Dwarkesh Patel

And then kind of why you exist is to...

understand the world and like learn how to interact with it um and it seems kind of like a training phase i agree that then there's like a sort of more gradual there's not a sharp cut off to like training to deployment but there seems to be this like initial training phase right there's nothing where you have training of what you should do there's nothing you you you see things that happen you're not you're not told what to do

I mean, you're like literally taught what to do.

This is like where the word training comes from, is from humans, right?

So I interviewed this psychologist and anthropologist, Joseph Henrich, who has done work about cultural evolution and basically what distinguishes humans and how do humans pick up knowledge.

I mean, we're trying to replicate intelligence, right?

So if you want to understand what is it that enables humans to go to the moon or to build semiconductors, I think the thing we want to understand is the thing that makes, no animal can go to the moon or make semiconductors.

So we want to understand what makes humans special.

Yeah, I think argument is useful.

But I do want to complete this thought.

So Joseph Henrich has this interesting theory that if you look...

A lot of the skills that humans have had to master in order to be successful.

And we're not talking about, you know, last thousand years or last ten thousand years, but hundreds of thousands of years.

You know, the world is really complicated and it's not possible to reason through how to, let's say, hunt a seal if you're living in the Arctic.

And so there's this many, many step long process of

of how to make the bait and how to find the seal and then how to process the food in a way that makes sure you won't get poisoned.

And it's not possible to reason through all of that.

And so over time, yes, there's this like larger process of

whatever analogy you want to use, maybe RL or something else, where culture as a whole has figured out how to find and kill and eat seals.

But then what is happening when through generations this knowledge is transmitted is