“However, it’s important to keep in mind that human society does not yet do things that evolution considers an example of a “fast foom.” To the extent that evolution cares about anything, it’s number of individuals around. Perhaps it’s interested in other metrics, such as ability to change the genes over time. From the perspective of evolution, humans are exhibiting a slow takeoffright now. They are exponentially rising in population and they exist in many climates, but this is still a continuous process implemented on genes and individuals, which are working in evolutionary scales.”
Hmmm. (1) Evolution might also care about things like mass extinctions and habitat changes, and we’ve brought those about in a flash by evolutionary timescales. Besides, I’m not sure it’s helpful to divide things up by what evolution would and wouldn’t care about. (2) Humans have the ability to do discontinuous things to our genes or population, we just haven’t exercised it yet. Analogously, an AGI project might have the ability to do a fast takeoff and then choose not to for some reason. This scenario, I believe, is for practical purposes in the “Fast takeoff” box—it has similar strategic implications. (3) Yes, progress is continuous when you zoom in enough to short enough timescales. But on the timescales evolution usually deals with, human population growth and spread around the world has been discontinuous. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_evolutionary_history_of_life Looking at the Wiki article, the smallest unit of measurement on the page is 1000 years, when we exclude extinction events caused by humans!)
“However, it’s important to keep in mind that human society does not yet do things that evolution considers an example of a “fast foom.” To the extent that evolution cares about anything, it’s number of individuals around. Perhaps it’s interested in other metrics, such as ability to change the genes over time. From the perspective of evolution, humans are exhibiting a slow takeoff right now. They are exponentially rising in population and they exist in many climates, but this is still a continuous process implemented on genes and individuals, which are working in evolutionary scales.”
Hmmm. (1) Evolution might also care about things like mass extinctions and habitat changes, and we’ve brought those about in a flash by evolutionary timescales. Besides, I’m not sure it’s helpful to divide things up by what evolution would and wouldn’t care about. (2) Humans have the ability to do discontinuous things to our genes or population, we just haven’t exercised it yet. Analogously, an AGI project might have the ability to do a fast takeoff and then choose not to for some reason. This scenario, I believe, is for practical purposes in the “Fast takeoff” box—it has similar strategic implications. (3) Yes, progress is continuous when you zoom in enough to short enough timescales. But on the timescales evolution usually deals with, human population growth and spread around the world has been discontinuous. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_evolutionary_history_of_life Looking at the Wiki article, the smallest unit of measurement on the page is 1000 years, when we exclude extinction events caused by humans!)