To the best of my knowledge, no hermaphroditic species are social (I’ll use pack formation as the threshold for social). Do you think that’s a coincidence?
I think that’s a function of a variety of issues. One is evolutionary lock-in. Some things are more difficult to alter than others. Changing your basic reproductive system is tough because so much can go wrong. There are very few parthenogenetic species. But they do seem to show up in clumps. There are a lot of lizards in that category and lizards generally don’t form packs. But if mammals had ended up with the necessary genetics to be easily engage in parthenogenesis things could easily have looked very different, and I see no reason why versions of us wouldn’t be having a very similar conversation, with one of us insisting that the flexibility given by parthenogenesis as an option is necessary to get sufficient intelligence.
I’m also curious if you think this sort of logic applies also to your claim about gametes, given that the example I gave was an unambiguously social species. Do you agree that the gamete claim is wrong?
Changing even a small number could have drastic consequences.
My argument is that those consequences are likely to be drastically negative. Remember, most mutations are deleterious!
Most mutations are probably neutral. It is probably true that most mutations which have some selection probably have a negative selection pressure. However, this remark confuses why mutations are so often negative. Most species have not only adopted to specific niches, their genes function in an intertwined mesh. So if I mutate one gene, all the genes that interact with that gene are potentially unhappy. That’s not a problem when one is discussing species evolving wholesale. They are then free to include or not include what we see as universals.
Those people don’t get wealthier because they make trips faster / have a longer driving season (the planet, Winter, has terribly cold winters which shut down all travel, and so being able to drive faster means being able to leave later), causing them to reproduce more than more timid drivers?
Huh? I’m not sure I follow this example. You mean driving a car? Humans have barely had a hundred years of car travel, way too little to show selection pressure. Moreover, driving is dangerous so there’s an obvious tradeoff. And many people don’t drive regularly at all (I for example live in a city with a decent public transit system). We also have laws which are enforced against extreme driving. And as long as there is other traffic you won’t gain too much from being able to drive faster since you’ll be in the traffic jams. Moreover, people do drive at drastically different speeds. Finally, and most damaging, cultural norms about how fast to drive have changed albeit slowly, and they vary a lot from country to country. Some places have speed limits as high as 160 km/hour (99 miles an hour). Around 1900, 25 miles an hour was considered to be blindingly fast for a car. It was a big deal in 1896 when parts of England has the speed limit raised to 14 miles an hour. If you had a species that had better reflexes and hand-eye coordination than humans have I could easily see 200 mph as the speed limit. Similarly, if human coordination was poorer or humans were more risk averse I could easily see us keeping the early 20th century speed limits.
Remember, just because we’ve hit some set of evolutionarily stable equilibria doesn’t mean that there aren’t a lot of others out there. We know there are a lot out there because there are a lot of other species. We don’t know how many there are that support highly intelligent life, but the existence of parrots, dolphins, elephants and some of the brighter corvids strongly suggest that there’s a lot of room.
And even if an alien species manages to make it to human-level intelligence without a calendar (perhaps their planet doesn’t have a satellite or axial tilt), will that invalidate the claim that they’ll be deeply similar to humans? Hardly. They’ll still have the imprint of their machiavellian evolution all over them
Are you trying to argue that it is likely that intelligent, social species will have a lot of ability to trick each other and engage in clever schemes and have sophisticated theories of mind? If so, I agree that seems very likely. But none of the universals you gave are functions of that feature.
I see no reason why versions of us wouldn’t be having a very similar conversation, with one of us insisting that the flexibility given by parthenogenesis as an option is necessary to get sufficient intelligence.
The primary reason I see is the Machiavellian Intelligence hypothesis- if human-level intelligence is reproductively successful primarily to seduce and outwit, then a species that does not need to seduce or outwit in order to get the best partners will not develop human-level intelligence.
My point in this debate is I want to see the math. The first proposed version of group selection sounds plausible but isn’t once you do the math.
I’m also curious if you think this sort of logic applies also to your claim about gametes, given that the example I gave was an unambiguously social species. Do you agree that the gamete claim is wrong?
I am not a biologist, and so am taking it on the advice of experts that gamete size determines social role in a bisexual society. I believe the strength of that role depends on the relative size of the gametes- and so it may be that hyena gametes are very close in size or there is some other reason why they are an exception. I do agree that “secondary” was not the right way to put my claim- instead, I’ll reword it to be that “in a bisexual society, sex roles will have deep similarity to human male-female roles.”
That’s not a problem when one is discussing species evolving wholesale. They are then free to include or not include what we see as universals.
Indeed, we could imagine an alien species that, for whatever reason, doesn’t trade with one another. They’re easy to imagine because they evolved on Earth. What I find entirely implausible is that such a species could be the first to make it to human-scale intelligence and technological domination.
We don’t know how many there are that support highly intelligent life, but the existence of parrots, dolphins, elephants and some of the brighter corvids strongly suggest that there’s a lot of room.
Right, but the differences between corvids and human-precursor primates are mostly superficial. If corvids had made it to human-level intelligence first, the similarities would be very deep.
The primary reason I see is the Machiavellian Intelligence hypothesis- if human-level intelligence is reproductively successful primarily to seduce and outwit, then a species that does not need to seduce or outwit in order to get the best partners will not develop human-level intelligence.
A hermaphrodic species could still need intelligence to outwit other members of the species.
My point in this debate is I want to see the math. The first proposed version of group selection sounds plausible but isn’t once you do the math.
Huh? You made no mention of math earlier. Is there math you think you have to support your position? If so, yes, you are correct that there are game theoretic models that predict certain classes of behavior being more likely. For example, one does in fact expect certain patterns based on which gender invests more resources in the young. There are some really interesting examples where the males have for various reasons come to invest more in the young, and exactly what you expect often occurs, the females end up having harems of males and try to pump out as many offspring as possible. Jacanas are a good example of this
I believe the strength of that role depends on the relative size of the gametes- and so it may be that hyena gametes are very close in size or there is some other reason why they are an exception. I do agree that “secondary” was not the right way to put my claim- instead, I’ll reword it to be that “in a bisexual society, sex roles will have deep similarity to human male-female roles.”
The problem you are running into is that gamete size is only a very rough proxy for level of resource investment. And as a proxy it becomes weaker the more time the species spends raising its young. Your second comment is more accurate.
But it is important to realize that for all of this humans actually show major exceptions to the rules that one expects to have. In particular, one expects males to spend more resources engaging in showy demonstrations of fitness. And in fact in many species one does see this (peacocks are of course the most famous example). But in most human societies, females spend as much or more resources than males looking nice. Jewelry is generally much more common among human females than human males. This is strongly not what one would expect.
Indeed, we could imagine an alien species that, for whatever reason, doesn’t trade with one another. They’re easy to imagine because they evolved on Earth. What I find entirely implausible is that such a species could be the first to make it to human-scale intelligence and technological domination.
I agree with you that trade is probably a necessary precursor. I’m not sure that it is absolutely necessary for intelligence but it is presumably necessary for the technological domination part simply because no one is going to be able to develop all the technologies on their own. And in fact, trade behavior occurs in a variety of species in limited contexts.
Right, but the differences between corvids and human-precursor primates are mostly superficial. If corvids had made it to human-level intelligence first, the similarities would be very deep
Really? Some birds are able to sleep with only one side of their brain sleeping at a time, while the other half watches for predators. I don’t know of any corvids that can do that, but it isn’t at all implausible. You don’t think that ability wouldn’t drastically alter perception of self, and many other behavioral attitudes? And when one realizes that corvids lay eggs rather than giving live birth, how many issues related to that go away? Or if we turn to the list that Kaj helpfully supplied and look at dolphins, one of the other very intelligent species I listed, how many of the things on that list would simply not be important to them just because they live underwater? Firestarting and fire rituals would be out for obvious reasons. And that’s just the most obvious starters. And then there’s all the stuff on the list that is simply a product of humans being overactive pattern seekers (e.g. luck, magic, faith healing...) or having poor introspection ability (soul-concept), etc.
A hermaphrodic species could still need intelligence to outwit other members of the species.
It could. But do you agree that parthenogenesis is a very unlikely reproductive method for a HLI? (I’ve gotten tired of writing human-level intelligence.)
You made no mention of math earlier. Is there math you think you have to support your position? If so, yes, you are correct that there are game theoretic models that predict certain classes of behavior being more likely.
I thought it was obvious, and have paid for that mistake with karma.
In particular, one expects males to spend more resources engaging in showy demonstrations of fitness. And in fact in many species one does see this (peacocks are of course the most famous example). But in most human societies, females spend as much or more resources than males looking nice.
Let’s take a step back here. Do you really believe that women spend more time and effort demonstrating their fitness than men do? Or are you trying to prove me wrong?
I think it obvious that men compete more than women do, that their competitions are riskier, and that human displays of fitness are status-based, and thus only partially visual (and then typically have more to do with posture than ornamentation). Indeed, the primary explanation for peacock tails appears to be the handicap they impose, not that they’re visually stunning (although some argue that the eyes on the tails might hypnotize females). I’m confused why I even have to point that out. I agree that women also compete for men, and one of the primary ways they do that is looking nice. But male and female psychology line up with what you would expect from females investing more into children than males, and differences in family structures between regions match what you would expect from the environment.
Jewelry is generally much more common among human females than human males. This is strongly not what one would expect.
Men are more visual, because the health of a mother is important and primarily communicated through appearance; the primary long-term value of a man to a woman is his ability to provide material and social comfort. Thus, one would expect men to provide women with expensive and pretty tokens of affection.
You don’t think that ability wouldn’t drastically alter perception of self, and many other behavioral attitudes?
It might, but I don’t know how much it would. I would look at split-brain patients and extrapolate from there- so there would probably be some oddness, but nothing fundamentally different.
And when one realizes that corvids lay eggs rather than giving live birth, how many issues related to that go away?
What issues related to live birth are you talking about? (For example, development time in womb compared to out of womb appears to be related to the limits that vaginal size puts on head size- I don’t know if that favors live birth or eggs, but might be a limiting factor for eggs.)
how many of the things on that list would simply not be important to them just because they live underwater?
Is an underwater species likely to reach HLI before an abovewater species? My understanding is the metabolic demands of intelligence are high, and that appears to favor abovewater species. (Note that our planet, at 70-30 water-land, would seem to favor the species that had access to more of the surface area, suggesting that something else puts land ahead of water.)
And then there’s all the stuff on the list that is simply a product of humans being overactive pattern seekers (e.g. luck, magic, faith healing...) or having poor introspection ability (soul-concept), etc.
But, how can you have an intelligence without pattern-seeking? Why would good introspection ability survive Machiavellian evolution?
It could. But do you agree that parthenogenesis is a very unlikely reproductive method for a HLI?
How unlikely is very unlikely? I’d agree that our evidence does suggest that I’d expect it to be less common than conventionally reproducing species. But that’s not the point. Parthenogenesis is but one example of many different features which show up in fairly smart species on Earth. I only need to change a few to drastically alter what one would expect.
Let’s take a step back here. Do you really believe that women spend more time and effort demonstrating their fitness than men do? Or are you trying to prove me wrong?
I don’t know if time is the best metric in this sort of context, and I really don’t know which gender generally spends more time.
In any event you seem to be missing my point so I will be a bit more explicit: In the vast majority of species that have substantial mate competition, the competition is almost exclusively among the males and it frequently takes a visual component. In humans that’s false. We’re an exception in that regard.
It might, but I don’t know how much it would. I would look at split-brain patients and extrapolate from there- so there would probably be some oddness, but nothing fundamentally different.
Split-brain patients are a tiny fraction of the general population. The situation here also isn’t that similar because it is a situation where they can turn off either half, or both, and the two communicate.
What issues related to live birth are you talking about?
Human universals surround pregnancy and the related issues. Almost every society has associated rituals and taboos. And some gender issues come from the fact that females are stuck for months being very vulnerable.
Is an underwater species likely to reach HLI before an abovewater species? My understanding is the metabolic demands of intelligence are high, and that appears to favor abovewater species.
I don’t think that the metabolic issues will matter much. The total caloric intake of a dolphin or other large sea creature is quite large. The difficulty with making useful underwater tools would strike me as a more substantial problem. Dolphins do make some makeshift tools (such as some pods using sponges in front of their faces to protect themselves from spines when they go after spiny undersea life) but it seems substantially more difficult to actually go and make tools (for example, chipping stone would nearly impossible).
But, how can you have an intelligence without pattern-seeking?
Pattern seeking is one thing. Being an overactive pattern seeker is another. I would guess for example that if HLI had arose from elephants rather than primates one would see much less overactive pattern seeking because of the lack of threats they face.
Why would good introspection ability survive Machiavellian evolution?
Why wouldn’t it? If I understand how minds work better that makes me more adept not less adept at manipulating others. There are arguments that this would not be the case, but they seem contingent on specifics of how humans function.
I am poorly calibrated at assigning numbers to probabilities like this, so I don’t think I can add more here.
I only need to change a few to drastically alter what one would expect.
My original claim was not that any noteworthy changes were impossible, but that any aliens that are social talking thinkers will be deeply similar to humans with high probability. (Implicitly attached is the claim that anything that isn’t a social talking thinker we wouldn’t consider intelligent and/or wouldn’t reach HLI.)
It could be that some aspect of human psychology that was adaptive for us just fails to exist in some alien species. But I think the chances of that are amazingly small. It could be that something I think is an universal driven by practicality turns out to be a close competitor with something else (like sequential hermaphroditism vs. bisex, or whatever that’s called), and on some planets things went the other way. If that’s the case, I suspect deep similarities will still exist, and the change will be relatively minor. (For example, I suspect sequential hermaphroditism would be female->male, and the resulting social system would look a lot like pederasty.)
In the vast majority of species that have substantial mate competition, the competition is almost exclusively among the males and it frequently takes a visual component. In humans that’s false. We’re an exception in that regard.
Human universals surround pregnancy and the related issues. Almost every society has associated rituals and taboos. And some gender issues come from the fact that females are stuck for months being very vulnerable.
So, there will be egg rituals and taboos instead, and I imagine some couples will trade off being ‘pregnant’. The invention of incubators will be comparable to the (future) invention of artificial wombs.
I would guess for example that if HLI had arose from elephants rather than primates one would see much less overactive pattern seeking because of the lack of threats they face.
Alright, but that’s an argument that elephants are less likely to reach HLI, as there’s less selection pressure for pattern-matching / swiftness of thought.
Why wouldn’t it? If I understand how minds work better that makes me more adept not less adept at manipulating others. There are arguments that this would not be the case, but they seem contingent on specifics of how humans function.
There are three factors in play: ability to know your motives, ability to lie convincingly, and ability to detect sincerity. The easiest one to drop is the ability to know your motives- when people promise to always be faithful, for example, they typically mean it, even though, beneath their consciousness, they don’t.
Note I made a comment about the vast majority of species. There’s a conference devoted to such competition precisely because they are the exception not the rule.
Alright, but that’s an argument that elephants are less likely to reach HLI, as there’s less selection pressure for pattern-matching / swiftness of thought.
Speed of thought isn’t necessarily related to overall intelligence. Note that elephants are one of the smarter species even though they aren’t subject to much of the specific selection pressure that makes humans overactive pattern seekers.
There are three factors in play: ability to know your motives, ability to lie convincingly, and ability to detect sincerity. The easiest one to drop is the ability to know your motives- when people promise to always be faithful, for example, they typically mean it, even though, beneath their consciousness, they don’t.
I don’t see why knowing your motives is easier to drop than the ability to lie convincingly. That may be the general solution for most humans but that doesn’t mean it is the easiest. Indeed, arguably one of the major features of psychopaths is that they are in some ways people who don’t have the motivation confusion but are able to lie well.
It seems to me from this conversation that our views are not as far apart as they initially seemed, and in so far as they disagree, you seem to have made good points about the presence of sexual selection being likely to have certain results. It seems that remaining disagreement is to a large extent based on background intuitions and vague words like the difference between “unlikely” and “very unlikely”. So, unless one or both of us tries to be a lot more precise, or unless we encounter some non-human evolved HLIs, it isn’t obvious to me what to say at this point. You’ve caused me to update my estimate for how close I should expect evolved HLIs to mentally resemble humans in the direction of expecting them to be more similar but I’m not sure how much I should update in that direction.
I think that’s a function of a variety of issues. One is evolutionary lock-in. Some things are more difficult to alter than others. Changing your basic reproductive system is tough because so much can go wrong. There are very few parthenogenetic species. But they do seem to show up in clumps. There are a lot of lizards in that category and lizards generally don’t form packs. But if mammals had ended up with the necessary genetics to be easily engage in parthenogenesis things could easily have looked very different, and I see no reason why versions of us wouldn’t be having a very similar conversation, with one of us insisting that the flexibility given by parthenogenesis as an option is necessary to get sufficient intelligence.
I’m also curious if you think this sort of logic applies also to your claim about gametes, given that the example I gave was an unambiguously social species. Do you agree that the gamete claim is wrong?
Most mutations are probably neutral. It is probably true that most mutations which have some selection probably have a negative selection pressure. However, this remark confuses why mutations are so often negative. Most species have not only adopted to specific niches, their genes function in an intertwined mesh. So if I mutate one gene, all the genes that interact with that gene are potentially unhappy. That’s not a problem when one is discussing species evolving wholesale. They are then free to include or not include what we see as universals.
Huh? I’m not sure I follow this example. You mean driving a car? Humans have barely had a hundred years of car travel, way too little to show selection pressure. Moreover, driving is dangerous so there’s an obvious tradeoff. And many people don’t drive regularly at all (I for example live in a city with a decent public transit system). We also have laws which are enforced against extreme driving. And as long as there is other traffic you won’t gain too much from being able to drive faster since you’ll be in the traffic jams. Moreover, people do drive at drastically different speeds. Finally, and most damaging, cultural norms about how fast to drive have changed albeit slowly, and they vary a lot from country to country. Some places have speed limits as high as 160 km/hour (99 miles an hour). Around 1900, 25 miles an hour was considered to be blindingly fast for a car. It was a big deal in 1896 when parts of England has the speed limit raised to 14 miles an hour. If you had a species that had better reflexes and hand-eye coordination than humans have I could easily see 200 mph as the speed limit. Similarly, if human coordination was poorer or humans were more risk averse I could easily see us keeping the early 20th century speed limits.
Remember, just because we’ve hit some set of evolutionarily stable equilibria doesn’t mean that there aren’t a lot of others out there. We know there are a lot out there because there are a lot of other species. We don’t know how many there are that support highly intelligent life, but the existence of parrots, dolphins, elephants and some of the brighter corvids strongly suggest that there’s a lot of room.
Are you trying to argue that it is likely that intelligent, social species will have a lot of ability to trick each other and engage in clever schemes and have sophisticated theories of mind? If so, I agree that seems very likely. But none of the universals you gave are functions of that feature.
The primary reason I see is the Machiavellian Intelligence hypothesis- if human-level intelligence is reproductively successful primarily to seduce and outwit, then a species that does not need to seduce or outwit in order to get the best partners will not develop human-level intelligence.
My point in this debate is I want to see the math. The first proposed version of group selection sounds plausible but isn’t once you do the math.
I am not a biologist, and so am taking it on the advice of experts that gamete size determines social role in a bisexual society. I believe the strength of that role depends on the relative size of the gametes- and so it may be that hyena gametes are very close in size or there is some other reason why they are an exception. I do agree that “secondary” was not the right way to put my claim- instead, I’ll reword it to be that “in a bisexual society, sex roles will have deep similarity to human male-female roles.”
Indeed, we could imagine an alien species that, for whatever reason, doesn’t trade with one another. They’re easy to imagine because they evolved on Earth. What I find entirely implausible is that such a species could be the first to make it to human-scale intelligence and technological domination.
Right, but the differences between corvids and human-precursor primates are mostly superficial. If corvids had made it to human-level intelligence first, the similarities would be very deep.
A hermaphrodic species could still need intelligence to outwit other members of the species.
Huh? You made no mention of math earlier. Is there math you think you have to support your position? If so, yes, you are correct that there are game theoretic models that predict certain classes of behavior being more likely. For example, one does in fact expect certain patterns based on which gender invests more resources in the young. There are some really interesting examples where the males have for various reasons come to invest more in the young, and exactly what you expect often occurs, the females end up having harems of males and try to pump out as many offspring as possible. Jacanas are a good example of this
The problem you are running into is that gamete size is only a very rough proxy for level of resource investment. And as a proxy it becomes weaker the more time the species spends raising its young. Your second comment is more accurate.
But it is important to realize that for all of this humans actually show major exceptions to the rules that one expects to have. In particular, one expects males to spend more resources engaging in showy demonstrations of fitness. And in fact in many species one does see this (peacocks are of course the most famous example). But in most human societies, females spend as much or more resources than males looking nice. Jewelry is generally much more common among human females than human males. This is strongly not what one would expect.
I agree with you that trade is probably a necessary precursor. I’m not sure that it is absolutely necessary for intelligence but it is presumably necessary for the technological domination part simply because no one is going to be able to develop all the technologies on their own. And in fact, trade behavior occurs in a variety of species in limited contexts.
Really? Some birds are able to sleep with only one side of their brain sleeping at a time, while the other half watches for predators. I don’t know of any corvids that can do that, but it isn’t at all implausible. You don’t think that ability wouldn’t drastically alter perception of self, and many other behavioral attitudes? And when one realizes that corvids lay eggs rather than giving live birth, how many issues related to that go away? Or if we turn to the list that Kaj helpfully supplied and look at dolphins, one of the other very intelligent species I listed, how many of the things on that list would simply not be important to them just because they live underwater? Firestarting and fire rituals would be out for obvious reasons. And that’s just the most obvious starters. And then there’s all the stuff on the list that is simply a product of humans being overactive pattern seekers (e.g. luck, magic, faith healing...) or having poor introspection ability (soul-concept), etc.
It could. But do you agree that parthenogenesis is a very unlikely reproductive method for a HLI? (I’ve gotten tired of writing human-level intelligence.)
I thought it was obvious, and have paid for that mistake with karma.
Let’s take a step back here. Do you really believe that women spend more time and effort demonstrating their fitness than men do? Or are you trying to prove me wrong?
I think it obvious that men compete more than women do, that their competitions are riskier, and that human displays of fitness are status-based, and thus only partially visual (and then typically have more to do with posture than ornamentation). Indeed, the primary explanation for peacock tails appears to be the handicap they impose, not that they’re visually stunning (although some argue that the eyes on the tails might hypnotize females). I’m confused why I even have to point that out. I agree that women also compete for men, and one of the primary ways they do that is looking nice. But male and female psychology line up with what you would expect from females investing more into children than males, and differences in family structures between regions match what you would expect from the environment.
Men are more visual, because the health of a mother is important and primarily communicated through appearance; the primary long-term value of a man to a woman is his ability to provide material and social comfort. Thus, one would expect men to provide women with expensive and pretty tokens of affection.
It might, but I don’t know how much it would. I would look at split-brain patients and extrapolate from there- so there would probably be some oddness, but nothing fundamentally different.
What issues related to live birth are you talking about? (For example, development time in womb compared to out of womb appears to be related to the limits that vaginal size puts on head size- I don’t know if that favors live birth or eggs, but might be a limiting factor for eggs.)
Is an underwater species likely to reach HLI before an abovewater species? My understanding is the metabolic demands of intelligence are high, and that appears to favor abovewater species. (Note that our planet, at 70-30 water-land, would seem to favor the species that had access to more of the surface area, suggesting that something else puts land ahead of water.)
But, how can you have an intelligence without pattern-seeking? Why would good introspection ability survive Machiavellian evolution?
How unlikely is very unlikely? I’d agree that our evidence does suggest that I’d expect it to be less common than conventionally reproducing species. But that’s not the point. Parthenogenesis is but one example of many different features which show up in fairly smart species on Earth. I only need to change a few to drastically alter what one would expect.
I don’t know if time is the best metric in this sort of context, and I really don’t know which gender generally spends more time.
In any event you seem to be missing my point so I will be a bit more explicit: In the vast majority of species that have substantial mate competition, the competition is almost exclusively among the males and it frequently takes a visual component. In humans that’s false. We’re an exception in that regard.
Split-brain patients are a tiny fraction of the general population. The situation here also isn’t that similar because it is a situation where they can turn off either half, or both, and the two communicate.
Human universals surround pregnancy and the related issues. Almost every society has associated rituals and taboos. And some gender issues come from the fact that females are stuck for months being very vulnerable.
I don’t think that the metabolic issues will matter much. The total caloric intake of a dolphin or other large sea creature is quite large. The difficulty with making useful underwater tools would strike me as a more substantial problem. Dolphins do make some makeshift tools (such as some pods using sponges in front of their faces to protect themselves from spines when they go after spiny undersea life) but it seems substantially more difficult to actually go and make tools (for example, chipping stone would nearly impossible).
Pattern seeking is one thing. Being an overactive pattern seeker is another. I would guess for example that if HLI had arose from elephants rather than primates one would see much less overactive pattern seeking because of the lack of threats they face.
Why wouldn’t it? If I understand how minds work better that makes me more adept not less adept at manipulating others. There are arguments that this would not be the case, but they seem contingent on specifics of how humans function.
I am poorly calibrated at assigning numbers to probabilities like this, so I don’t think I can add more here.
My original claim was not that any noteworthy changes were impossible, but that any aliens that are social talking thinkers will be deeply similar to humans with high probability. (Implicitly attached is the claim that anything that isn’t a social talking thinker we wouldn’t consider intelligent and/or wouldn’t reach HLI.)
It could be that some aspect of human psychology that was adaptive for us just fails to exist in some alien species. But I think the chances of that are amazingly small. It could be that something I think is an universal driven by practicality turns out to be a close competitor with something else (like sequential hermaphroditism vs. bisex, or whatever that’s called), and on some planets things went the other way. If that’s the case, I suspect deep similarities will still exist, and the change will be relatively minor. (For example, I suspect sequential hermaphroditism would be female->male, and the resulting social system would look a lot like pederasty.)
Females don’t compete in other species?
So, there will be egg rituals and taboos instead, and I imagine some couples will trade off being ‘pregnant’. The invention of incubators will be comparable to the (future) invention of artificial wombs.
Alright, but that’s an argument that elephants are less likely to reach HLI, as there’s less selection pressure for pattern-matching / swiftness of thought.
There are three factors in play: ability to know your motives, ability to lie convincingly, and ability to detect sincerity. The easiest one to drop is the ability to know your motives- when people promise to always be faithful, for example, they typically mean it, even though, beneath their consciousness, they don’t.
Note I made a comment about the vast majority of species. There’s a conference devoted to such competition precisely because they are the exception not the rule.
Speed of thought isn’t necessarily related to overall intelligence. Note that elephants are one of the smarter species even though they aren’t subject to much of the specific selection pressure that makes humans overactive pattern seekers.
I don’t see why knowing your motives is easier to drop than the ability to lie convincingly. That may be the general solution for most humans but that doesn’t mean it is the easiest. Indeed, arguably one of the major features of psychopaths is that they are in some ways people who don’t have the motivation confusion but are able to lie well.
It seems to me from this conversation that our views are not as far apart as they initially seemed, and in so far as they disagree, you seem to have made good points about the presence of sexual selection being likely to have certain results. It seems that remaining disagreement is to a large extent based on background intuitions and vague words like the difference between “unlikely” and “very unlikely”. So, unless one or both of us tries to be a lot more precise, or unless we encounter some non-human evolved HLIs, it isn’t obvious to me what to say at this point. You’ve caused me to update my estimate for how close I should expect evolved HLIs to mentally resemble humans in the direction of expecting them to be more similar but I’m not sure how much I should update in that direction.