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A review by rossbm
A Brief History of Intelligence: Evolution, AI, and the Five Breakthroughs That Made Our Brains by Max Solomon Bennett

informative medium-paced

4.0

Good over view of how intelligence developed. 5 key developments were:
1.  nervous system for steering
2.  Reinforcement Learning through  Basal Ganglia  and dopamine.
3. Simulation through pre-frontal cortex. Apparently this is unique to mammals? Or Birds developed separately?
4.  Theory of mind. Social apes very good at this. helps with learning behaviours from others.
5. Language: developed relatively recently and rapidly?

One of my biggest takeaways is that the brain is a simulation machine. Always predicting the world, even predicting  Basal Ganglia  and dopamine  response for planning purpose. So when predictions correct, don't notice. But once prediction is off, then surprise. But of course, might predict wrong but not see error.