Jeff Bone says:
> Evolution works slowly.
So slowly in fact, that a lot of people are now asking if the earth is
even old enough to support the diversity of species that we see*.
Jeff;
(* lots of good footnotes omitted; I am really busy today - sorry!)
-----Original Message-----
From: Jeff Bone [mailto:jbone@jump.net]
Sent: Friday, April 20, 2001 8:40 AM
To: Joseph S Barrera III
Cc: fork@xent.com
Subject: Re: Eli and Brian Update [Fwd: [>Htech] "Friendly AI" released
for commentary]
Joseph S Barrera III wrote:
> Also sprach Jeff Bone:
> > > We are actually incredibly clueless about the concept of a sense of
> > > self.
> >
> > There's one thing we can say definitively about it, assuming you believe
in "the real
> > world" that is: we have one because it's a survival trait.
>
> Oh, you mean like my appendix and my wisdom teeth?
We have those because at some point, they were survival traits.
Evolution works slowly.
Do you really think sense of self has outlived its usefulness.
> I think SJ Gould would rip you a new one regarding the "if we have it,
> then evolution dicates it must be useful, or at least once was useful"
> argument.
SJ Gould isn't the only evolutionary biologist out there, ya know.
jb
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