Subnostr

Lots of journalists this past week have been lauding AI 🤖 as the biggest thing our species has done since discovering fire. 🔥

Which is curious, because Homo Sapiens 🕺 did not discover fire, Homo Erectus did. 🚶

Homo Sapiens only evolved after cooking with fire 🔥 became widespread and made available extremely high density nutrition 🥩, which allowed Homonids to dedicate less metabolic effort to digestion and more to cognition 🧠.

If AI is similarly important (and I’m not claiming it is) it’s quite likely that AI is an extinction event for Homo Sapiens 😱, as some newer evolution of the Hominid clade outcompetes us over a few generations 👽.

Evolutionary success is entirely determined by reproductive success. Demographics are where this story will be read. 🫥 👽👽👽

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Discussion

⚡️🌱🌙 2y ago

As an example, if we become less reliant on certain parts of our brain and our reproductive success is more aligned with different parts of our brain than our evolutionary past… then we are very likely to become extinct and to be replaced by a species with a more optimal brain structure.

And I’m OK with that. After all, I’m just a link in a long chain that stretches right back to single called life.

This is actually normal, predictable and entirely natural that this should happen.

signal_and_rage 2y ago

So those Brain games aren’t gonna cut it?

Tim Bradford 2y ago

Do you have any candidates for this other species with a more optimal brain structure? Or do you imagine this species will be a branch of our own in the distant future? How will you keep these 2 species seperate for long enough to successfully branch off?

⚡️🌱🌙 2y ago

Pretty sure other species will branch off humans in due course, if we survive long enough.

In reality I don’t think new species emerge in a binary manner, it’s more likely that the probability of reproduction a parent and child species just falls towards 0% over some number of generations.

But it’s important context to remember that we didn’t invent/discover fire. Homo Erectus did.

We only evolved because fire was discovered and tamed by Homo Erectus. No fire, no Homo Sapiens.

Whilst using fire was advantageous for the Homo Erectus individuals… discovering fire was the worst thing to happen to Homo Erectus as a species.

Cooking with fire allowed Homo Sapiens to evolve with vastly reduced digestive metabolic demands and vastly increased cognitive metabolic demands.

If AI changes the value weighting of our metabolic system then something with more optimal weightings (for achieving reproduction) will evolve from humans.

I actually think this is quite likely now that I think it through like this. Do humanoids with AI really need such a large cognitive metabolic weighting? Probably not. Intelligence can now be centralised and immortalised and it’s likely that we are reduced to obedient agents and vehicles.

Intelligence is actually a headwind for reproductive success, so human intelligence is likely to fade quite quickly now that we can biologically disassociate from it.

Quite sad really.

Tim Bradford 2y ago

Profound thoughts. How do you suppose another species can branch off humans? Ie how would they be separated from us for long enough to become a separate species? What would that mechanism of evolutionary isolation look like?