One of the things that survival of the least inadequate also implies is that evolution generates solutions with the least amount of effort, on the path of least resistance - hence we have a single spinal column, instead of a tripod or redundant nerve bundles or what have you. Evolution takes all the existing pieces it has available, shifts them around a little bit, and rearranges into something similar, and the thing that's successful first wins no matter how inferior the engineering seems when a sentient intelligence examines it. So as you say "superior" solutions honestly never happen in evolution except by pure, pure chance.
But this too ends up being an argument that sentience is a fundamental part of the equation; it wouldn't have arisen if there was no advantage to it. Sentience clearly brings something more to the table than pure intelligence - if all the other creatures on the planet have low sentience, it demonstrates that sentience and intelligence really aren't divisible after a certain critical mass is achieved. This is probably best observable with infants and toddlers; I'm told that parents can see when sentience begins occurring in children, and they see it as a "spark" that lights up their faces, and is a step above pure mimicry or response to outside stimuli. And I'm sure that various forms of autism are also related to level of sentience and different kinds of mental processing...
As far as super intelligences go, I'm convinced of a couple of things:
1) Integrating ourselves with them is the best option 2) AGI (artificial general intelligence) will be achieved biologically before it is achieved non-biologically (growing synthetically designed brains in jars will work better than writing computer programs)
no subject
One of the things that survival of the least inadequate also implies is that evolution generates solutions with the least amount of effort, on the path of least resistance - hence we have a single spinal column, instead of a tripod or redundant nerve bundles or what have you. Evolution takes all the existing pieces it has available, shifts them around a little bit, and rearranges into something similar, and the thing that's successful first wins no matter how inferior the engineering seems when a sentient intelligence examines it. So as you say "superior" solutions honestly never happen in evolution except by pure, pure chance.
But this too ends up being an argument that sentience is a fundamental part of the equation; it wouldn't have arisen if there was no advantage to it. Sentience clearly brings something more to the table than pure intelligence - if all the other creatures on the planet have low sentience, it demonstrates that sentience and intelligence really aren't divisible after a certain critical mass is achieved. This is probably best observable with infants and toddlers; I'm told that parents can see when sentience begins occurring in children, and they see it as a "spark" that lights up their faces, and is a step above pure mimicry or response to outside stimuli. And I'm sure that various forms of autism are also related to level of sentience and different kinds of mental processing...
As far as super intelligences go, I'm convinced of a couple of things:
1) Integrating ourselves with them is the best option
2) AGI (artificial general intelligence) will be achieved biologically before it is achieved non-biologically (growing synthetically designed brains in jars will work better than writing computer programs)