Nice job :) Studying evolutionary history to understand the possibilties for minds is probably my favorite EA genre.
One criticism: We don’t know if sentience really imbues or is necessary for any of the traits you listed as associated with it. You sort of addressed the hard problem after the list, but if you’re not positing some benefit to awareness itself then I think you might as well say the Cambrian Explosion was due to a predator-prey arms race that elaborated the nervous system of many animal taxa and promoted fossilizable protected exteriors. Might be more accurate to say that sentience was a byproduct of the Cambrian Explosion if it’s those factors you see as beneficial and you’re just noting their seeming association with sentience.
If you expand this, I think it would really help to clarify what it would mean for sentience to play an active role in spurring the diversification (i.e. if sentience somehow gives the ability to learn and sense) versus the diversification promoting the things required for sentience.
Nice job :) Studying evolutionary history to understand the possibilties for minds is probably my favorite EA genre.
One criticism: We don’t know if sentience really imbues or is necessary for any of the traits you listed as associated with it. You sort of addressed the hard problem after the list, but if you’re not positing some benefit to awareness itself then I think you might as well say the Cambrian Explosion was due to a predator-prey arms race that elaborated the nervous system of many animal taxa and promoted fossilizable protected exteriors. Might be more accurate to say that sentience was a byproduct of the Cambrian Explosion if it’s those factors you see as beneficial and you’re just noting their seeming association with sentience.
If you expand this, I think it would really help to clarify what it would mean for sentience to play an active role in spurring the diversification (i.e. if sentience somehow gives the ability to learn and sense) versus the diversification promoting the things required for sentience.