"...cognitive science (e.g., the study of heuristics and biases) [suggests] that humans are, in practice, very far short of optimal design. The broad state of cognitive psychology suggests that “Most humans cannot multiply two three-digit numbers in their heads” is not an unfair indictment—we really are that poorly designed along many dimensions. "On a higher level of abstraction, this is saying that there exists great visible headroom for improvement over the human level of intelligence. It’s extraordinary that humans manage to play chess using visual recognition systems which evolved to distinguish tigers on the savanna; amazing that we can use brains which evolved to make bows and arrows to program computers; and downright incredible that we can invent new computer science and new cognitive algorithms using brains mostly adapted to modeling and outwitting other humans. But by the standards of computer-based minds that can redesign themselves as required and run error-free algorithms with a billion steps of serial depth, we probably aren’t thinking very efficiently." --- Eliezer Yudkowsky
Posted on: Wed, 19 Jun 2013 11:06:48 +0000
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