Hypothesis: The Naturalistic Fallacy has leapt from Animal Welfare into AI Capability Assessment
The naturalistic fallacy IMO influences how many people evaluate artificial intelligence capabilities, causing systematic underestimation of technological progress. In animal welfare discussions, this fallacy manifests when people justify consumption practices by arguing “humans have always eaten animals” or “it’s natural to eat meat,” improperly deriving an ethical “ought” from a historical “is.”
Similarly, in AI capability assessment, this fallacy operates through several key mechanisms:
Historical cognitive dominance bias: Assuming humans must remain the dominant cognitive species simply because we’ve always occupied that position throughout evolutionary history.
Biological exceptionalism: Believing intelligence must be biological in nature because it has only emerged through natural evolution previously.
Anthropomorphic benchmarking: Judging AI capabilities exclusively against human-centric metrics while dismissing alternative forms of intelligence that may surpass humans in different domains.
Status quo preservation: Psychologically resisting evidence of AI advancement because it threatens humanity’s position as the most intelligent entities on Earth.
IMO this manifestation of the naturalistic fallacy blinds observers to exponential progress in AI capabilities by conflating what has been “natural” with what should continue to be, making the objective assessment of technological advancement particularly challenging.
*I wrote this up as dot points and Claude built it out for me. I don’t even know why I added this point, it just feels honest to do so.
Hypothesis: The Naturalistic Fallacy has leapt from Animal Welfare into AI Capability Assessment
The naturalistic fallacy IMO influences how many people evaluate artificial intelligence capabilities, causing systematic underestimation of technological progress. In animal welfare discussions, this fallacy manifests when people justify consumption practices by arguing “humans have always eaten animals” or “it’s natural to eat meat,” improperly deriving an ethical “ought” from a historical “is.”
Similarly, in AI capability assessment, this fallacy operates through several key mechanisms:
Historical cognitive dominance bias: Assuming humans must remain the dominant cognitive species simply because we’ve always occupied that position throughout evolutionary history.
Biological exceptionalism: Believing intelligence must be biological in nature because it has only emerged through natural evolution previously.
Anthropomorphic benchmarking: Judging AI capabilities exclusively against human-centric metrics while dismissing alternative forms of intelligence that may surpass humans in different domains.
Status quo preservation: Psychologically resisting evidence of AI advancement because it threatens humanity’s position as the most intelligent entities on Earth.
IMO this manifestation of the naturalistic fallacy blinds observers to exponential progress in AI capabilities by conflating what has been “natural” with what should continue to be, making the objective assessment of technological advancement particularly challenging.
*I wrote this up as dot points and Claude built it out for me. I don’t even know why I added this point, it just feels honest to do so.