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Comment by visarga | Hacker News Reader

> If deep learning isn’t enough, then brains aren’t enough, right?

No, not right. Humans need other humans to be smart, we need culture, technology and science. We're not that smart - just 700 years ago we were dying of the plague without even knowing the germ theory of disease, even with our lives on the line we couldn't solve it. We're only INCREMENTALLY smart over our current cultural level.

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How do you explain non-human intelligence and tool usage, where there is no known culture?

They can still individually learn tool usage by imitation, random exploration and reinforcement. But without culture they can't build on it.

Human supremacist world-view. Sadly incredibly common, once you drill down.

It's culture-supremacist actually. Information needs to copy itself into the future, that's the essence of both life (genes) and culture (memes).

Culture supremacy is still just bio-supremacy. Memes don’t exist except through genes.

Arguing that memes exist outside of genes is like arguing that the Platonic solids are real.

Actually, tool usage in primates is a form of culture (protoculture). Those groups that have mastered it can be better of than those that didn't -- giving them an evolutionary advantage. The "tools" can be suprisingly complex, see for example:

https://web.archive.org/web/20110608070200/http://www.uic.ed...

What about birds?

https://www.wired.com/2011/01/new-crow-tools/

That is pretty interesting -- I didn't knew that. I would classify this behaviour also as protocultural.

What about swarm intelligence of ants and bees?

Protoculture as well?

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