[suddenlybananas]

Do you think evolutionary pressures are the best explanation for why humans were able to posit the Poincaré conjecture and solve it? While our mental architecture evolved over a very long time, we still learn from miniscule amounts of data compared to LLMs.

[famouswaffles]

Yeah. What else would it be ? A brain capable of doing that was clearly the result of evolutionary pressures.

[suddenlybananas]

But there is no evolutionary pressure for the Poincaré conjecture, we were never optimized for that in particular, unlike these kinds of LLMs.

[int_19h]

We were optimized to rapidly adapt to changing environments by solving the problems that arise through tool-making and cooperation in complex multi-stage tasks (like say hunting that mammoth to make clothing out of it). It turns out that the cheapest evolutionary pathway to get there has some interesting emergent phenomena.

[munksbeer]

Of course it is evolution. What else could it be?