[ExI] ai is the easy road
John Clark
johnkclark at gmail.com
Sat Oct 17 20:37:17 UTC 2026
On Sat, Oct 17, 2026 at 4:08 PM <spike at rainier66.com> wrote:
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> *>…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?*
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> *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. *
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*Yes but I don't see why Bipedal walking would be better at endurance than
quadratic walking, if anything the reverse would seem more likely to me. *
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> *If the hands had evolved to be able to knap flint, they could create the
> tools necessary to butcher the beest,*
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Yes if you have a big brain and hands you could do that, but you can't do
that with just hands and hands evolved before big brains. What are the huge
disadvantages of evolution is that it has no foresight, even if a mutation
would give a great advantage two or three steps down the line it's not
going to get passed to the next generation unless it conveys an advantage
right now RIGHT NOW. It just doesn't understand that one step back and two
steps forward is an advance because evolution is dumb but until it got
around to impending a brain that was the only way that complex objects
could get built.
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> *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.*
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*True, but what immediate advantage would that mutation confer? *
> * I think I read they occasionally do, for short distances. *
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> *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.*
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> *>…There are lots of theories but I don't find any of them particularly
> convincing. * *John K Clark*
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> *John is the biggest flaw in that line of reasoning?*
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> *spike*
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