From: Andrew Clough (aclough@mit.edu)
Date: Thu May 01 2003 - 14:29:03 MDT
At 02:29 PM 5/1/2003 -0400, you wrote:
>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.
I'd imagine that an increased need for energy would also be one of those
former evolutionary disadvantages. In fact, I would think that the caloric
cost of grey-matter is one of the biggest hurdles in any species developing
intelligence. Humans generally spend 1/3 of their energy on their brains,
and we're one of the most active species on the planet. For a cursory
hunter (*cough*kzinti*cough*) the energy costs would be very hard to bear.
Never attribute to malice what can be explained by stupidity. Don't assign
to stupidity what might be due to ignorance. And try not to assume your
opponent is the ignorant one-until you can show it isn't you.
-M.N. Plano
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