If I wanted to nitpick or argue, I’d nitpick based on the meaning of “intended”. (I think I stayed silent during that discussion. On a side note, I suspect that human brains do have a built-in capacity to model the physics of ballistics, air resistance included, because we can throw objects to hit a target.)
Anyway, if we want a “model-free” designer and optimization process, we can always go point to our “friend” the alien god, which certainly doesn’t have models or make predictions, yet it works.
As far as I can tell, only way to call evolution an intelligence, you have to add in the whole system in which the evolution works(The biosphere). If we take “mutual information” to be basis for “model”, evolution actually has absolutely accurate model of the biosphere, the biosphere itself. It’s just that evolution uses this model in a very very very suboptimal way.
The reason behind combining the process and the system it works in is quite simple, I believe. Evolution is simply a result of the biosphere doing the biosphere-thing, just as our intelligence is a result of our brain doing the brain-thing, all according to the laws of physics. Take the biosphere(or the brain) away, and that “intelligence” is gone.
If I wanted to nitpick or argue, I’d nitpick based on the meaning of “intended”. (I think I stayed silent during that discussion. On a side note, I suspect that human brains do have a built-in capacity to model the physics of ballistics, air resistance included, because we can throw objects to hit a target.)
Anyway, if we want a “model-free” designer and optimization process, we can always go point to our “friend” the alien god, which certainly doesn’t have models or make predictions, yet it works.
As far as I can tell, only way to call evolution an intelligence, you have to add in the whole system in which the evolution works(The biosphere). If we take “mutual information” to be basis for “model”, evolution actually has absolutely accurate model of the biosphere, the biosphere itself. It’s just that evolution uses this model in a very very very suboptimal way.
The reason behind combining the process and the system it works in is quite simple, I believe. Evolution is simply a result of the biosphere doing the biosphere-thing, just as our intelligence is a result of our brain doing the brain-thing, all according to the laws of physics. Take the biosphere(or the brain) away, and that “intelligence” is gone.