Realizing far-reaching consequences of an idea is only easy in hindsight, otherwise I think it’s a matter of exceptional intelligence and/or luck. There’s an enormous difference between, on the one hand, noticing some limited selection and utilising it for practical benefits—despite only having a limited, if any, understanding of what you’re doing—and on the other hand realizing how life evolved into complexity from its simple beginnings, in the course of a difficult to grasp period of time. Especially if the idea has to go up against well-entrenched, hostile memes.
I don’t know if this has a name, but there seems to exit a trope where (speaking broadly) superior beings are unable to understand the thinking and errors of less advanced beings. I first noticed it when reading H. Fast’s The First Men, where this exchange between a “Man Plus” child and a normal human occurs:
“Can you do something you disapprove of?”
“I am afraid I can. And do.”
“I don’t understand. Then why do you do it?”
It’s supposed to be about how the child is so advanced and undivided in her thinking, but to me it just means “well then you don’t understand how the human mind works”.
In short, I find this trope to be a fallacy. I’d expect an advanced civilisation to have a greater, not lesser, understanding of how intelligence works, its limitations, and failure modes in general.
In short, I find this trope to be a fallacy. I’d expect an advanced civilisation to have a greater, not lesser, understanding of how intelligence works, its limitations, and failure modes in general.
But what reason do we have to expect them to pick evolution, as opposed to the concept of money, or of extensive governments (governments governing more than 10,000 people at once), or of written language, or of the internet, or of radio communication, or of fillangerisation, as their obvious sign of advancement?
Just because humans picked up on evolution far later than we should have, doesn’t mean that evolution is what they’ll expect to be the late discovery. They might equally expect that the internet wouldn’t be invented until the equivalent tech level of 2150. Or they might consider moveable type to be the symbol of a masterful race.
Just because they’ll likely be able to understand why we were late to it, doesn’t mean it would occur to them before looking at us. It’s easy to explain why we came to it when we did, once you know that that’s what happened, but if you were from a society that realised evolution [not necessarily common descent] existed as they were domesticating animals; would you really think of understanding evolution as a sign of advancement?
EDIT: IOW: I’ve upvoted your disagreement with the “advanced people can’t understand the simpler ways” trope; but I stand by my original point: they wouldn’t EXPECT evolution to be undiscovered.
I suspect that the intent of the original quote is that they’ll assess us by our curiosity towards, and effectiveness in discovering, our origins. As Dawkins is a biologist, he is implying that evolution by natural selection is an important part of it, which of course is true. An astronomer or cosmologist might consider a theory on the origins of the universe itself to be more important, a biochemist might consider abiogenesis to be the key, and so on.
Personally, I can see where he’s coming from, though I can’t say I feel like I know enough about the evolution of intelligence to come up with a valid argument as to whether an alien species would consider this to be a good metric to evaluate us with. One could argue that interest in oneself is an important aspect of intelligence, and scientific enquiry important to the development of space travel, and so a species capable of travelling to us would have those qualities and look for them in the creatures they found.
This is my time posting here, so I’m probably not quite up to the standards of the rest of you just yet. Sorry if I said something stupid.
I wouldn’t consider anything you’ve said here stupid, in fact I would agree with it.
I, personally, see it as a failure of imagination on the part of Dawkin’s, that he considers the issue he personally finds most important to be that which alien intelligences will find most important, but you are right to point out what his likely reasoning is.
I think you’re interpreting the quote too literally, it’s not a statement about some alien intelligences but an allegory to communicate just how important the science of evolution is.
Another chain of reasoning I have seen people use to reach similar conclusions is that the aliens are looking for species that have outgrown their sense of their own special importance to the universe. Aliens checking for that would be likely to ask about evolution, or possibly about cosmologies that don’t have the home planet at the center of the universe. However, I don’t think a sense of specialness is one of the main things aliens will care about.
In short, I find this trope to be a fallacy. I’d expect an advanced civilisation to have a greater, not lesser, understanding of how intelligence works, its limitations, and failure modes in general.
Have you never looked at something someone does and asked yourself, “How can they be so stupid?”
It’s not as though you literally cannot conceive of such limitations; just that you cannot empathize with them.
It’s anthropomorphism to assume that it would occur to advanced aliens to try to understand us empathetically rather than causally/technically in the first place, though.
Anthropomorphism? I think not. All known organisms that think have emotions. Advanced animals demonstrate empathy.
Now, certainly it might be possible that an advanced civilization might arise that is non-sentient, and thus incapable of modeling other’s psyche empathetically. I will admit to the possibility of anthropocentrism in my statements here; that is, in my inability to conceive of a mechanism whereby technological intelligence could arise without passing through a route that produces intelligences sufficiently like our own as to possess the characteristic of ‘empathy’.
It’s one thing to postulate counter-factuals; it’s another altogether to actually attempt to legitimize them with sound reasoning.
Do you have any good evidence that this assertion applies to Cephalopods? I.e., either that they don’t think or that they have emotions. (Not a rhetorical question; I know about them only enough to realize that I don’t know.)
Do you have any good evidence that this assertion applies to Cephalopods?
Cephalopods in general have actually been shown to be rather intelligent. Some species of squid even engage in courtship rituals. There’s no good reason to assume that given the fact that they engage in courtship, predator/prey response, and have been shown to respond to simple irritants with aggressive responses that they do not experience at the very least the emotions of lust, fear, and anger.
(Note: I model “animal intelligence” in terms of emotional responses; while these can often be very sophisticated, it lacks abstract reasoning. Many animals are more intelligent beyond ‘simple’ animal intelligence; but those are the exception rather than the norm.)
I agree, but I’m not sure the examples you gave are good reasons to assume the opposite. They’re certainly evidence of intelligence, and there are even signs of something close to self-awareness (some species apparently can recognize themselves in mirrors).
But emotions are a rather different thing, and I’m rather more reluctant to assume them. (Particularly because I’m even less sure about the word than I am about “intelligence”. But it also just occurred to me that between people emotions seem much easier to fake than intelligence, which stated the other way around means we’re much worse at detecting them.)
Also, the reason I specifically asked about Cephalopods is that they’re pretty close to as far away from humans as they can be and still be animals; they’re so far away we can’t even find fossil evidence of the closest common ancestor. It still had a nervous system, but it was very simple as far as I can tell (flatworm-level), so I think it’s pretty safe to assume that any high level neuronal structures have evolved completely separately between us and cephalopods.
Which is why I’m reluctant to just assume things like emotions, which in my opinion are harder to prove.
On the other hand, this means any similarity we do find between the two kinds of nervous systems (including, if demonstrated, having emotions) would be pretty good evidence that the common feature is likely universal for any brain based on neurons. (Which can be interesting for things like uploading, artificial neuronal networks, and uplifting.)
While I think you’re right to point out that the uncomprehending-superior-beings trope is unrealistic, I don’t think Dawkins was generalizing from fictional evidence; his quote reads more to me like plain old anthropomorphism, along with a good slice of self-serving bias relating to the importance of his own work.
A point similar to your first one shows up occasionally in fiction too, incidentally; there’s a semi-common sci-fi trope that has alien species achieving interstellar travel or some other advanced technology by way of a very simple and obvious-in-retrospect process that just happened never to occur to any human scientist. So culture’s not completely blind to the idea. Both tropes basically exist to serve narrative purposes, though, and usually obviously polemic ones; Dawkins isn’t any kind of extra-rational superhuman, but I wouldn’t expect him to unwittingly parrot a device that transparent out of its original context.
Easily.
Realizing far-reaching consequences of an idea is only easy in hindsight, otherwise I think it’s a matter of exceptional intelligence and/or luck. There’s an enormous difference between, on the one hand, noticing some limited selection and utilising it for practical benefits—despite only having a limited, if any, understanding of what you’re doing—and on the other hand realizing how life evolved into complexity from its simple beginnings, in the course of a difficult to grasp period of time. Especially if the idea has to go up against well-entrenched, hostile memes.
I don’t know if this has a name, but there seems to exit a trope where (speaking broadly) superior beings are unable to understand the thinking and errors of less advanced beings. I first noticed it when reading H. Fast’s The First Men, where this exchange between a “Man Plus” child and a normal human occurs:
“Can you do something you disapprove of?” “I am afraid I can. And do.” “I don’t understand. Then why do you do it?”
It’s supposed to be about how the child is so advanced and undivided in her thinking, but to me it just means “well then you don’t understand how the human mind works”.
In short, I find this trope to be a fallacy. I’d expect an advanced civilisation to have a greater, not lesser, understanding of how intelligence works, its limitations, and failure modes in general.
Yeah. This was put very well by Fyodor Urnov, in an MCB140 lecture:
“What is blindingly obvious to us was not obvious to geniuses of ages past.”
I think the lecture series is available on iTunes.
But what reason do we have to expect them to pick evolution, as opposed to the concept of money, or of extensive governments (governments governing more than 10,000 people at once), or of written language, or of the internet, or of radio communication, or of fillangerisation, as their obvious sign of advancement?
Just because humans picked up on evolution far later than we should have, doesn’t mean that evolution is what they’ll expect to be the late discovery. They might equally expect that the internet wouldn’t be invented until the equivalent tech level of 2150. Or they might consider moveable type to be the symbol of a masterful race.
Just because they’ll likely be able to understand why we were late to it, doesn’t mean it would occur to them before looking at us. It’s easy to explain why we came to it when we did, once you know that that’s what happened, but if you were from a society that realised evolution [not necessarily common descent] existed as they were domesticating animals; would you really think of understanding evolution as a sign of advancement?
EDIT: IOW: I’ve upvoted your disagreement with the “advanced people can’t understand the simpler ways” trope; but I stand by my original point: they wouldn’t EXPECT evolution to be undiscovered.
I suspect that the intent of the original quote is that they’ll assess us by our curiosity towards, and effectiveness in discovering, our origins. As Dawkins is a biologist, he is implying that evolution by natural selection is an important part of it, which of course is true. An astronomer or cosmologist might consider a theory on the origins of the universe itself to be more important, a biochemist might consider abiogenesis to be the key, and so on.
Personally, I can see where he’s coming from, though I can’t say I feel like I know enough about the evolution of intelligence to come up with a valid argument as to whether an alien species would consider this to be a good metric to evaluate us with. One could argue that interest in oneself is an important aspect of intelligence, and scientific enquiry important to the development of space travel, and so a species capable of travelling to us would have those qualities and look for them in the creatures they found.
This is my time posting here, so I’m probably not quite up to the standards of the rest of you just yet. Sorry if I said something stupid.
Welcome to lesswrong.
I wouldn’t consider anything you’ve said here stupid, in fact I would agree with it.
I, personally, see it as a failure of imagination on the part of Dawkin’s, that he considers the issue he personally finds most important to be that which alien intelligences will find most important, but you are right to point out what his likely reasoning is.
I think you’re interpreting the quote too literally, it’s not a statement about some alien intelligences but an allegory to communicate just how important the science of evolution is.
Another chain of reasoning I have seen people use to reach similar conclusions is that the aliens are looking for species that have outgrown their sense of their own special importance to the universe. Aliens checking for that would be likely to ask about evolution, or possibly about cosmologies that don’t have the home planet at the center of the universe. However, I don’t think a sense of specialness is one of the main things aliens will care about.
Have you never looked at something someone does and asked yourself, “How can they be so stupid?”
It’s not as though you literally cannot conceive of such limitations; just that you cannot empathize with them.
It’s anthropomorphism to assume that it would occur to advanced aliens to try to understand us empathetically rather than causally/technically in the first place, though.
Anthropomorphism? I think not. All known organisms that think have emotions. Advanced animals demonstrate empathy.
Now, certainly it might be possible that an advanced civilization might arise that is non-sentient, and thus incapable of modeling other’s psyche empathetically. I will admit to the possibility of anthropocentrism in my statements here; that is, in my inability to conceive of a mechanism whereby technological intelligence could arise without passing through a route that produces intelligences sufficiently like our own as to possess the characteristic of ‘empathy’.
It’s one thing to postulate counter-factuals; it’s another altogether to actually attempt to legitimize them with sound reasoning.
Do you have any good evidence that this assertion applies to Cephalopods? I.e., either that they don’t think or that they have emotions. (Not a rhetorical question; I know about them only enough to realize that I don’t know.)
Cephalopods in general have actually been shown to be rather intelligent. Some species of squid even engage in courtship rituals. There’s no good reason to assume that given the fact that they engage in courtship, predator/prey response, and have been shown to respond to simple irritants with aggressive responses that they do not experience at the very least the emotions of lust, fear, and anger.
(Note: I model “animal intelligence” in terms of emotional responses; while these can often be very sophisticated, it lacks abstract reasoning. Many animals are more intelligent beyond ‘simple’ animal intelligence; but those are the exception rather than the norm.)
I agree, but I’m not sure the examples you gave are good reasons to assume the opposite. They’re certainly evidence of intelligence, and there are even signs of something close to self-awareness (some species apparently can recognize themselves in mirrors).
But emotions are a rather different thing, and I’m rather more reluctant to assume them. (Particularly because I’m even less sure about the word than I am about “intelligence”. But it also just occurred to me that between people emotions seem much easier to fake than intelligence, which stated the other way around means we’re much worse at detecting them.)
Also, the reason I specifically asked about Cephalopods is that they’re pretty close to as far away from humans as they can be and still be animals; they’re so far away we can’t even find fossil evidence of the closest common ancestor. It still had a nervous system, but it was very simple as far as I can tell (flatworm-level), so I think it’s pretty safe to assume that any high level neuronal structures have evolved completely separately between us and cephalopods.
Which is why I’m reluctant to just assume things like emotions, which in my opinion are harder to prove.
On the other hand, this means any similarity we do find between the two kinds of nervous systems (including, if demonstrated, having emotions) would be pretty good evidence that the common feature is likely universal for any brain based on neurons. (Which can be interesting for things like uploading, artificial neuronal networks, and uplifting.)
While I think you’re right to point out that the uncomprehending-superior-beings trope is unrealistic, I don’t think Dawkins was generalizing from fictional evidence; his quote reads more to me like plain old anthropomorphism, along with a good slice of self-serving bias relating to the importance of his own work.
A point similar to your first one shows up occasionally in fiction too, incidentally; there’s a semi-common sci-fi trope that has alien species achieving interstellar travel or some other advanced technology by way of a very simple and obvious-in-retrospect process that just happened never to occur to any human scientist. So culture’s not completely blind to the idea. Both tropes basically exist to serve narrative purposes, though, and usually obviously polemic ones; Dawkins isn’t any kind of extra-rational superhuman, but I wouldn’t expect him to unwittingly parrot a device that transparent out of its original context.