I clarify:
Let’s say scientists can’t come up with solutions to global problems, AI gets out of control and turns almost everyone into paperclips during wars, and in the 2040s or 2050s, the surviving people (about a few tens of millions around the world or even less) gradually return to the level of intelligence of their distant ancestors?
As you have well noticed, I did not take into account that human evolution did not advance much intellectually and computationally, it was rather a matter of the variety of information that sharpened the human mind, to put it simply. Unfortunately, it is difficult to take all this into account.
We didn’t advance in intelligence, at all, as that’s “the capacity for, with information and tools, find a way to put them to use”. And the human mind is as sharp as it’s always been.
We had less information, and because of that no knowledge of how to make better tools, but if you gave someone from 5000 years ago the information and tools, they would be intelligent enough to figure out how to use them without instruction.
There are also issues of societal specialization leading to the ability of individuals to specialize in gaining knowledge, instead of 100% of the population working 99% of the time on survival.
But my brain and Og the Caveman are basically the same.
Yeah exactly!
A fun example of that, there’s been time and again where prototypes of things we now think of as modern were made thousands of years before. But they didn’t have the prerequisite tools and information to make it anything more than a prototype.
Like “Hero’s Engine”, a thousand of years old toy that’s a fully working Bronze Steam Engine, but it’s basically like 10cm in size. But cause they weren’t good enough at metallurgy yet, they knew it could work bigger but didn’t have any methods to make it bigger (copper and bronze can’t handle the strain that anything bigger than that would make, and that’s all they knew how to use at the time)