Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!tdatirv!sarima
From: sarima@tdatirv.UUCP (Stanley Friesen)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: AI - the real problem
Message-ID: <162@tdatirv.UUCP>
Date: 6 Mar 91 21:24:16 GMT
References: <1473@ucl-cs.uucp> <4083@aipna.ed.ac.uk>
Reply-To: sarima@tdatirv.UUCP (Stanley Friesen)
Organization: Teradata Corp., Irvine
Lines: 25

In article <4083@aipna.ed.ac.uk> cam@aipna.ed.ac.uk (Chris Malcolm) writes:
>>If the first people walked that Earth 2.5 million years ago, then why
>>did they have a brain with the same biology of that of Einstein,
>>Beethoven or us?
>
>With a much poorer cultural inheritance (far less giants to stand on the
>shoulders of) it took an Einstein to invent such things as the
>bow-and-arrow and a Marie Curie to invent such things as the basket --
>the basket has been cited as the single most important human invention.

Very good!  The basket was the most important invention,

and the bow and arrow was the *hardest*.  It did indeed take an Einstein
to invent it.  [It is one of those things that is obvious onece seen,
but hard to derive for the first time].


By the way, the original poster exaggerated a bit.  The earliest hominds,
2.5 milion years ago had *far* smaller brains than we.  (Proportionally
to thier body the brain of Autralopithecus afarensis was about the same
size as a chimpanzee's).  It was not until about 100 thousand years ago
(give or take a few tens of thousands) that a modern sized brain appeared.
-- 
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uunet!tdatirv!sarima				(Stanley Friesen)