Re:

I suggest the expression really should be "I think, therefore I believe I am"

I believe that I think, but am "I" the agent of thinking?

i is a mental construct that gives an evolutionary advantage.

absolutely. so are truth and meaning

i wonder in game theory what advantage it gives.

Law of large numbers is all that is needed

I am not sure how to relate that to game theory; you may be able to get that without evolutionary competition. However, game theory is probably the way to explain how we evolve submission to norms beyond indirect reciprocity.

Most animals don have a self model, probably because they don't have complex enough brains or long enough training phases (childhoods) to do meta-regulation.

they may have physical prothesitcs 40=A0 like cat whiskers. to enable it to guage widith

of hole. ? = A0

no, i disagree = the spaceship is only an advanced prosthetic.. not =nteresting at all.. interesting is we have no idea what the top do=n for humans is.. collective . group behavior, I dont=see any differnce between humans and cells , just a diff=rent layer of the same.. regulatory systems. action s =eedbacks and " learning ",. all with no goal . =A0the goals are illusions.. that the indiv thinks they decide. lik= the soldier ant that is recapitualted to a garbage ant if the garbage ant= are wiped out. the soldier ant thinks it made the decision. =C2 .

Exactly! Sensors like that are often one of these=solution that get you 80% of the way with 20% of the effort. Except that m=nds that take 15 years to train are o dramatically more expensive that alm=st no species can afford them (but they end up getting you to the moon, wh=ch no prosthesis can).

So you don't think that practical intelligence is th= ability to build arbitrary prosthetics?

I agree =hat humans share an important similarity with cells, i.e. they have mechan=sms that suppress individual competition when it conflicts too much with g=oup selection. Without such mechanisms, group selection fails, because wit=in each group, defectors have a local advantage.

=he simplest mechanism to enforce cooperation is reputation, but it works o=ly when others are looking, and manage to keep tallies. To do better than =hat, evolution has to breed a virtual next level regulator into the indivi=ual, which may be your missing "top down for humans". A syste= of norms and taboos, for instance a religion or ideology that people pick=up from their environment.

Individuals can decide= but in social contexts, the utility of decisions is given by how well we =nderstand the constraints under which we operate.

i see it as a complex system agents are buildi=g many things. dependent on the local condition. some take off=as useful in other parts of the system, monkeys using to=ls? I think the term intelligence is too vague. . a crab using=a lure to catch its prey. is a bio inspired prosthetic. =C24o it arguaabley evolved. but cant be sur=.