A Brief History of Intelligence Evolution, AI, and the Five Breakthroughs That Made Our Brains

and one of them was a brief history of intelligence, evolution, AI, and the five breakthroughs that made our brains.

I read the book and I absolutely loved it. And I've actually now read it two and a half times and been talking about it forever.

I love your book. It's so good. I've recommended to so many people.

It's a very very dense in a great way book you cover geological evolution animal evolution the AI history and it's all cohesive and multidisciplinary and as you talked about it's such an impressive book you made it quite easy.

Everybody read a brief history of intelligence until your next book.

I was listening to this book for the second time, A Brief History of Intelligence. Great book, recommend it.

but I was listening in this book for the second time, a brief history of intelligence. Great book recommend it.

It's talking about the period in evolution where fish crawled out of the water and started eating vegetation close to the waterline and developed lung. Ultimately becomes mammals, right? And my understanding of evolution, which is there's a mutation that net mutations beneficial and then they breed more and that's how the thing lasts. Lunges is so complicated. How the fuck could that be a mutation? Are we saying one fish, one of these days had a set of lungs and all of a sudden I was like, I don't think I buy this.

I was recently reading A Brief History of Intelligence which is a great book.

It's called a brief history of intelligence.

He said Angela I'm going to do something I never do because I have a rule not to do this and then of course I was waiting on the edge of my seat he was like I'm going to recommend a book I never tell people what to read but I'm going to tell you to read this book and I was like okay what's the book and he said a brief history of intelligence by Max Bennett

I said to Danny I was like never heard of Max Bennett I spent 20 plus years studying intelligence and what it is and what it's not and it was like who the hell's Max Bennett he's like I had never heard of Max Bennett either but I was looking for something to read and he saw this book that he had never heard of

he's like I had never heard of Max Bennett either but I was looking for something to read and he saw this book that he had never heard of so Danny decides to start the book you know exploration not exploitation like why not give it a whirl yes and and he says he couldn't do anything else but read that book until he finished it so he read it cover to cover and then he read it again

so I indeed immediately ordered the book and I started reading it and even before I finished it I started evangelizing to all of my friends in psychology and I email these people and I'm like look you know take it from Danny Kahneman like you should just start reading this book they're like who the hell is Max Bennett and I'm like I don't know he's some kid who apparently got a BA in philosophy but like oh wait so he's like a young I mean he's not 12 but he's not a professor he doesn't have a PhD I think he runs an AI tech startup but he just got interested in what is it to have an intelligent thought and he does this kind of like tour of how we got smart as a species beginning with primordial sludge taking us all the way through to chat GPT-4 that kind of being like the next horizon like something human beings invented and I need to show you these email threads all of these eminent professors at Stanford at Harvard at Yale at MIT all of us are like holy sh** holy sh** this guy has come up with a story for the beginning and the middle and the future of intelligence that none of us who do this for a living could possibly have dreamed of

so Mike I'm not going to send you a song or a poem every week but I am going to tell you that you should read a brief history of intelligence and then you need to tell me later whether it blew your mind