Evolution had to succeed. In order for evolution to be noticed and/or modeled by anything, the patterns of neurons had to align perfectly, even if there was a one-in-a-trillion chance of something like neurons randomly forming the correct general intelligence, anywhere, ever. The fact that we came from neuron brute forcing doesn’t tell us that much about whether neuron brute forcing can create general intelligence.
Animals and insects aren’t evidence at all; given that intelligence evolved, there would be plenty of offshoots.
By “evolution succeeds,” the OP means “succeeds at aligning humans with caring about inclusive genetic fitness” – not at creating general intelligence.
The fact that we came from neuron brute forcing doesn’t tell us that much about whether neuron brute forcing can create general intelligence.
The link you include mentions that anthropic updating on our observations can sometimes give us evidence on how hard something was likely to be initially (e.g., the cold war example where survival is evidence that things were less dangerous than we might have thought, all else equal). You can do something similar with the evolution of intelligence: This paper argues that if the evolution of human-level intelligence had been very unlikely, we’d be closer to the extremes of when Earth is no longer hospitable to big-brained life forms. The fact that the sun isn’t going to expand for a while longer (and make Earth uninhabitable) or that asteroid risks aren’t massively overdue for us compared to evolutionary timescales suggests that the evolution of general intelligence on earth wasn’t some freak accident that would almost never happen again under similar circumstances.
Evolution had to succeed. In order for evolution to be noticed and/or modeled by anything, the patterns of neurons had to align perfectly, even if there was a one-in-a-trillion chance of something like neurons randomly forming the correct general intelligence, anywhere, ever. The fact that we came from neuron brute forcing doesn’t tell us that much about whether neuron brute forcing can create general intelligence.
Animals and insects aren’t evidence at all; given that intelligence evolved, there would be plenty of offshoots.
By “evolution succeeds,” the OP means “succeeds at aligning humans with caring about inclusive genetic fitness” – not at creating general intelligence.
The link you include mentions that anthropic updating on our observations can sometimes give us evidence on how hard something was likely to be initially (e.g., the cold war example where survival is evidence that things were less dangerous than we might have thought, all else equal). You can do something similar with the evolution of intelligence: This paper argues that if the evolution of human-level intelligence had been very unlikely, we’d be closer to the extremes of when Earth is no longer hospitable to big-brained life forms. The fact that the sun isn’t going to expand for a while longer (and make Earth uninhabitable) or that asteroid risks aren’t massively overdue for us compared to evolutionary timescales suggests that the evolution of general intelligence on earth wasn’t some freak accident that would almost never happen again under similar circumstances.