yes!

Stupid psychopaths are not self-aware, in that they don't engage in self-reflection, they just do stuff (Based on what I've read), but smart ones develop a pretty good working model of their own minds. They are self-aware… some of the time. Rest of the time, they live for the game.

Theory of Mind is a useful tool for behaviour prediction (of prey [how can we chase wild horses over the cliff?], of predators [is the lion hungry or not?], and, probably most important in apes and humans, of members of the peer group). But there's a major difference between thinking about "If I do this then another person probably would do that …", and pondering about internal processes.

I recently read a paper about an experiment with macaques and baboons, showing their almost equal performance compared to apes and toddlers in physical intelligence tasks:

http://www.plosone.org/article…..A394378302

Another argument that human intelligence had developed in more and more complex social interactions.

Post edited 2:37 pm – April 11, 2012 by Andrea_A

Lanius said:

How can you even ask the question about evolution.

Only religion-twisted fools still think evolution has an 'aim'.

There is no reason for us to believe it has an aim, therefore, it cannot have 'progress', it is just about adaptation.

We're a fluke, I believe… complexity wise. Is there any evidence today's animals are more complex than those of 30 million years ago? 

Therefore I mentioned "progress in society" … and I would definitively prefer an universe without a whatsoever power saying "Game Over".

30 million years ago — had you a special reason for the choice of this time? We are there at the borderline between Eocene and Oligocene, with climate change, causing an extinction event mainly among marine organisms. Such events roll the dices … and generalists have the chance to fill new niches.

In my momentary bedtime reading the evolutionary process got compared with a dance competition: As long as only one kind of music gets played, Slow Waltz, e.g., specialists would dominate, but when the band suddenly plays Rumba, then Rock 'n Roll, then a medieval Pavane, the generalists have better chances.

If we go further back at 47 million years ago, we're in the Eocene and at the Messel Pit, a great window into time, showing the complexity of the ecosystem. I don't think that those life-forms had been less complex, especially as most "macroscopic" species are insects. Some of them are existing in similar form until nowadays, for example the ants.

If we go back to the dinosaurs, we're getting surprised: New scientific evidence shows that they're not those stupid monsters with only a small brain. Maybe an analogy could be taken from the ability of reptiles to get target trained (turtle and alligator). Others had been rather bird-like, and birds are known to be able to perform complex intelligence tasks with a relatively small brain. But fossils sadly don't tell much about behaviour. We probably would never know details about the mating behaviour of Velociraptor … but sometimes science could be enlighting (ornamental function of Microraptor's feathers). Not to mention the obligatory insects …

The Ammonites developed thousands of species. An example for their complexitivity is the complex folding of the septa (chamber walls): http://de.wikipedia.org/w/inde…..0819132807

Could we agree that comparable complexitivity exists almost since the Coal Age? Maybe even longer. The German Science Fiction author Frank Schätzing in "Der Schwarm/The Swarm" deals with this idea.

Once I had read that a typical mammal species lasts about a million year …

Post edited 2:50 am – April 12, 2012 by Andrea_A

Lanius said:

No offence meant.. but The 'new evidence' mentioned was in my kids' books about dinosaurs 15 years ago :D

Dinosaurs were likely pretty smart, at least the late ones.  But was I saying complexity has been increasing so much.

It was merely meant to set up a kind of story line, and I wanted to show this as a common prejudice about reptiles. Maybe I should have added this link, too.

But if overall complexitivity grew, then on a much larger timescale, with several backlashs. For a long time evolution plays the same theme with variations, but when things change, then rather fast (cambrian explosion).

In fact, even humans are not especially complex compared to other animals.

I totally agree —  flying is a much more complex task, and wings had been independently developed more than once.

As to 'typical mammal species'… maybe. Doesn't affect us at all. Technology we use is not 'natural',

You're right that mankind has decoupled itself from biological evolution. One of those guys in the above mentioned book (Johann Grolle: Evolution  — Wege des Lebens) talked about a "human self-domestication". 

Have you read Charles Stross' "Saturn's Children", with the underlying idea that humans became extinct and only their Robots keep all going?

Have you read Black Man by Morgan? That book's theme is human-self domestication, and how that has created people willing to submit, and how perhaps the ancient hunter gatherers were less like that ..  

Lanius said:

Have you read Black Man by Morgan? That book's theme is human-self domestication, and how that has created people willing to submit, and how perhaps the ancient hunter gatherers were less like that ..  

At the moment I'm preparing myself for the Elstercon in Leipzig, currently reading a German steampunk/time-travel/alternative history story starting before WW1: The Little Cruiser "Saarbrücken" thrown into the 4th century AD.

"Kaiserkrieger" is rather a "Connecticut Yankee" story than alternate history. Finally, I didn't like the first novel very much (only preparing the stage), and there are names over names over names … most of them ending with -us — I'm confused.

Maybe the author also got inspired by William R. Forstchen's "The Lost Regiment" series.

But both novels adress the problems of maintaining a high(er) technology in low-tech environment, for example steel production.