[AntonioCao]

Make sense. A fun argument for why brain's underlying "algorithm" should be simple is that evolution didn't take that long to go from creatures with primitive cognitive functions to thinking-talking humans. The sensible solution, just like the way evolution solved many other problems, is to replicate what's working in a massive scale, similar to how we build artificial neural networks. This argument was popularized by jeff hawkins in his thousand brains theory, I believe.

[ianbicking]

Punctuated evolution doesn't mean that evolution was fast, at least as I see it: instead evolution has solved problems in the past and created latent capabilities that can be rapidly engaged through small mutations or epigenetic changes like hormonal changes that get passed on generationally through early development.

That is to say that while humans developed higher intelligence over a relatively short time, that was created from a novel combination of evolutionary abilities rather than a novel evolutionary invention.