Re: The Dream Palace Of The Space Cadets (another Op-Ed by Jeff Bell

"John Savard" <jsavard@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:4391bfe5.3724025@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> On Sat, 03 Dec 2005 16:48:15 GMT, simberg.interglobal@xxxxxxxxx (Rand
> Simberg) wrote, in part:
>
>>No, they selected for intelligence, but they didn't select for many of
>>the applications to which we put it. Our intelligence has far
>>outpaced the "desires" of our genes.
>
> I'm not sure what you mean by that.
>
> The potential of our brains is the result of their design and
> construction, which is specified by our genes.
>
> I think you mean, of course, that not all human intellectual capacities
> have been directly selected for. This certainly is true. The present
> structure of the human brain is the same as it was in the Cro-Magnon
> period. Hence, we cannot have been selected even for our ability to read
> and write, much less the abilities to program computers, design
> spaceships, or compose symphonic works.
>
> Various explanations have been proposed for human intelligence.
>
> One possibility is that while our intelligence can be used for high
> technology, it was all directly useful to survival while we were yet
> hunter-gatherers as well. Many writers have noted, for example, of the
> detailed naturalistic knowledge and keen powers of observation of people
> we esteem as 'primitive', enabling them to find food in environments
> which would defeat a 'civilized' but naive individual.
>
> I remember one book noting that our hunting ancestors may have stopped
> large animals by throwing rocks at them - and the coordination required
> to hit them required accurate timing, obtained by averaging the firing
> times of enormous numbers of neurons.
>
> Another theory notes that our brains are enormous and metabolically
> costly, and it was not until high technology, or at least agriculture,
> came along, after the selection took place, that we became much more
> successful than the chimpanzee. Thus, they compare the human brain to
> the tail of the pea***, or the antlers of the Irish elk, and attribute
> it to the same source. And why would men need giant brains to impress a
> mate? Because internal rearrangements associated with bipedal locomotion
> caused the female orgasm to cease to be an automatic concomitant of
> intercourse, which led to the human female abandoning estrus (or
> 'heat')... which suddenly put an immense premium on the ability to come
> up with a smooth line.
>
> Since the human mode of survival is as a pack-hunting species, like the
> wolf, more complex social interactions and the development of articulate
> speech could account for a great deal of brain development. The latter,
> in particular, could have given Cro-Magnon man an edge when competing
> with other extant hominid species.
>
> What our intelligence - combined with a complex social organization that
> allows *specialization* and the recording of knowledge outside our own
> memories - may allow us to do in future is indeed something whose full
> extent we are unlikely to have plumbed.
>
> I hope we get the chance to continue.

I think that language provided a short-hand that allowed us to store more
information in our brains. Before language, someone could have added 2 + 3
to get 5. Bigger numbers would have been beyond them. We needed a way to
represent large numbers before we could add them. Language also provides a
way for one generation to teach the next generation. I think that language
boosted our intelligence by a factor of 10 or more.

In evolution, change promotes intelligence. It is possible for an animal to
be born with everything it needs to know. Many animals hatched from eggs
are like this. Such animals may be well adapted to one environment, but
they have trouble changing. Smart animals can handle changing environments
and changing environments make them smarter. It isn't just global climate
change one adapts to, but mountains are different from valleys. In the case
of humans, coming down from the trees and inventing spears gave us to big
changes to adapt to.

Many animals went extinct 12,000 years ago. There is some evidence early
Americans had boats. Boats would have given us yet another environment to
adapt to. 2500 years ago there seemed to be a link between the
Mediterranean Sea and civilization.


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