[ExI] ai is the easy road

[spike at rainier66.com]

From: John Clark <johnkclark at gmail.com> 
Subject: Re: [ExI] ai is the easy road

 

 

 

On Sat, Oct 17, 2026 at 2:56 PM <spike at rainier66.com <mailto:spike at rainier66.com> > wrote:

 

> John Clarke opined:

>…No, John K Clark (no e) opined, although Arthur E Clark was my father….

 

Very well, my error.  Just don’t claim Arthur C Clarke as your father, as he is indistinguishable from god.  I consider him the most influential writer on my life.

 

 

>…That's one of the big unsolved mysteries about human evolution. It's clear from the fossil record that fully bipedal walking evolved before our large brains did, and that makes sense because a large smart brain wouldn't increase survival much if you didn't have hands; but what evolutionary pressure favored bipedal walking?

 

I have seen a compelling theory on that.  Bipedal walking enables humans to have a great deal of distance endurance even if at the expense of speed.  Humans are not the fastest, but if we consider which beast can travel the greatest distance in one day, humans are way up there in the list.

 

Consider large game, the kind of big game that chimps, bonobos and gorillas do not hunt, wildebeests for instance.  The wildebeest can easily outrun the human, but cannot outdistance the persistent biped.  If the humans just keep coming, and they work together in series, the hapless… beest… will overheat.  His surface area to volume ratio is good for sprinting, or even running for half an hour.  But humans can run for much longer, and we can work together as a superorganism.  

 

If a group or tribe of humans chases the game, then they are joined by a later group, like a group relay race, then it is beneficial to every group in the relay to participate, for some other groups may chase a wildebeest back their way at some point.  The beest drops from heat exhaustion, but is still dangerous with those horns.  The humans slay it by hurling stones, in a process that might take several brutal hours.

 

In that scenario, the ideal size of a human group is a tribe large enough to devour an adult wildebeest before the meat spoils.

 

But wait, there’s more.

 

If the hands had evolved to be able to knap flint, they could create the tools necessary to butcher the beest, which might enable them to cut the meat into sufficiently thin strips and dry it for preservation.  If the hands could knap flint, they could hold a rock, crush the large bones, giving the early humans access to the very high nutrient high protein bone marrow, which may have supported the development of our enormous bulbous heads.  We were the ancient Talosians.  Cool!  

 

The hands capable of knapping flint might eventually figure out how to make a spear point and tie it onto a shaft.  With the development of the spear, it was off to the races, in all directions at once.  If that scenario works, the evolutionary spark plug was bipedalism.  

 

The interesting point is that bipedalism is almost where chimps are today.  It doesn’t take much of a mutation for a modern ape to stand and walk on two feet.  I think I read they occasionally do, for short distances.  

 

Once out of sub Saharan Africa, the hands which were adapted to manipulating a spear were pre-adapted to building more elaborate shelters, enabling humans to radiate further, creating new evolutionary pressure.

 

>…There are lots of theories but I don't find any of them particularly convincing.   John K Clark

 

John is the biggest flaw in that line of reasoning?

 

spike

 

 

  

 

 

 

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.extropy.org/pipermail/extropy-chat/attachments/20261017/e1ec7434/attachment.htm>