I don’t think Moravec’s paradox is a real paradox in the first place. The reason we think of activities like walking, using your hands, being able to speak language, etc. as easy is because we don’t have any long-term memories from the first few years of life when we had to figure all of that out from scratch. https://x.com/stuartbuck1/status/1798547161489231928
Interesting point, Stuart! I think when people say a given ability is easy to achieve they are referring to the chance of achieving it conditional on putting some effort into it. Sensorimotor tasks may be hard in the sense of requiring lots of effort (even if we forgot about it), but the vast majority of people achieve a great level conditional on the training effort of a typical upbringing. I guess there would be much greater variance in chess and maths ability conditional on a given amount of training.
Not sure if this is responsive, but while most people (barring disability) do reach a decent level of proficiency at navigating the world, I think the variance can still be huge. Look at the feats of Olympic gymnasts or professional basketball players—hardly anyone could reach that level no matter how much they trained.
Thanks, Stuart. I think Ege’s point is that there is less variation in activities that humans have done for a long time, which does not apply to all sporty activities. I would say most of olympic gymnastics and professional basketball do not qualify, whereas walking and running do. The fastest marathon was run in around 2 h, whereas a random person with age 30 can maybe complete one in around 9 h moving at a walking pace of 4.67 km/h[1] (= 42⁄9), which is 4.5 (= 9⁄5) times as much time. In contrast, a random person would not beat the best chess players even if they had 4.5 times as much time (unless they had very little time like 4.5 s against 1 s for the top players).
I don’t think Moravec’s paradox is a real paradox in the first place. The reason we think of activities like walking, using your hands, being able to speak language, etc. as easy is because we don’t have any long-term memories from the first few years of life when we had to figure all of that out from scratch. https://x.com/stuartbuck1/status/1798547161489231928
Interesting point, Stuart! I think when people say a given ability is easy to achieve they are referring to the chance of achieving it conditional on putting some effort into it. Sensorimotor tasks may be hard in the sense of requiring lots of effort (even if we forgot about it), but the vast majority of people achieve a great level conditional on the training effort of a typical upbringing. I guess there would be much greater variance in chess and maths ability conditional on a given amount of training.
Not sure if this is responsive, but while most people (barring disability) do reach a decent level of proficiency at navigating the world, I think the variance can still be huge. Look at the feats of Olympic gymnasts or professional basketball players—hardly anyone could reach that level no matter how much they trained.
Thanks, Stuart. I think Ege’s point is that there is less variation in activities that humans have done for a long time, which does not apply to all sporty activities. I would say most of olympic gymnastics and professional basketball do not qualify, whereas walking and running do. The fastest marathon was run in around 2 h, whereas a random person with age 30 can maybe complete one in around 9 h moving at a walking pace of 4.67 km/h[1] (= 42⁄9), which is 4.5 (= 9⁄5) times as much time. In contrast, a random person would not beat the best chess players even if they had 4.5 times as much time (unless they had very little time like 4.5 s against 1 s for the top players).
Healthy young people can walk all day if needed even if they do not exercise regularly.