Re: Two draft papers: AI and existential risk; heuristics and biases.

From: John K Clark (jonkc@att.net)
Date: Thu Jun 08 2006 - 11:07:24 MDT


"Michael Vassar" <michaelvassar@hotmail.com>

> Lamarckian evolution is, as a general principle, trivially
> refuted by all > manner of day-to-day experiences

The claim was that Darwinian evolution could have been deduced with no
experience of nature at all just by using logic. I don't believe that's
true, as a matter of fact I believe in the future Lamarckian evolution will
be far more important than Darwin's variety, just look at cultural
evolutionary artifacts like Moore's Law.

>as the need for children to learn skills their parents have already
>acquired.

A powerful and skilled blacksmith with a son that was also a powerful and
skilled blacksmith would not be obvious evidence to me that Lamarck was
wrong, but zebra strips might be.

> Denser objects do seem to fall faster than less dense ones

In a atmosphere denser objects don't seem to fall faster they do fall
faster, and until a few hundred years ago nobody had any means of removing
that atmosphere or even certainty that such a thing was possible, so it's no
wonder they were confused.

  John K Clark



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