From: Wei Dai (weidai@weidai.com)
Date: Thu May 01 2003 - 12:29:46 MDT
On Thu, May 01, 2003 at 12:46:29PM -0400, Keith Elis wrote:
> Those who read Yudkowsky's essay on 'Algernon's Law' (before he took off
> his website, for shame...) have an alternative view of Einstein's odd
> behaviors. I'll let Eliezer go into the details if he likes, but I
> wanted to at least bring it up. The essay when I read it in '97 or '98
> was for me one of those 'Necker Cube' moments, when the same old picture
> suddenly looks different without changing at all.
Found a copy of it here:
http://web.archive.org/web/20000831013137/http://www.singinst.org/algernon.html
I'll take this opportunity to point out that Algernon's Law should be
changed to "Any simple major enhancement to human intelligence *was* a net
evolutionary disadvantage." Now that we can have birth by cesarean
section, there is a significantly lower evolutionary cost to having a
bigger brain. There may also be simple major intelligence enhancements
that require the intake of nutrients that are easy to produce today but
were not available in the past.
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