The pattern of “some human or humans want X to happen” causing “X happens” occurs very frequently and reliably
I think we have to be very careful with this kind of reasoning because of hindsight and survivorship bias. Humans are very good at explaining their behavior as rational when it largely isn’t. I would like to see a systematic review of such decisions.
Some humans wanted X to happen. Other humans wanted to prevent X. Finally, X happened.
We can interpret this as a result of intelligence (of those humans who wanted X to happen) or evolution (some impersonal mechanism selected the winning side).
This is a good point. Could something like Shapley value help in distributing credit for X between the humans and the impersonal mechanism? I find myself also wanting to ask about how frequent these cases are—where it could easily be viewed both ways—and declare that if it’s mostly ambiguous then ‘evolution’ wins.
For “some impersonal mechanism” I’m thinking “memetic fitness of X amongst humans” (which in some cases cashes out as the first group of humans being larger?). What are other ways of thinking about it?
The story feels a little underspecified. When X happens because the first group of humans figured out how to thwart the second group, and anticipated them, etc. and furthermore if that group consistently does this for whatever they want, it seems a lot more like intelligence.
I think we have to be very careful with this kind of reasoning because of hindsight and survivorship bias. Humans are very good at explaining their behavior as rational when it largely isn’t. I would like to see a systematic review of such decisions.
Some humans wanted X to happen. Other humans wanted to prevent X. Finally, X happened.
We can interpret this as a result of intelligence (of those humans who wanted X to happen) or evolution (some impersonal mechanism selected the winning side).
This is a good point. Could something like Shapley value help in distributing credit for X between the humans and the impersonal mechanism? I find myself also wanting to ask about how frequent these cases are—where it could easily be viewed both ways—and declare that if it’s mostly ambiguous then ‘evolution’ wins.
For “some impersonal mechanism” I’m thinking “memetic fitness of X amongst humans” (which in some cases cashes out as the first group of humans being larger?). What are other ways of thinking about it?
The story feels a little underspecified. When X happens because the first group of humans figured out how to thwart the second group, and anticipated them, etc. and furthermore if that group consistently does this for whatever they want, it seems a lot more like intelligence.