Why AI researchers love Blindsight: consciousness as an evolutionary dead end
ShahabBakht · x · 2026-10-18
AI researcher Rylan Schaeffer recommends Peter Watts' Blindsight for two reasons: it makes readers feel what fighting a superintelligence is like (you understand <30% of the plot, like playing chess against AlphaZero), and it explores whether consciousness actually improves evolutionary fitness — the novel's answer being no, with consciousness as a cognitive bottleneck that dooms humanity against a superior non-conscious alien race.
Related event: AI Researcher Recommends Sci-Fi Novel Blindsight(2 posts)→
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