[sillysaurusx]

The only answer to such questions is "there's no way to know." Which implies that selection bias is the best we can do.

Ultimately, we're here. And we may only be here because we genocided all the other proto-human races (at least four of them). But no one likes talking about that, since it seems much more... personal... than a meteor.

Was it intelligent to slay the neighbors? Maybe. But it was a comparatively rare event, since once it was done, it couldn't be done again.

The interesting thing is that there's no way to know how many events like that have happened throughout all of history. We have very little data compared to the entire timeline. So any kind of measurement of "If this, then that" is very hard, and I have serious respect for the careful work that scientists manage to do in spite of the limitations.

[nefitty]

By the time I was done with school, subgroup dominance was shared among jocks and punk kids. Previously, it seemed that jocks were the most admired. After my time in school, the shift towards "weird and smart" kept increasing, to the point that bullying is now anathema and kids seem much freer to express their non-normie views.

I think this is a micro example of a tendency for people to value raw physical power over mental faculties, and how it eventually shifts as the environment changes. On earth and elsewhere, there may be species that evolved to dominate through power, snuffing out those with the potential for dominating through intelligence. I agree, this might be one of those filters that are hard to surpass. For example, by sheer luck, dinosaurs were wiped out leaving room for mammals to take over the planet. Could dinosaurs have evolved to discover computation?

On an intraspecies level, we breached a similar filter when we began organizing into agricultural/specializing societies. Those societies were started as a way for the physically powerful to harness lower-status humans. The consequence was the emergence of information-societies where intelligence is more valuable than physical power.

[Vetch]

> Could dinosaurs have evolved to discover computation?

At least judged by brain-case, (predatory) theropods would have been on the upper-end of dinosaur intelligence. Therefore we have that birds/avian dinosaurs are descendants of possibly the most intelligent branch of dinosaurs. Birds had as much time as mammals to evolve a candidate for human level general intelligence but never did. The most intelligent dinosaurs† that have ever evolved seem to be Parrots, Crows, Ravens and their close relatives.

Though bird brains (IMO) are better designed, able to keep up with higher primates using fewer more densely packed lower energy neurons, they do not match later homininans in generality.

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†The Silurian hypothesis essentially observes it would be extremely difficult for definitive evidence of a past advanced civilization to persist for longer than 10^6 to 10^7 years. It also notes that it's more difficult than one would naively assume to rule out the possibility of an advanced civ based on the geological record.

It's unlikely to be correct however. I went into more detail in this post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29514626.