/sci/ - Science & Math

[Anonymous No.10262511]

Why did it take so long for a species with a cognitive ability like ours to come into the Earth? What about the last ~500 million years of vertebrates, some of who were so big their caloric requirements must have been way above ours did not place the selective advantage that made us in any other animal phyla, classes, or families?

[Anonymous No.10262515]

Because all you need is benis in bagina

[Anonymous No.10262614]

>>10262511
Cephalopods got smart millions of years ago, and why that happened is a mystery. My favored idea is it's a way a species can survive when something suddenly makes it vulnerable to predators, so with cephalopods they lost the external shell, I guess part of it with humans was the sudden move from trees to plains.

[Anonymous No.10262620]

What reason did it have in the first place? Look how long it took to yield substantial results, did the short term benefits really outweigh the downside of having to devote so much energy to a brain?

[Anonymous No.10262688]

>>10262620
it allows for a species to use resources in the environment to better its odds. octopuses use bottles and coconuts, corbids use tools like sticks and cars, humans use rocks and sticks.

[Anonymous No.10262695]

>>10262614
That's a very good book.

[Anonymous No.10263323]

>>10262614
Great hypothesis.

[Anonymous No.10263326]

>>10262511
God created

[Anonymous No.10263333]

>>10262511
Nobody really knows the answer. It appears the most plausible answer is that the genes that makes humans smart happen by chance.

[Anonymous No.10263372]

>>10263326
This

[Anonymous No.10263422]

intelligence was sexually selected for the most part

[Anonymous No.10263431]

Maybe there was a species that was sapient but they didn't have opposable thumbs to build shit?

[Anonymous No.10263436]

>>10262511

Brains are expensive (something like 1/4th of the human body's energy consumption). If there aren't enough caloric/ecosystem/social/etc from a brain...why have it?

>humans use rocks and sticks.

Humans also evaluate each other socially and make plans and strategies to move up in social rank. Our social groupings are an environment onto themselves.

[Anonymous No.10263469]

>>10263422
Wrong. Girls prefer brainlet gangsters

[Anonymous No.10263481]

>>10263469
men selected for it in women, think harder about your next post please

[Anonymous No.10263492]

>>10263481
Why would you want a smart woman?
She wouldn't know when to shut up and stay in the kitchen.

[Anonymous No.10263506]

>>10263492
this discussion is centered around the development of intelligence in humans, not modern trends in IQ selective-processes
here's one answer: higher IQs correspond with higher impulse control, meaning less violence and negligence and thus more 'feminine' and caring women as well as lower likelyhood of illicit offspring, which is an obvious selective advantage for men

[Anonymous No.10263507]

>>10262511
Because the strength in humans was in social groupings. If you want to lead a large and complex social group you need to both have good communication and language skills(requiring intelligence) and planning skills (also requiring intelligence). This meant that intelligence was selected for.

[Anonymous No.10263508]

>>10263506
The most feminine women are air heads though. They're not smart.

[Anonymous No.10263513]

>>10263508
That is a very personal opinion that is both deplorable as well as non-scientific

[Anonymous No.10263528]

I think evolution started operating in a fucked up way in response to primates being too comfortable for too long. I think primates became bored after millions of years of doing the same shit and just simply started doing more risky and dangerous things for no other reason than complacency was becoming miserably uncomfortable. To the point of tempting fate to the point of death. Life is just never satisfied. It always needs more. A lack of stimulation is itself stimulation still.

[Anonymous No.10263529]

>>10263513
I don't learn (((science)))

[Anonymous No.10263539]

>>10263529
based

[Anonymous No.10263541]

>>10263528
>started doing more risky and dangerous things

as well as more creative things. Like >>10263507
points out about good communication and language skills. How the fuck does that shit develop to a degree of being able to use it in a way that makes others look up to you? I imagine it was a long period of primates just making sounds at each other in certain ways for no other reason than to see what would happen. And weird shit started to happen. And over a long period of time, certain things caught on because the majority of primates liked those certain things for whatever reason.

[Anonymous No.10263571]

>>10262695
what's the name of the book?

[Anonymous No.10263611]

>>10262511
because the brain is energetically very expensive to mantain, and every trait is a tradeoff.
to sum it up: it took a lot to evolve because it's not particularly useful in normal natural circumstances.

[Anonymous No.10263680]

>>10262511
Darwinism can't predict our cognitive abilities. Only option left is <insert the supernatural>.
Deal with it.

[Anonymous No.10263958]

>>10262511
The next leap in cognitive ability won’t take but maybe 2 more generations from now to kick off via genetic engineering. B/c of https://www.gwern.net/Embryo-selection

[Anonymous No.10264007]

>>10263958
You have to be very idiotic to actually think we'll get smarter over time.

[Anonymous No.10264038]

>>10262614
predators are definitely a deep part of it.
i think also it's to do with manipulation of the world and social activities. apes, dolphins, wolves, elephants, etc, they all have the ability to spontaneously produce novel solutions that help themselves or each other.
octopus intelligence is probably so high because the have poor proprioception, so they actually have to look very carefully at everything to gauge if what they're doing is accomplishing the desired action.

[Anonymous No.10264153]

>>10263958
Why is your image so shitty and why are all the fonts different?

[Anonymous No.10264174]

>>10262695
>>10263571
Squid Empire by Danna Staaf is incredible and where I first read about it. A lot of people rave about Godfrey-Smith's Other Minds, I know that has some evo stuff in it, but haven't read it yet because the person who said they'd swap books with me turned out to be a massive twat.

[Anonymous No.10264177]

>>10264153
Clearly made in Russia ;)

[Prof Sai No.10264245]

>>10262511
>Why did it take so long for a species with a cognitive ability like ours to come into the Earth?

The normal trend is for life forms to evolve to suit their environment, and discard excessive systems that aren't useful. But humans aren't particularly well evolved to any specific environment. How did that happen?

In Africa there was a period when environmental change was happening so fast that large animals could not adapt fast enough. Evolution of the physical form no longer had any specific goal possible. So what survived was a form that was mediocre in any specific environment, but excelled when the constant rule changes upset the game for everyone else. Intelligence is the evolutionary response to chaos.

Once an organism is good at responding to change, it then becomes an effective strategy to CAUSE change at every opportunity. This way predators and competition are kept at a constant disadvantage. Doing this requires still more intelligence until we have humanity as we know it today.

[Anonymous No.10264256]

>>10263958
I often think we erroneously look at genetic engineering as though it were not part of the natural evolution process.

[Anonymous No.10264262]

>>10264256
>addendum
In compsci it's called bootstrapping. The bootstrapping phase is almost complete.

[Prof Sai No.10264270]

>>10264245
>Intelligence is the evolutionary response to chaos.

This is why conservatives are a danger to the survival of the human race. They want to lock down society into a narrow set of fundamental rules and resist change and innovation. Islamic, Christian, or other forms of fundamentalism all amount to the same thing: A desire to return to an imagined perfect past, where intelligence is less relevant because all the answers are in the holy book. Climate change and peak oil can't be real because change isn't real. Conservatism is a denial of what set above the animals.

[Prof Sai No.10264279]

>>10264256
>I often think we erroneously look at genetic engineering as though it were not part of the natural evolution process.

It isn't. Evolution is directed by what works for long term reproduction. Genetic engineering is the product of what a few human minds decide is desirable. By the time the results of genetic engineering face any real environmental test, massive damage could have happened.

See pic.

[Anonymous No.10264307]

Because it's not necessary and not particularly advantageous. Basically everything that a conscious mind can do can be done cheaper with pre-programmed instinct. There are some theories consciousness developed to mediate motor impulses but then again, there's a million simpler mechanisms to do that. It might just have been luck, but the bottom line is we shouldn't even exist, yet here we are.

[Prof Sai No.10264312]

>>10264307
>Basically everything that a conscious mind can do can be done cheaper with pre-programmed instinct.

Nope. Pre-programmed instincts have to evolve in the same way as a physical form. See: >>10264245

[Anonymous No.10264592]

>>10264307
T. Peter watts

[Anonymous No.10264682]

>>10264245
>Once an organism is good at responding to change, it then becomes an effective strategy to CAUSE change at every opportunity.
ha, sounds like the workplace, where the experienced folk hoard their knowledge and keep processes mutating in order to keep the noobs out of their well-moneyed seats

[Anonymous No.10264686]

>>10264279
yes there will be hurdles and snafus, but see:
>>10264245
>So what survived was a form that was mediocre in any specific environment, but excelled when the constant rule changes upset the game for everyone else
>>10264245
>Once an organism is good at responding to change, it then becomes an effective strategy to CAUSE change at every opportunity.
Makin' it happen!

[Anonymous No.10264739]

>>10264270
That is why a nice medium is good
liberalism can be far to chaotic.
It was under the conservative stability of religion and the governments we designed with them that we were able to advance.

[Anonymous No.10264755]

>>10264739
One foot in chaos because there are always new problems and the need for new solutions.
One foot in order because hard won solutions and wisdom need to be preserved and maintained.
Both are necessary and so is clear (true) communication between the two.

[Anonymous No.10265127]

>>10263506
>higher impulse control, meaning less violence and negligence and thus more 'feminine' and caring women as well as lower likelyhood of illicit offspring
prove it

[Anonymous No.10265163]

>>10263680
Darwinism can’t explain why a giraffe has a long neck

[Anonymous No.10265180]

>>10262511
>Why did it take so long for a species with a cognitive ability like ours to come into the Earth?
Who says that's a long time?

[Anonymous No.10265498]

>>10265180

this. Intuitively it seems like the difference between a human being and am amoeba is much more dramatic than that between an amoeba and a single-cell microbe - and yet it took almost 3 billion years for multicellular life to develop and just a few hundred million for these to develop into humans, elephants, bees, trees and everything else.

From that perspective, the development of humans happened really quickly.

[Anonymous No.10265524]

>>10265163
No mystery, eating stuff that's high. Duh.
But Darwinism explains the laryngeal nerve that goes with it:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cO1a1Ek-HD0

[Anonymous No.10265951]

>>10264174
Not that anon, but thanks for those book suggestions.

[Anonymous No.10265989]

>>10265498
>Intuitively it seems like the difference between a human being and am amoeba is much more dramatic than that between an amoeba and a single-cell microbe
It depends what we're talking about and looking at. Whenever we talk about single celled organisms we have to have some level of absraction, sure you have to look at two under a microscope but the internals of an amoeba and a cell from a multicellular organism have much more in common than to a bacteria.