Tim Tyler: Self-directed evolution

[hord]

i have to say i disagree on alot of the points raised here, your looking at society as a whole and throughout history we have seen how we can never work as a whole, also the moment a new type of leadership arives to replace capitalism we can see its ineffectiveness. You could argue that capitalism has more time and therefore would look better but we must ask, will capatalisms own downfall be itself?

[motters2001]

Similar to the idea that the intelligence of a crowd may be somewhat less intelligent than it's constituent individuals the intelligence of large state entities may be similarly less evolved.  Does this mean that we're heading for a future of gradually declining intelligence, or where individual intelligence is suppressed by larger less intelligent systems?

[tmtyler]

Collective intelligence seems poorly studied - but it seems reasonable to assume that it is growing in a similar way to the intelligence of individual agents - if not much faster.

Intelligence *does* look like it will be centralised. Agents seem destined to have their most of their brains sucked out by the cloud. They might still be smarter than us - but they will be like thin clients - satellite entities - telepresence devices - as in the hugely successful ant model.