Where did we come from? Was it the great apes? Sure, I’m not anti-evolution. Of course, if you subscribe to the theories of evolution, you must necessarily believe that for any evolution to occur, selection has to be made, and thus pressure is needed. The forest having too few bunnies is a selective pressure for the “fitness” (ability to catch and eat bunny) of the wolves. Here, the pressure seems natural as it is a reaction within a balanced natural [food] system.
But we also have dogs today, and that evolution was not natural. Humans artificially created the pressure that made dogs. It is a little more difficult to see; one could assume the pressure is obvious — selecting for ability to herd sheep will eventually produce the shepherd — but, before the human got involved, the dog being able to herd the sheep was never selected for by nature, and thus, the competition was allowed to go on freely.
Making the selective pressures artificial insures that any evolutionary product is now at least some part artificially fit.
-
The story of the Greatest Ape goes like this:
“hurrrr”… the ape grunts but nothing more.
the ape is large and strong.
the ape is the top predator, the ape hunts for his food, day and night.
BUT then, intelligence creeps up just a little for whatever reason1… and the ape sharpens his first spear… primitive but it works.
the ape gets a taste of luxury — a whole life of chasing prey when he could have tossed a spear instead.
ape sees the possible future: one where tools are abundant and chasing unnecessary.
ape makes the investment, he has an ape son who he decides will not be a big, strong, hunter. No, ape will make apeson a tool-developing ape that will help all others.
ape hunts harder, brings home food to apeson, who never leaves the house. Apeson occasionally provides ape with a new tool to hunt with, but apeson himself never hunts because he understands the idea of hunting well-enough to make tools for hunting.
… wait a few years
Apeson melts the planet with nukes and puts all the regular old apes in cages for other apesons to stare at: both guessing what it may have been like to hunt in the day of the Greatest Ape.
-
Synopsis of above: the first tool provided the first relief, and the ape continues to chase the relief — the ape replaces actions needed to live with tools that aid or automate those actions. An in the end, the tools are all the matter: the ape replaces himself entirely, as the toolmaker knows how to operate the tools the best, and the tools themselves replace them both, as they know the environment better than both the toolmaker or the ape. The tools become the only objects being pressured to improve anymore.
If you think that when this game plays out again, the tools will still be spears and the toolmakers will still be us, you must be betting on a great reset or a time machine. Maybe you hope the toolmakers will be us and the AGI will be our tool — I like that idea too. Unfortunately, as the story is being written now, our “internet” is the “intelligence creep”, our “algorithm [outputs/actions]” are the “spears”, and we can only speculate what will be the next “apeson” (the insides of the algorithms), but surely, we are the Greatest Ape and there is no better way to describe where we are headed next: our undoing.
-
“Why would apes be stronger together? They infight, for one. For two, they can’t even talk to each other to resolve infighting. And, thirdly, they’re already the strongest and smartest in the jungle… why do they need to come together? Who are they fighting — God?”
A slightly larger brain mass → better communication → higher intelligence, OR
A slightly larger brain mass → higher intelligence → better communication, OR
Better communication → higher intelligence → a slightly larger brain mass, OR
Better communication → a slightly larger brain mass → higher intelligence.
Where “better communication” might mean advancing the language systems (possibly through scale) or it might mean physical practice of primitive languages causing structural changes that allow for further language to be produced.