From: Avatar Polymorph (avatarpolymorph@hotmail.com)
Date: Fri Sep 27 2002 - 23:45:15 MDT
>From Extropian mailing list:
Wei Dai comments on:
brains over genes.
Absolutely correct. Spot on.
Art and culture as an evolutionary tool, for selection.
Possibly.
Dates: huts 1.5 million years, fire 1.5 million years (tools longer).
earliest art 0.25 million years. Ochre painting of body: possibly longer.
Fully fledged painting: 40,000 years, possibly longer. Flint mines with
ladders (Egypt): 38,000 years.
Generally speaking the mircro level of culture has been pushed back during
the last 20 years of research, but the main burst still seems to be 40,000
years ago on.
Usually 10,000 years is regarded as a base figure for a mutation to push
into a species. Selection can operate faster than this, of course, if the
pressure is high enough. However, the little research that has been done
where possible into elites and genetic cohesion has indicated that they
interbreed with non-elite classes too little for selection in the broad
sense considered here to operate. I'd consider it highly unlikely that the
classes with art and culture would retain enough genetic cohesion for any
selective pressure to operate during the last 10,000 years anyhows, which is
the main period for metalworking cultures (don't forget iron was in use in
the bronze age, but from meteorites, it's then value was 8 times gold).
It is more likely that lanaguage has been around long enough for it to have
caused selective pressures.
More generally, motivational factors in the post-Singularity period (post
"natural" [environmental] selection and random mutation - i.e. conscious,
self-directed evolution/cultural evolution) will most likely be more
artistic and cultural. Our phenomenological envelopes are also likely to be
somewhat frozen in many cases and such conservative areas will likely
persist for billions of years, whether in overtuality or virtualities (i.e.
regardless of neurological systems divergence, computronium, broadcast
possibilities, end of bodylock etc.).
Avatar Polymorph
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