I am uneasy with premise 4. I think human technological progress involves an awful lot of tinkering and evolution, and intelligent action by the technologist is not the hardest part. I doubt that if we could all think twice as quickly*, we would develop technology twice as quickly. The real rate-limiting step isn’t the design, it’s building things and testing them.
This doesn’t mean that premise 4 is wrong, exactly, but it means that I’m worried it’s going to be used in an inconsistent, equivocal, way.
*I am picturing taking all the relevant people, and having them think the same thoughts they do today, in half the time. Presumably they use the newly-free time to think more thoughts.
No no, I wasn’t attributing “same thoughts in half the time” to you. I was explaining the thought-experiment I was using to distinguish “intelligence” as an input from other requirements for technology creation.
If what you understand by “intelligence” is the ability to arrive at the same conclusions faster, then I agree with you that that thing has almost nothing to do with technological development, and I should probably backup and rewrite assumptions 4-6 while tabooing the word “intelligence”
I am uneasy with premise 4. I think human technological progress involves an awful lot of tinkering and evolution, and intelligent action by the technologist is not the hardest part. I doubt that if we could all think twice as quickly*, we would develop technology twice as quickly. The real rate-limiting step isn’t the design, it’s building things and testing them.
This doesn’t mean that premise 4 is wrong, exactly, but it means that I’m worried it’s going to be used in an inconsistent, equivocal, way.
*I am picturing taking all the relevant people, and having them think the same thoughts they do today, in half the time. Presumably they use the newly-free time to think more thoughts.
Fair enough. If I end up using it equivocally or inconsistently, please do call me out on it.
Note that absolutely nothing I’ve said so far implies people thinking the same thoughts they do today in half the time.
No no, I wasn’t attributing “same thoughts in half the time” to you. I was explaining the thought-experiment I was using to distinguish “intelligence” as an input from other requirements for technology creation.
If what you understand by “intelligence” is the ability to arrive at the same conclusions faster, then I agree with you that that thing has almost nothing to do with technological development, and I should probably backup and rewrite assumptions 4-6 while tabooing the word “intelligence”