Lots of people at Harvard don’t like astrophysicist Avi Loeb, on account of his belief that Oumuamua was an extraterrestrial visitation. Okay, we are all entitled, maybe, to a nutout now and then. That one was, after all, both diverting and harmless.

That said, some ideas should be called out. Recently, he also said this:

What makes human intelligence so unique relative to animals? It is its ability to promote knowledge exponentially fast. Natural selection is often set up through gradual zero-sum games in an environment that offers limited resources. Animals with better motor skills maintain territorial control more effectively than their competitors. This perspective changed drastically over the past century of human history. Modern science and technology now offer an infinite-sum game with unlimited resources. Whereas natural evolution was limited to Earth, humans launched spacecraft towards new domains of real estate within the solar system and beyond.

Avi Loeb, “Intelligence Means Exponential Growth,” Medium, December 15. 2023

Exponentially fast? The main reasons we hear more ideas today is that we are building on basic past ideas plus there are many more human beings and communications systems.

Loeb sounds as though has absolutely no idea what makes human intelligence unique; thus he mistakes the result for the cause.

Human intelligence thrives on immaterial ideas. Albert Einstein (1879–1955) did not think what he did because it would make him rich or famous or more attracted to beautiful women. That could all have happened for all anyone knows but It might all have been true but it issn’t how great ideas happen. It wasn’t how great ideas happened for Aristotle (384– 322 BC) or Isaac Newton (1642–1747 ) either.

It is not possible to understand great ideas without appreciating their immateriality. How people want to explain that is, of course, another matter.