I think that’s a really interesting point[1], but a really unhelpful (in the “Ways that Words Can Be Wrong” sense) way to interpret the exercise. It would remove some of the creative potential from the medianworld concept to interpret it as a list of traits about cavemen.
A median earthling on another world would make lots and lots of errors in imagining Earth, and I think it would make sense to be biased toward errors that make things more legible.
Like how, in planecrash, it’s said that smarter-than-average dath ilani doing the exercise still have their medianworld share dath ilan’s high-end of intelligence, since “what kinds of innovations might superhuman geniuses make?” is not at all the point of the exercise. (Of course Eliezer ignored that rule...)
I think that’s a really interesting point[1], but a really unhelpful (in the “Ways that Words Can Be Wrong” sense) way to interpret the exercise. It would remove some of the creative potential from the medianworld concept to interpret it as a list of traits about cavemen.
and I gave an upvote for that!
A median earthling on another world would make lots and lots of errors in imagining Earth, and I think it would make sense to be biased toward errors that make things more legible.
Like how, in planecrash, it’s said that smarter-than-average dath ilani doing the exercise still have their medianworld share dath ilan’s high-end of intelligence, since “what kinds of innovations might superhuman geniuses make?” is not at all the point of the exercise. (Of course Eliezer ignored that rule...)