Predation as Payment for Criticism

post by Benquo · 2025-01-30T01:06:27.591Z · LW · GW · 2 comments

This is a link post for https://benjaminrosshoffman.com/predation-as-payment-for-criticism/

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A predator's success depends on exploiting specific flaws in prey – poor awareness, slow reactions, weak social coordination. Unlike resource competition or disease, which select based on physiological robustness, predation creates focused pressure on intelligence, pressure which favors the development of consciousness. A cheetah doesn't catch just any gazelle, but the one that fails to notice and react effectively. Prey get better at evading, predators get better at predicting, each side has to model the other's thoughts more accurately - an arms race that eventually rewards both sides for explicitly modeling the other's perspective, the basis for cognitive empathy. If you're glad you're conscious, no need to thank a predator - somebody else already did - by being eaten.

For a species evolving over time, predators are performing a service: identifying specific failures of capacity. The payment for this service is the nutrition from the prey's body, while the cost to the prey is their life and fewer offspring. This harsh exchange enables something remarkable - the development of sophisticated defensive capabilities without any explicit agreement or negotiation between species. The gazelle doesn't need to understand that it's participating in continuous process improvement via selective criticism, nor agree to pay for the information.

Before someone can explicitly negotiate for decision-relevant criticism, it needs to already be smart enough to generate the idea of making informed decisions, and of criticism, understand the information value of criticism, and choose to offer to pay for it by some means other than being devoured by the critic. Predation creates pressure to develop these capabilities without requiring their preexistence. This differs markedly from domestication, where selective pressures often reduce agency - breeding for docility rather than capacity.

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