The belief that human level intelligence is some natural consequence of evolution continues among strong ETI believers to this day despite a much clearer view of human evolution which shows it was a quirky branching path to us not some steady positive feedback loop. I have heard it claimed that few anthropologists now think evolving our level of intelligence is anything more than a quirk of evolution. Human evolution is very supportive of Gould's punctuated equilibrium concept. It's too bad he is no longer with us to comment on these issues as more data comes to light.

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Gould's punctuated equilibrium views have fallen way out of favor with the younger generation of evolutionists. They regard the hypothethis as untestable and therefore unscientific.

There is now evidence emerging that this universe has some yet underscovered mechanisms that encourage the development of complex systems be they chemicals from stars, organic chemicals, complex lattice structures, biological systems and quite possibly intelligence. It's way too soon to say but I favor the thought that there IS an underlying complexity law or whatever.

-p (doen't think there's any ETI around this galaxy though, probably wrong)