From: Anders Sandberg (asa@nada.kth.se)
Date: Tue Mar 09 1999 - 05:46:29 MST
"Eliezer S. Yudkowsky" <sentience@pobox.com> writes:
> The problem with this theory of the Great Filter, like the simple
> Singularity theory, is that it doesn't take into account psychological
> differences between races. I suspect that most races are much like
> humans in the sense of being individualistic rather than altruistic, and
> not very cooperative; it's a stronger evolutionary attractor.
How do you know? The relationship between social structure and the
emergence of intelligence is at best unclear.
A solitary species will likely never develop a civilization, there
will not be enough memetic exchange to keep much accumulated
knowledge. Clearly, a certain amount of social connection is
necessary, but it is not clear where the "optimum" (i.e. maximal
probability of the emergence of a technological civilization) level of
individuality lies. So it is a bit premature to say that this is a
stronger evolutionary attractor.
-- ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Anders Sandberg Towards Ascension! asa@nada.kth.se http://www.nada.kth.se/~asa/ GCS/M/S/O d++ -p+ c++++ !l u+ e++ m++ s+/+ n--- h+/* f+ g+ w++ t+ r+ !y
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