I think you may be overestimating how much work formal proof can do here. For example, could formal proof have proved that early homonids would cause the human explosion?
Data about the world is very important in my view of intelligence.
Hominid brains were collecting lots of information about the world, then losing it all when they were dying, because they couldn’t pass it all on. They could only pass on what they could demonstrate directly. (Lots of other species were doing so as well, so this argument applies to them as well.)
The species that managed to keep a hold of this lost information and spread it far and wide, you could probably prove would have a different learning pattern to the “start from scratch-learn/mimic-die” model of most animals, and potentially explode as “things with brains” had before.
Could you have proven it would be homonids? Possibly, you would need to know more about how the systems could realistically spread information between them including protection from lying and manipulation. And whether homonids had the properties that made them more likely to explode.
Thanks!
I think you may be overestimating how much work formal proof can do here. For example, could formal proof have proved that early homonids would cause the human explosion?
Data about the world is very important in my view of intelligence.
Hominid brains were collecting lots of information about the world, then losing it all when they were dying, because they couldn’t pass it all on. They could only pass on what they could demonstrate directly. (Lots of other species were doing so as well, so this argument applies to them as well.)
The species that managed to keep a hold of this lost information and spread it far and wide, you could probably prove would have a different learning pattern to the “start from scratch-learn/mimic-die” model of most animals, and potentially explode as “things with brains” had before.
Could you have proven it would be homonids? Possibly, you would need to know more about how the systems could realistically spread information between them including protection from lying and manipulation. And whether homonids had the properties that made them more likely to explode.