[extropy-chat] Two Errors: Intelligent Design and "Progress"

[Brian Atkins]

Alfio Puglisi wrote:
> I find it weak too, for a different reason. His argument that
> intelligence is not significative for survival doesn't work anymore
> when the same intelligence gives a species some powerful technology to
> change the environment: a moderately intelligent dinosaur may be not
> much fitter than a dumb one, but a dinosaur intelligent enough to
> detect the incoming asteroid and change its orbit is a hell of a lot
> fitter than a T. Rex.
> 

Possibly, but while I was quickly scanning his page, I think he brought that up 
somewhere and proposed the idea that greater intelligence also may create 
additional risks for the species that did not exist prior to that point. In 
other words, global catastrophic risks, which the upcoming book is exactly 
about. Some of those risks might wipe out humans, but leave bacteria - so which 
species had better survivability in the _long run_?
-- 
Brian Atkins
Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence
http://www.singinst.org/