[BigTex]

My dog's mind is in perfect balance with her body and her environment. She has just enough intelligence to be able to relax most of the time and to be happy with living in my backyard. She does not appear to be overly troubled by anything other than some of the other dogs that walk by the fence, yet she is quite sensitive and capable of much affection and loves to give and receive attention.

I, on the other hand, have a large human brain and I am endlessly troubled by all sorts of things, one of which is why our mental capacities seem to so utterly outstrip our survival needs. In other words, how did our brains ever get this big in the first place?

For a long time I thought perhaps we had become intelligent since our bodies are so poorly adapted to the physical environment. We have almost no natural defense against the cold, heat or other elements and we are not well-suited for hunting without tools or for defending ourselves against other predators without weapons. This theory always bothered me because it suggests that a more physically fit creature with a smaller brain somehow morphed into a much less physically fit creature with a bigger brain that provided no additional survival advantage. But this explanation wasn't all that satisfying.

The other day I read an article suggesting that in the same ways that males of other species have large antlers, or blue butts, or enormous feather spreads, humans may have evolved with larger brains solely as a result of mating rituals. In other words, human males are smart because it takes a high degree of intelligence to make them appear attractive to human females. Human females, on the other hand, are VERY smart because it takes a high degree of intelligence to distinguish among competing males, each of whom has a pretty good act.

Thus, perhaps we have developed this high degree of cognitive ability solely to secure the best mate that we can for the evening or for a lifetime. Think about it: What activity do humans engage in that truly tasks the mind to the limit of its abilities? The process of finding and keeping a suitable mate (or perhaps getting rid of a mate that is no longer suitable) is one of a short list of things I can think of (science and technology development don't count, since that didn't start until we already had big brains, thus it probably wasn't the cause of the brains getting so big in the first place).

Stated differently, perhaps if women hadn't been so picky 100,000,000 years ago, maybe we would be a lot less intelligent than we are now. This theory sort of casts the Adam and Eve story in a different light.

One of the brain functions that were cited in the article as having little survival value is the ability to make instruments and compose music....but the ladies sure do like musicians. Ever been to a rock concert?

Since I think it is obviously a surplus of intelligence and creative ability that has created most of our problems, it is helpful to try to understand how we got this surplus of brain capacity in the first place.

For anyone who says that people aren't really that smart, look at the ingenious methods and tools that prisoners can come up with to escape. When pressed, people can be very clever and creative.

It is ironic that the saying goes "idle hands are tools of the devil." People take it as axiomatic that being industrious is a good thing, that pushing and developing the mind is a good thing. Maybe it's not. The fact is that humans like to modify their environment. They just do. They like building stuff and changing stuff and fighting with each other and conqering nature. It makes us feel alive. It makes us feel like we are DOING something.

This mental fidgetiness is an old problem, and soothing and calming the mind is perhaps the oldest problem that religion seeks to solve. But I still wonder how we got this way in the first place?

Here are some candidates:

1. The human body became more feeble and a big brain was compensation.

2. The ladies decided they liked mates who could entertain them and started choosing the skinny hairless cerebral cavemen.

3. The aliens came down to earth and had sex with the monkeys and we were the mule offspring--we are monkeylike, but also intelligent like the aliens. This also accounts for mankind's persistent sense of "alienation" and love of bananas.

4. God made us in his image and God is really smart and a little neurotic.

5. The monkeys actually evolved from us and we are really the primitive and doomed life form and our brains are our useless and extinction-inducing appendage (I know this one has been pretty well debunked, but I still wanted to include it).

Anyone else have any thoughts on how we got so smart?

Anyone else have any thoughts on the areas of our brain that for whatever reason haven't gotten smarter (such as our utter inability to see long-term threats to survival such as PO at the group level)?

Anyone think we are an evolutionary dead end (i.e., surplus intelligence is actually an impediment to survival)?

[Carlhole]

Well, they say one sex molds the other.

Question is, "Who did the better job?". I think the males did.


And your dog is so laid back and cool because it has someone taking care of it. You want to meet some really spiritually unattractive mongrels? Go visit an indian reservation (I'm referring to the dogs) - unsurprisingly, there is not a Zen Master amongst the whole damn miserable bunch of them.

...and I bet they all secretly wish they had the brains to get the hell out of there.

[Ayame]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('BigTex', 'A')nyone else have any thoughts on how we got so smart?

[Ayame]

Just opened my trusty book 'How homo became sapiens' and found the theory: machiavellian theory of intelligence.

Says that cortex size is proportionate with group size and ability to deceive. So according to this theory which is championed by the book, you and I have big brains because the most successfull of our ancestors were sneaky conniving cheats.

[davep]

I heard somewhere that our ancestors lived in a time of climate change. Through desertification they were forced to move and to adapt to new surroundings. Our constant hunt for technical solutions and innovation may be a direct result of the survival of the most able to adapt to a changing world a long time ago.

It looks like those qualities may be useful again shortly, thanks to those same qualities ensuring we destroy what we depend on.

[Revi]

Are we really all that smart? I just saw Idiocracy. Mike Judge's newest film. Great commentary on today's society. I don't thing humans as a group are all that smart. Really, look around.

Not as funny as office space, but interesting.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idiocracy

[BigTex]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Ayame', 'J')ust opened my trusty book 'How homo became sapiens' and found the theory: machiavellian theory of intelligence.

Says that cortex size is proportionate with group size and ability to deceive. So according to this theory which is championed by the book, you and I have big brains because the most successfull of our ancestors were sneaky conniving cheats.

[peaker_2005]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Revi', ' ')I don't thing humans as a group are all that smart. Really, look around.

[dorlomin]

It is not only decieving other humans but anticipating what they are thinking that is important, together with the forming of alliances, judging when those alliances are beneficial, working out who is cheating and so on. Not to mention the huge advantage in hunting and gathering from memory and communicating information. There is no one reason but hundreds and hundreds more competing against big brains like the huge energy drain they would be, the massive investment in youth needed, the enormous dangers it created in child birth.

One of the key developments is now thought to be the whitening of the eyes. All other primates have dark eye balls, but humans sacrifice some field camoflage for the enormouse communication benefit of being able to see where others are looking. This would have been enormousely beneficial in anticipating what other humans were thinking, think of sitting in an office and just flicking a glance at something else to a co-worker, how much you can communicate......

It is also very very strongly worth pointing out that at various points in human evolution since we split from the rest of the primates the evolutionary pressures have been different. What may have been a dominant evolutionary driver for early Homo Ergaster may not have been for late humans of that speices.....


As an example the evolutionary force that was the dominant one in why we originaly adopdet bipedalism may have been very very different to why we retained and improved upon it. Say as an example from current theories, we may have become bipedal to see predators above the grass like meerkats, but retained and improved it we were able to carry fruits and other things across reasonable distances (I am talking very very early homonids with these examples).

[Revi]

This is a great thread. I think that how we got so smart is very relevant to how we deal with peak oil. We have figured out a way to live in a society, but it may not confer an advantage to the individual. I am above average in intelligence, but it hasn't conferred that much of an advantage in life.

[dorlomin]

It is far better to think of a human as an animal that can rationalise its instinctive actions than a sentient being that can reason its future actions.

[NEOPO]

"got" smart?

The ancient's were aware that the earth was round and that the earth revolved around the sun. Fast forward to medieval times and we see a populous that was generally convinced that the earth was flat and that it was also the center of the universe.

Although this was a mass manipulation it was still widely accepted and promoted by the lower classes as well as the elite.

Go figure, "got" brains?

[jboogy]

Dorlomin wrote;
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'I')t is far better to think of a human as an animal that can rationalise its instinctive actions than a sentient being that can reason its future actions.

[Revi]

In the middle ages we got dumber as a group, but we were the same humans. I think that we act as a group. Burning gasoline is what we do in this society. We all think it's normal. 5 generations have been doing it. This is what we do now. That doesn't mean that it's smart. 95% of people just do what other people next to them do. We are people who live in a culture, and that culture tells us what to do most of the time. Our culture is all about consumption.

In Gladwell's Tipping Point he talks about the 5% or less that are needed to change things. If we can get a few influential people in our society to start thinking green, the tipping point can come quickly. Otherwise we are stuck plodding along behind the rest of the world, spewing noxious greenhouse gasses.

[BigTex]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Revi', 'T')his is a great thread. I think that how we got so smart is very relevant to how we deal with peak oil. We have figured out a way to live in a society, but it may not confer an advantage to the individual. I am above average in intelligence, but it hasn't conferred that much of an advantage in life.

[BigTex]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Revi', 'I')n Gladwell's Tipping Point he talks about the 5% or less that are needed to change things. If we can get a few influential people in our society to start thinking green, the tipping point can come quickly. Otherwise we are stuck plodding along behind the rest of the world, spewing noxious greenhouse gasses.

[jboogy]

Bigtex wrote;
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'P')art of the problem is that much of what we imagine is progress is actually us digging a deeper grave for ourselves

[dorlomin]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('NEOPO', 'T')he ancient's were aware that the earth was round and that the earth revolved around the sun. Fast forward to medieval times and we see a populous that was generally convinced that the earth was flat and that it was also the center of the universe.

[dorlomin]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Revi', 'I')n the middle ages we got dumber as a group, but we were the same humans. .