First, very early in our evolution, we humans realized that the world is not made up only of dry facts (what we might call data today); rather, these facts are glued together by an intricate web of cause-effect relationships. Second, causal explanations, not dry facts, make up the bulk of our knowledge, and should be the cornerstone of machine intelligence. Finally, our transition from processors of data to makers of explanations was not gradual; it was a leap that required an external push from an uncommon fruit. This matched perfectly with what I had observed theoretically in the Ladder of
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