I have long championed the view that intelligence is the mental ability to adapt: to take whatever situation you’re in, and turn it around to your advantage. I fell in love with this definition because it unified the many parts of intelligence (verbal ability, spatial ability, Theory of Mind) into a single system, and because it placed intelligence at its rightful place at the pinnacle of evolution: for all animals have adaptations, but humans dominate, because our adaptation is the ability to adapt itself.
But the question becomes, why did humans become so uniquely intelligent? The logical theory that I had always believed, and that Darwin himself believed, was that it was bipedalism. Once we started walking erect, we freed our hands up to make tools and this selected for intelligence, which allowed us to make more tools, which selected for even more intelligence.
Duh!
And yet the fossil record shows intelligence did not immediately follow bipedalism. Indeed our ape ancestors may have been bipedal for nearly four million without showing much of any evidence for increased brain size or intelligence.
Then only in about the last few million years did brain size suddenly TRIPLE. How do we explain this?
Scholar Rick Potts argues that during the last few million or so years there was rapid climate change in Africa. Massive droughts followed by massive wet periods followed by massive droughts. Lakes would come and go in the blink of a geological eye. One day it dawned on Potts that it wasn’t the particular environment that was selecting for intelligence, it was the constant CHANGE in environment.
And who thrives in a constantly changing environment? Those who can adapt.
Of course every organism adapts to its environment, that’s the point of evolution, however most organisms adapt by changing their genes over many generations. We also adapted by changing our genes, but we took it a step further: We were selected for genes that allowed us to change our BEHAVIOR, which allowed rapid instantaneous change, far outpacing slow genetic change.
Intelligence is just whatever mental abilities are needed to change your behavior as successfully as possible. Those who couldn’t learn quickly and think creatively during rapid change died out, leaving bigger brained primates as the survivors.
As an HBDer, I have long believed that adapting to newer colder climates caused whites and Northeast Asians to evolve especially high intelligence, but I had no idea that climate change in Africa was so key to the evolution of human intelligence itself.
This theory is discussed starting at the 40 minute mark in the below video:
“But the question becomes, why did humans become so uniquely intelligent?”
Im currently reading a book by a neuroscientist that will shed some light on this. Will report back when I’m done.
“The logical theory that I had always believed, and that Darwin himself believed, was that it was bipedalism. Once we started walking erect, we freed our hands up to make tools and this selected for intelligence, which allowed us to make more tools, which selected for even more intelligence.”
https://notpoliticallycorrect.me/2016/10/02/the-rise-of-bipedalism/
It was to find more food.
“Intelligence is just whatever mental abilities are needed to change your behavior as successfully as possible. Those who couldn’t learn quickly and think creatively during rapid change died out, leaving bigger brained primates as the survivors.”
Those with worse genes died out. Genes survive, the vehicle for the genes, the body, is a non-factor. The more intelligent could find better ways to survive. Dawkins’s selfish gene theory applies here. Bigger brained people could survive better because they had better foresight into the future. Of course the same applies for Africans but they weren’t selected for higher intelligence obviously.
I’ll go in depth later.
“But the question becomes, why did humans become so uniquely intelligent? The logical theory that I had always believed, and that Darwin himself believed, was that it was bipedalism.”
Darwin was wrong here.
“which allowed rapid instantaneous change, far outpacing slow genetic change.”
….. How does this make any sense?
“Of course every organism adapts to its environment, that’s the point of evolution, however most organisms adapt by changing their genes over many generations. We also adapted by changing our genes, but we took it a step further: We were selected for genes that allowed us to change our BEHAVIOR, which allowed rapid instantaneous change, far outpacing slow genetic change.”
Dear God pp. If behavior changes, genetics change!! Are you trolling with this statement or are you serious?
Dear God pp. If behavior changes, genetics change!! Are you trolling with this statement or are you serious?
So when you decide to wear warm clothes on a cold day and cool clothes on a warm day, you’ve changed your behavior to adapt to the weather, so have your genes changed? OF COURSE NOT!!! That’s the difference between humans and many other animals. We have genes that allow us to change our behavior everyday, every SECOND of the day. By contrast many animals have to wait thousands of years for their genes to change before they can change their behavior, because their behavior is HARD-WIRED. Our behavior is learned, and thus adaptable.
THAT’S WHAT MAKES US SO MUCH MORE INTELLIGENT THAN OTHER ANIMALS!!!!
Are we talking about the past or today….?
“THAT’S WHAT MAKES US SO MUCH MORE INTELLIGENT THAN OTHER ANIMALS!!!!”
NO!!!!
PP, I’m reading a book I just picked up the other day at BnN by a neuroscientist. It’s called “The Human Advantage: A New Understanding of How Our Brain Became Remarkable”. “The human brain was not singled out to be amazing in its own exclusive way, and it never stopped being a primitive brain.
Our brains are *not* special. Why are we so different than other animals? Cooking!
See, PP, what changed our brains was cooking. THIS is why we are ‘special’ (we aren’t). This is why we’re different. For a comparison, to sustain the brain volume we have right now on a chimp-like diet, we would have needed to hunt and forage for over 9 hours (Herculano-Houzel, 2016)!!!
http://www.pnas.org/content/109/45/18571.abstract
http://www.pnas.org/content/108/35/14555.full
The reduction in molar size in H. Erectus shows that they cooked and are why our brains started becoming bigger. Cooking food means we can consume more kcal. This is why our brains started growing bigger.
Ain’t that weird? Look at how bipedality occurred BEFORE we started cooking, which as I showed previously, bipedality preceded stone tools by a few million years.
More neurons in the cerebral cortex is the cause for our amazing brains. But we are NOT unique!! This kcal increase led to more neurons in our cerebral cortex which then allowed for reasoning, finding patterns, developing technology and passing it on through culture. Cooking is why we are so ‘unique’ in comparison to other animals. As shown in the graph above, the increase in brain size happened around the time of H. Erectus. They show smaller teeth at that period, which shows that the selection was already occurring.
More neurons in our cerebral cortex make us more intelligent than other animals.
Are we talking about the past or today….?
Both. We evolved genes that allow us to instantaneously change our behavior in a goal directed way. That makes humans uniquely adaptable.
Our brains are *not* special. Why are we so different than other animals? Cooking!
Uh, the fact that we were cooking in the first place suggests our brains were already super special.
Cooking began with h erectus. We can see he had smaller teeth which meant it was easier to break down bugger foods easier. As we became bipedal and started cooking, brain size then increased. Read the quotes and cites I cited from that book.
You should read it, I think you’d really enjoy it. Her Ted talk explains it well too.
Well I’m talking ancient evolution. Those who were weak died, the strong lived. Mutations passed on.
All cooking does is supply the necessary energy and nutrients to enforce a big brain it isn’t the selection pressure itself.
An interesting link for you racerealist.
http://www.evoanth.net/2016/04/21/cooking-didnt-help-big-brains-evolve/
What book is that race realist?
“The Human Advantage: A New Understanding of How Our Brain Became Remarkable”
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/27310486-the-human-advantage
It’s a great read. She argues that we are not special and that we evolved bigger brains due to cooking. Specifically meat. I haven’t finished it yet so I don’t really have anything to say about the fire comments in the article you linked me.
She says:
“The very day that our study was published showing that energy availability in a raw diet is so limiting that human evolution would not have been possible without a radical change in how humans got their calories such as the invention of cooking.” (http://www.pnas.org/content/109/45/18571.abstract) and she cites her study. She said she got an email talking about how her graphs were wrong because “the caloric requirements of the human brain are trivial.” She then said the reviewer said that the caloric requirement would have been covered with “five bananas, 13 oysters, 7 turtle eggs or 69 cashews”. (Herculano-Houzel, 2016: 196)
She has a footnote at the end of p 197 that says:
“No, I’m not saying that we gained more neurons thanks to cooking was the only change that occurred in human evolution; there is abundant evidence of small and large genetic changes of consequence to human anatomy and physiology. What I am arguing is that tripling the number of neurons in our brain and cramming in it the largest number of neurons found in the cerebral cortex of any species is the simplest, most basic and yet profound change the underlies our human advantage.”
I will assess the link you gave me next week when I’m done with this book. You should pick it up.
I keep telling PP to read other authors (I wonder what kinds of books PP reads).
He should also read A Troublesome Inheritance. It is OUTSTANDING.
Here’s her Ted Talk:
Well the biggest argument against you is that fire doesn’t appear until a million years after homo erectus.
“A new review throws a bit more fuel onto this skeptical fire. As well as confirming there’s no real correlation between archaeological evidence of fire and brain size increases; they create a model of how primates would adapt to increasing energy costs. It turns out the preferred strategy would be to more intensively exploit their territory to gain extra food, rather than modifying their normal food. I’m not so sure if this model is applicable to humans. After all, at a certain point there just isn’t enough food in a territory to sustain you. If humans reached that point we would have had to switch to something like cooking.
But they thought of my criticism and present a few additional lines of data too. The most significant being a little experiment they ran, feeding two groups of mice raw and cooked meat respectively. The cooked population (or, the group that received cooked food, not the mice that were cooked) didn’t experience any additional weight gain; so they clearly weren’t getting any extra energy from them. However, cooking could have been used to cook plants, which is something they should have tested.”
I think this is a good point, some time during our evolutionary history there was no extra food so to compensate we started cooking and even though the researchers think they have covered this criticism with their mice experiments they fail to realize that cooking food doesn’t necessarily give more energy(adding more weight) it just makes consuming food less energetically expensive. It allowed the weakening of our jaws and henceforth the broadening of our craniums. but as I said it isn’t the actual driver of encephalization just the fuel.
Found a good quote, she even cites Liberman, the author of The Story of the Human Body, the other book I’m reading as well:
“The remaining way to work around an energetic constraint to the number of neurons in the brain involves dietary changes that would allow for more calories to be obtained in the same amount of time, or even less. Some first changes in that direction probably took place 4 million years ago when our australopithecine ancestors stood upright and became habitual bipeds. As Daniel Lieberman explores in detail in The Story of the Human Body, bipedality potentially increases the amount of calories that can be amassed in a day by extending the range of food picking, for it is much easier and costs four times fewer kilocalories to walk on two feet, as humans do, than on all fours, as modern great apes do and the ancestor from which australopithecines originated must have done. Roaming away from home to find food, is the definition of a food gatherer, as opposed to a food picker, which is what great apes remain to this day. Bipedality made food gatherers of our ancestors.” (Herculano-Houzel, 2016: 189)
Citations:
“The two earliest sites are in Kenya: FxJj20 at East Turkana, and site GnJi 1/6E in the Chemoigut Formation at Chesowanja near Lake Baringo (figure 3). These are both open sites. According to the original publications, FxJj20 preserves burned sediments and some heat-altered stone tools [98,99]. The site remains a strong candidate for early fire use and is currently under complete reinvestigation (S. Hlubik 2015, personal communication). Chesowanja preserves somewhat similar information, but the burnt material at the centre of the site consists not of a burnt patch, but of a few large clasts of baked clay [100,101]. The possibility that they could come from an adjacent (but lost) natural burning feature is difficult to exclude on present evidence, although the clasts are directly associated with numerous stone tools and faunal remains. A site at Gadeb in Ethiopia is also of similar age [102].”
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4874402/
She also says:
“A radical, and sudden, increase in brain size as seen in the evolution of Homo from then on must have required an equally radical and sudden change in the caloric intake. One such way to achieve such a change–to obtain many more kilocalories in the same time–is well known to us, and there is good and still-growing evidence in the fossil record that it was indeed used by our ancestors as early as 1 or even 1.5 million years ago, just at the same time the brain size of humans started to increase rapidly, as illustrated in figure 11.2. It is the transformation of foodstuffs–predigestion outside the body, really, before food reaches the mouth–that goes by the name of “cooking.” (pg 191)
She also says that once we were freed from the energetic constraint imposed by the raw food diet of all other animals, brain size increased rapidly–without humans ever stopping to be primates in the neuronal composition of our brains.” (pg 192)
I shouldn’t need to explain why cooking leads to an increase in kcal.
Again homo erectus proceeds fire but I’m sure cooking accelerated brain growth later on in our evolutionary tree. Here was a good discussion about it but honestly the proponent suffers from not realizing that cooking isn’t a selection pressure.
http://www.sciforums.com/threads/encephalization-of-early-hominids.145308/
Those citations show when we think fire arose. She does say that grinding of plants made them easier to digest and extract more nutrients. The erectus teeth started getting smaller around that time. As they got smaller our brains got bigger. Smaller teeth means we can break down food better to extract the nutrients.
Cooking isn’t a selection pressure but I’m almost positive that if you take 2 genetically similar groups and let one cook and the other gather, the differences in brain size would be huge.
“I’m almost positive that if you take 2 genetically similar groups and let one cook and the other gather, the differences in brain size would be huge.”
over a few generations and if the selection pressures were the same.****
Goes without saying. But yea the group who cooked would have a considerable advantage in brain size compared to the one who didn’t.
All evolution is driven by a demand for survival, so saying “to find more food” makes me fucking facepalm. Social interaction is the tandem driver with climate variability taking position as secondary mechanism to sociability. Social isolation is worse than cigarettes. Apes that socialize more are better problem solvers, chimps have imagination and culture and it has been shown that hunter gatherers with higher social status produced more babies.
I get that. But there is sufficient evidence to show that what made us bipedal was the climate change that occurred right as humans and chimps split. Since it’s impossible to know exactly what selected for bipedalism, we have to make inferences. But most evidence supports the idea that regularly standing upright and walking made it easier for early humans to find food more effectively due to the scarcity of food due to the climate shift that was occurring at the time that humans and chimps diverged (Lieberman, 2013: 40).
This was one causal factor in bipedalism.
Saying that ‘we became bipedal for tool-making’ makes no sense. Stone tools, millions of years after bipedalism, etc.
Bipedalism didn’t occur to get us on our feet to free our hands. Rather, it occurred so we could forage more efficiently and expend less energy as bipedal walking expends 75 percent more energy than knuckle walking (http://www.pnas.org/content/104/30/12265.abstract) (as the LCA is thought to have walked).
PP it’d be much appreciated if you stopped saying things that have been rebutted,
PP it’d be much appreciated if you stopped saying things that have been rebutted,
LOL! What specifically did I say that’s been rebutted? Provide the exact quote.
“First, as described in a misconception below (link to “Natural selection produces organisms perfectly suited to their environments”), natural selection does not produce organisms perfectly suited to their environments. It often allows the survival of individuals with a range of traits — individuals that are “good enough” to survive. Hence, evolutionary change is not always necessary for species to persist. Many taxa (like some mosses, fungi, sharks, opossums, and crayfish) have changed little physically over great expanses of time. Second, there are other mechanisms of evolution that don’t cause adaptive change. Mutation, migration, and genetic drift may cause populations to evolve in ways that are actually harmful overall or make them less suitable for their environments. For example, the Afrikaner population of South Africa has an unusually high frequency of the gene responsible for Huntington’s disease because the gene version drifted to high frequency as the population grew from a small starting population. Finally, the whole idea of “progress” doesn’t make sense when it comes to evolution. Climates change, rivers shift course, new competitors invade — and an organism with traits that are beneficial in one situation may be poorly equipped for survival when the environment changes. And even if we focus on a single environment and habitat, the idea of how to measure “progress” is skewed by the perspective of the observer.”
From Berkeley.
First, as described in a misconception below (link to “Natural selection produces organisms perfectly suited to their environments”), natural selection does not produce organisms perfectly suited to their environments.
But it does produce organisms that are better suited to their environment over time.
It often allows the survival of individuals with a range of traits — individuals that are “good enough” to survive. Hence, evolutionary change is not always necessary for species to persist.
If evolutionary change is not always necessary for species to persist, then some species will persist without evolving as much as others. This proves my point about some populations being more evolved than others.
Many taxa (like some mosses, fungi, sharks, opossums, and crayfish) have changed little physically over great expanses of time.
And by definition, these are less evolved than life forms that have changed more. More evolved = more changed.
Second, there are other mechanisms of evolution that don’t cause adaptive change. Mutation, migration, and genetic drift may cause populations to evolve in ways that are actually harmful overall or make them less suitable for their environments.
Correct, but over billions of years of trial and error, good changes are favored over bad changes.
Finally, the whole idea of “progress” doesn’t make sense when it comes to evolution. Climates change, rivers shift course, new competitors invade — and an organism with traits that are beneficial in one situation may be poorly equipped for survival when the environment changes.
But some adaptations are useful in many environments, such as the ability to adapt itself.
The whole wading hypothesis was interesting as a causation for bipedalism especially seeing as how water would be a good retreat from predation risk that may be completely wrong though. But honestly I l think it was just more costly energy wise to walk on all fours than 2.
“But honestly I l think it was just more costly energy wise to walk on all fours than 2.”
Exactly. Selection occurred due to it being less metabolically demanding. It really is that simple. So along with the climate change during the human/chimp divergence, this selected for bipedalism.
Well the fact that giant lakes have appeared and disappeared multiple times sometimes within 100 year time frame may lead more credence to the wading hypothesis. Shallow water mussels and fish would have provided more nutrients for brain growth.
The wading hypothesis makes tons of sense. It really does. But it’s not why we became bipedal. I’m pretty convinced that climate change drove these changes in humans.
And damn if your last sentence doesn’t make a ton of sense.
But it’s the same thing friend. Believe it or not but I have already watched the video pumpkin showed. The archaeological evidence showed that lakes were coming and going over millions of years and so it’s very plausible that one sec hominids would be using bipedlism for terrestrial/arboreal locomotion and then switching back to littoral. This would have supplied an enormous pressure for bipedalism because it is useful in all of those climates when food is relatively scarce. Bipedalism started in the trees then to land and water.
Hmmm
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12617279
I’ll look into this more tomorrow but what you said does make a ton of sense..
The climate change was global warming. Since the earth was warming then lakes filled up. Along with the drive for food we had to stand on two legs looking for edible fruit and things of that nature. Hunger drove us into the water, and in shallow water one would need to be bipedal.
Daaaaamn.
Yes I think it would be important to look into this harmonic new theory. I am not an aquatic ape proponent because I do not believe it to be the “explain all” theory it tries to be but I will concede that some features may be best explained by adaptations for a littoral environment. Predatory risk and starvation may have driven early primates who had already adapted primitive forms of bipedal locomotion for tree movements(like orangutans) to search shallow rivers and lakes and when it became dry these more refined locomotion strategies helped in open grassland like areas.
I’m definitely going to look into it this weekend. It makes a ton of sense. Great thought Melo!
However, the main point of Bipedalism was to find more sources of food. That’s the driver. Wading in the water was just something that needed to be done in order to get the food.
Here are some links for you, and again all evolution comes down to survival(food) and reproduction my friend, So i feel it’s oversimplified and not a complete answer to the issue.
These will help you quite a bit, studies on the wading hypothesis:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2819487/
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ajpa.21122/abstract;jsessionid=B2D1B982711CA38698D7BBB909315163.f03t03
That last one looks great. I’m going to see if the pdf is in the database I have access to. This has me thinking though.
I’m only averse to the aquatic ape theory.
Im not to fond of it either but it does raise interesting inquiry
“But it does produce organisms that are better suited to their environment over time.”
Yes. But not always. Traits the are selected for positively mat effect another negatively which then decreases fitness.
“If evolutionary change is not always necessary for species to persist, then some species will persist without evolving as much as others. This proves my point about some populations being more evolved than others.”
It isn’t always needed for a species to persist. This is why the notion of progressive evolution makes no sense.
You’re making the leap that because some things are ‘less evolved’ then that applies to humans? No. Selection pressures still occurred. Refer back to last week when I showed the Nicholas Wade quote about the number of regions that were under selection, over 130 for Asians, whites and blacks. But wait! East Asians and whites have about 8 more regions selected for. More evolved confirmed!!! Not.
“Correct, but over billions of years of trial and error, good changes are favored over bad changes.”
Right. But as I said, negative changes may incur positive changes and vice versa. One thing selected for that is positive may then make another trait negative.
“But some adaptations are useful in many environments, such as the ability to adapt itself.”
Let’s say Eurasians as we know them today existed 100 kya. Would they be able to survive better because they’re “more evolved”? No!! Because they weren’t selected for that environment.
It’s that simple. This is why the notion of more evolved is retarded. Evolution selects for advantageous alleles for that environment. End of story.
You’re making the leap that because some things are ‘less evolved’ then that applies to humans? No. Selection pressures still occurred. Refer back to last week when I showed the Nicholas Wade quote about the number of regions that were under selection, over 130 for Asians, whites and blacks. But wait! East Asians and whites have about 8 more regions selected for. More evolved confirmed!!! Not.
I’m not saying evolution has stopped for any groups of humans, I’m just saying it’s been greater for some human populations than others. This is just based on common sense. Those populations who split off the evolutionary tree early, and remained in Africa and other tropical regions, are morphologically more similar to humans who lived 100,000 years ago, and score lower on IQ tests. That seems like a good prima facie case for saying they’re less evolved. I’m surprised that you, as a hardcore HBDer, would deny the most obvious pro-HBD argument.
Let’s say Eurasians as we know them today existed 100 kya. Would they be able to survive better because they’re “more evolved”?
Yes. Modern humans today are genetically more intelligent than modern humans 100 kya, and this would give us a huge competitive advantage over early stone age people, even if we were stripped of modern culture. The advantage would be even greater if you went back 600 kya. This shows evolution is progressive. The further we go back in time, the less adaptable our ancestors. Generally speaking of course. There are exceptions.
“I’m just saying it’s been greater for some human populations than others”
How do you objectively quantify this? Is it falsifiable? Can you think of a falsifiable theory to prove this?
I’ve seen no reputable people say this is true. In fact, the people I respect most, Nicholas Wade, Charles Murray, Greg Cochran and Razib Khan all font believe this. Hmmm….
“Those populations who split off the evolutionary tree early, and remained in Africa and other tropical regions, are morphologically more similar to humans who lived 100,000 years ago, and score lower on IQ tests.”
Similar doesn’t mean the same. They score lower on iq tests due to environment.
“I’m surprised that you, as a hardcore HBDer, would deny the most obvious pro-HBD argument.”
I am rational. I follow the data. Sure I have my own theories, but the hard data says that this notion isn’t true.
“Yes. Modern humans today are genetically more intelligent than modern humans 100 kya, and this would give us a huge competitive advantage over early stone age people, even if we were stripped of modern culture.”
And? Does that mean “more evolved”? No. Sure we had an advantage over other early hominids. But that doesn’t mean more evolved. We were more fit. You seem to be conflating these terms.
“This shows evolution is progressive”
No it doesn’t.
” The further we go back in time, the less adaptable our ancestors.”
They survived. They died out. They were less fit than the organisms who didn’t die out. It’s that simple.
How do you objectively quantify this? Is it falsifiable? Can you think of a falsifiable theory to prove this?
It’s very falsifiable. You take a look at skeletons from over 100,000 years ago and you feed their measurements into a computer. The computer will tell you which modern race the skulls are most similar to, and which they’re least similar to. The former are least evolved and the latter are most evolved.
I’ve seen no reputable people say this is true. In fact, the people I respect most, Nicholas Wade, Charles Murray, Greg Cochran and Razib Khan all font believe this. Hmmm….
Well people associate the idea of more evolved with progress (they’re two different concepts, though I defend both) and they associate progress with an “end goal” which implies a higher power directing evolution. Since a lot of these people are atheists (like me) they understandably don’t believe evolution is progressing towards a goal. However you can have progress without having a goal. Progress is just the end result of blind trial and error over billions of years.
The late great J.P. Rushton believed in evolutionary progress. He also cited E.O. Wilson, Dale Russell and Princeton emeritus biology professor John Bonner and even Darwin himself believing in it.
Even long before evolution was discovered, Aristotle ranked life into a single chain of progress, and this was described as one of the most important ideas of Western thought.
I really think you need to step out of your mental box and look at this from a different perspective.
Similar doesn’t mean the same. They score lower on iq tests due to environment.
But if you remain similar to your ancestral form, you are less evolved than people who have moved far beyond their ancestral form
And? Does that mean “more evolved”? No. Sure we had an advantage over other early hominids. But that doesn’t mean more evolved. We were more fit. You seem to be conflating these terms.
We’re talking about two different things (1) are some organisms more evolved than others? (2) are more evolved organisms superior? Your own source from Berkley admitted that some animals have changed little in millions of years, so even they admit some animals are less evolved, so that debate is over. As to whether more evolved organisms are superior; I think we now agree that modern humans could easily out-adapt our ancestors.
“It’s very falsifiable. You take a look at skeletons from over 100,000 years ago and you feed their measurements into a computer. The computer will tell you which modern race the skulls are most similar to, and which they’re least similar to. The former are least evolved and the latter are most evolved.”
PP what it seems like you’re not understanding is that the environment was different back then. Of COURSE there would be a difference, but it does not mean ‘more evolved’.
“Well people associate the idea of more evolved with progress (they’re two different concepts, though I defend both) and they associate progress with an “end goal” which implies a higher power directing evolution. Since a lot of these people are atheists (like me) they understandably don’t believe evolution is progressing towards a goal. However you can have progress without having a goal. Progress is just the end result of blind trial and error over billions of years.”
I deride both. They’re stupid terms when it comes to evolutionary biology. The term ‘progress’ in and of itself assumes there is an endgame involved. There isn’t. Evolution will just keep continuing until either all organisms die out or the Sun explodes.
“The late great J.P. Rushton believed in evolutionary progress. He also cited E.O. Wilson, Dale Russell and Princeton emeritus biology professor John Bonner and even Darwin himself believing in it.”
Rushton is not the be-all end-all. I respect the hell out of Rushton and Wilson, but they’re clearly wrong on this. PP what kind of books do you read? Ever read anything by Dawkins? Selfish Gene? God Delusion? The Extended Phenotype? It seems that your misconceptions when it comes to evolution come from not reading any evolutionary biologists and continuously quoting Rushton.
Point me to where and what Rushton cites of Wilson saying that evolution is progressive; I’d love to see it.
http://www.tc.umn.edu/~lauren/edu_technology/Evolution%20Site/evo_misconcep.htm#anchor599143
When will you get it??
“But if you remain similar to your ancestral form, you are less evolved than people who have moved far beyond their ancestral form”
OK. So let’s take Man in Africa 100 kya and compare him to Man from Africa today. You’re telling me there will be hardly any changes in both pheno and genotype? That’s ridiculous. The fact that all of the 5 races are relatively new (within the last 10 k years) shows that there was considerable change in the genetics of Africans.
“We’re talking about two different things (1) are some organisms more evolved than others? (2) are more evolved organisms superior? Your own source from Berkley admitted that some animals have changed little in millions of years, so even they admit some animals are less evolved, so that debate is over. As to whether more evolved organisms are superior; I think we now agree that modern humans could easily out-adapt our ancestors.”
You realize that evolution isn’t only about Natural Selection, right?
See, simple organisms like mosses and fungi are ‘good enough’ to reproduce. It is true that they have changed little over time. THAT shows that evolution is NOT progressive.
And:
http://www.evolution.berkeley.edu/evosite/misconceps/IBladder.shtml
Debate over.
See, PP. when you play word games you can make yourself appear to be right. “Out-adapt” or we were just more fit and could better handle selection pressures??
PP, the fittest live, not the strongest. And with the fittest. come the Genes. There are literally tons of books out there to read on evolution. Please don’t continue to be stuck on Rushton as if he’s the be-all end-all in regards to human evolution.
PP what it seems like you’re not understanding is that the environment was different back then. Of COURSE there would be a difference, but it does not mean ‘more evolved’.
No that’s not the point. If two populations are both descended from a common ancestor, and population A remains more similar to that common ancestor than population B, then population A is less evolved, because it’s done less evolving from the common ancestor. Why can’t you grasp this concept, RR?
I deride both. They’re stupid terms when it comes to evolutionary biology. The term ‘progress’ in and of itself assumes there is an endgame involved. There isn’t. Evolution will just keep continuing until either all organisms die out or the Sun explodes.
Actually that’s not true. Humans are close to reaching the point where we no longer evolving in the conventional sense. Any further genetic change will be self-directed, via genetic engineering, and not the product of natural selection and genetic drift. And progress needn’t imply an end point, it only implies more recent forms will on average be more adaptable than life from millions of years ago.
Rushton is not the be-all end-all. I respect the hell out of Rushton and Wilson, but they’re clearly wrong on this.
No, you’re clearly wrong on this.
PP what kind of books do you read? Ever read anything by Dawkins? Selfish Gene? God Delusion? The Extended Phenotype? It seems that your misconceptions when it comes to evolution come from not reading any evolutionary biologists and continuously quoting Rushton.
I don’t have any misconceptions when it comes to evolution RR. It’s you who is confused. And I’ve seen Dawkins talk about evolutionary progress. He shows some understanding of the concept, but it’s not complete.
Point me to where and what Rushton cites of Wilson saying that evolution is progressive; I’d love to see it.
On page 293 of the third edition of his book Race, Evolution, and Behavior, Rushton cites Wilson describing evolution progressing through four major stages:
(1) the emergence of life itself in the form of primitive prokaryotes with no nucleus
(2) the emergence of eukaryotes with nucleus and mitochondria
(3) the evolution of large multicellular organisms that have complex organs like eyes and brains
(4) the emergence of the human mind
Metaphorically speaking, Darwin’s theory of evolution has proceeded like a branching tree of ancestral descendent relationships. If we were to draw a tree of life depicting these relationships, all the primates, including humans, would occupy an arbitrary position of the tree.
WRONG! Some primates would occupy branches that split off from the main line later than others, showing a clear progression to anyone with the intelligence to see the pattern.
OK. So let’s take Man in Africa 100 kya and compare him to Man from Africa today. You’re telling me there will be hardly any changes in both pheno and genotype? That’s ridiculous. The fact that all of the 5 races are relatively new (within the last 10 k years) shows that there was considerable change in the genetics of Africans.
You have no idea what you’re talking about. Humans who left Africa 60,000 years ago looked like Andaman islanders who clearly look like modern Africans today. Further, facial reconstructions of the African Eve from 125,000 years ago also looks like modern Africans. The notion that modern looking Africans are only 10,000 years old is INSANE. Did they look EXACTLY like Africans today? No. Were they close enough that no one would think twice if they walked down the street in modern clothing? Yes.
See, simple organisms like mosses and fungi are ‘good enough’ to reproduce. It is true that they have changed little over time. THAT shows that evolution is NOT progressive.
It shows that there are lineages that become very adaptable despite not being very evolved, and some that don’t need to be adaptable because they lucked into a fixed ecological niche. But generally speaking, across all lineages, more recent forms of life are more adaptable than more ancient forms of life.
http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2013/04/not-as-evolved-as-we-think/
http://www.csicop.org/si/show/getting_the_monkey_off_darwins_back
PP, you’re basically saying that guys hundreds (and thousands) of years ago thought something so it must be true. How does that make any sense? Aristotle didn’t have any of the modern tools and the like that we have. He believed it was progressive…. and? He was alive 2kya. What he thought about evolution is meaningless. And Darwin was not right about everything that he wrote about.
“There is no ‘progress’ in evolution. No living thing is trying to get anywhere,” Zuk said. “And humans are not at the pinnacle of the evolutionary ladder.”
WRONG! Humans are the highest branch within the homo evolutionary tree which is the highest branch within the primate evolutionary tree which is perhaps the highest branch of the mammal evolutionary tree, which is perhaps the highest branch within the animal evolutionary tree etc. This can be seen in phylogenetic diagrams.
Evolution, she said, is no engineer, building the perfect organism from scratch every time the environment changes. Rather, evolution is the ultimate tinkerer, always having to make do with the parts on hand. Its creations tend to be imperfect, just fit enough to survive.
And yet evolution has created the human brain, the most complex known object in the universe.
A study of the DNA of Darwin’s finches on the Galapagos Islands (Petren et al. 1999) provides a good example of why the idea of progress makes no sense in evolution. The study’s findings suggest that the first finches to arrive on the islands were the Warbler finches (Certhidea olivacea), whose pointy beaks made them good insect eaters. A number of other finches evolved later from the Warbler finches. One of these is the Geospiza ground finch, whose broad beak is good for crushing seeds, and another is the Camarhynchus tree finch with its blunt beak which is well adapted for tearing vegetation.
The idea of progress makes sense when you look at the grand sweep of evolution across BILLIONS OF YEARS. We’ve gone from simple, restricted life forms that could only survive in the ocean, to complex adaptable GOd-like life-forms like humans, that can live in virtually any environment, and travel to space.
..
Even though biologists reject the Great Chain of Being or any similar ladder-of-progress explanation of evolution, the idea still persists in popular culture. A more accurate analogy would be that of a bush that branches in many directions. If we think of evolution over time in this way, we’re less likely to be confused by notions of progress because the branches of a bush can grow in various directions in three dimensions, and new branches can sprout off of older branches without implying that those farther from the trunk are better or more advanced than those closer to the trunk. A more recent branch that has split off from an earlier branch-like a species that has evolved from an ancestral species-does not indicate greater progress or advancement. Rather, it is simply a new and different growth on the bush, or more specifically, a new species that is sufficiently adapted to its environment to survive.
This is the same tired nonsense. In evolution, almost every time one branch splits into two, it means evolutionary growth has occurred. So if you’re the first branch, and you don’t do anymore branching, you’re less evolved, and typically less complex and versatile than branches that split off after much branching occurred.
When it comes to understanding evolution, there are four kinds of people:
Level 1: People who don’t believe in evolution
Level 2: People who think evolution is progressive because they don’t understand the random nature of natural selection (most secular non-scientists fit in this category)
Level 3: People who think evolution is NOT progressive because they understand natural selection is random and geared to specific environments(most scientists and science writers and bloggers fit in this category)
Level 4: People who realize that even random processes will eventually show progress through billions of years of trial and error, and no environment is 100% specific (many of the greatest minds in history reached this stage: E.O. Wilson, Darwin, Rushton)
You’re stuck on Level 3, RR, and so are all the people you quote. I hope your mind can one day make the leap to Level 4.
Here is my response:
https://notpoliticallycorrect.me/2016/10/17/evolution-is-not-progressive/
RaceRealist, you’re far too stupid to be discussing evolution. Stick to health and nutrition.
Define ad hominem — (of an argument or reaction) directed against a person rather than the position they are maintaining.
Good job.
Why can’t you grasp this concept, RR?
May be an IQ of 108 is not enough.
I checked my transcript and it’s higher than that.
Nice jab at me though! I see that PP is the only one able to discuss this with me other than throw retarded attacks.
I checked my transcript and it’s higher than that.
Of course, now it’s higher.
Nice jab at me though! I see that PP is the only one able to discuss this with me other than throw retarded attacks.
Calm down RR, I was just answering PP’s question. No need to be agressive & insulting 🙂
What do I have to prove to people here? My IQ is meaningless here. What matters are my arguments and what I type. Ad hominems, plz go.
PP, I am not so sure about the ice age theory because humanity, despite living in all sorts of climates, seem much more alike than different. For example, every race can use technology well, can read, understands money/business, can all speak English.
I think the question shouldn’t be why IQ are so different but why is IQ so similar between races despite living in a variety of environments.
In this respect, I think monogamy is the reason why humanity is so intelligent because it favored keeping kids alive. It allowed for a culture to develop around marriage, having kids, and transferring knowledge.
“seem much more alike than different. For example, every race can use technology well, can read, understands money/business, can all speak English.”
And?
“but why is IQ so similar between races despite living in a variety of environments.”
This makes no sense. You can say ‘why don’t we study similarities too!!’ how is IQ 70 compared to IQ 100 ‘similar’?
What I’m trying to ask is environment really that influential in IQ compared to say malaria resistance or Vitamin D production? A white guy wouldn’t make it through the Amazon jungle alive while a pre-1500 Amerindian couldn’t live in Europe because of smallpox but both groups can grasp reading, religion, gold, trading, and slavery.
They’re all based on environment. Your example is great case for disproving PP’s ‘more evolved’ phrase
Don’t get so caught up in the preponderance of the amazing variances we see that you forget the similarities. 70 -100 is barely a difference especially since the dumbest human is still far more intellligent than any other animal on the planet
Higher IQ individuals “do better” in complex modern societies. (Probably all societies)
Groups with a higher mean IQ “do better” in complex modern societies.
I heard somewhere that IQ gives increasing returns on intelligence so that means someone with an IQ of 100 is more RELATIVELY dumb compared to a person with an IQ of 130 than someone with an IQ of 70 is to one with 100. Is this true? So basically the 30 point differential between 70-100 is less severe in regards to intellectual differences than 100-130 would be. Hope that wasn’t too confusing…
I forget the source, but there are huge diminishing returns in IQ after IQ 140.
So many uncertainties. I guess I have to search a bit.
If ability to adapt = intelligence, then the cockroach is the most intelligent species. They’ve been here long before us and will be here long after us and can even survive nuclear war.
Humans adapt because they are smart. There are not smart because they adapt. Cause and effect can’t be the same.
Are there studies associating geniuses with things like: change in routines?
I heard Einstein wore the same suit. Adaptability doesn’t seem to be the genius’s strong-suit :p
http://www.forbes.com/sites/jacquelynsmith/2012/10/05/steve-jobs-always-dressed-exactly-the-same-heres-who-else-does/
http://www.cnn.com/2015/10/09/world/gallery/decision-fatigue-same-clothes/index.html
http://elitedaily.com/money/science-simplicity-successful-people-wear-thing-every-day/849141/
Once you find the optimal solution, you don’t want to change.
Exactly, seems, certain types of (high levels of ) creativity are negatively correlated with adaptation because on avg creative thinkers are always thinking in the future, in ”if”… and practicality generally is ”to think in the present, right now” (”no there” such thing future, only the present)
the first ”adaptation” is conformity, and a disproportional percentage of creative types are nonconformist.
if. imorally speaking, as PP want to say, intelligence is the ability to adapt, so high functioning psychopaths are the smartest of all. They are**
No, maybe, they are one of the smartest types, but the only one.
Also because creativity tend to correlate with mental disorders similar fitness disadvantages found among mental disordered individuals will be found among highly creative people, on avg.
Intelligence is in their core concept = perceptiveness, those who perceive more facts, novel or not, are smarter than those who don’t perceive or confuse factoids with facts.
Intelligence while action is the minimally correct judgments we can do.
Both are complementary.
who perceive more tend to do higher % of correct judgments than those who perceive less.
Human adaptability is overrated, theorically speaking seems correct to say ”humans are more adaptable than other non-human animals”, but based on absolute/ideal criteria, humans, on avg, are not so more adaptably smarter (at individual levels) than other animals.
If ability to adapt = intelligence, then the cockroach is the most intelligent species. They’ve been here long before us and will be here long after us and can even survive nuclear war.
When I say intelligence is the ability to adapt, I mean behavioral adaptability. Other animals can adapt physically in ways we can’t like cuttlefish which can rapidly change their skin color to match their environment. But even so, some scientists think humans are the most adaptable species period:
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/humans-may-be-most-adaptive-species/
As for cockroaches surviving longer than us, keep in mind that they survive as thousands of different species while we survive as one, so it might not be an apples to apples comparison.
It’s still a good example and throws a wrench in your theory.
“And who thrives in a constantly changing environment? Those who can adapt.”
…..this goes without saying, PP. Unicellular organisms adapt to changing environments, with your logic they’re intelligent as well.
This is why your ‘intelligence is the ability to adapt’ theory is bunk.
when people say ”adapt” i thought they are saying ”selective pressures”…
at collective level, micro organisms die at higher rates and those who are more adapted to the new environment ”ADAPT”…
at individual levels, it’s not exactly a advantage…
humans are the only ones who can really adapt at individual levels without higher rates of individuals dying in changing environment, or not,
and because the higher human tolerance to the mutations, i thought this capacity to adapt, at individual levels, in other environments, may higher ”among us”.
other thing
”humans” really adapted to the new environment without higher rates of death OR they were taking the adapted genes of host human populations like neanderthals*
i thought diversity or proximity with people with different genetic background seems not so bad at all because none of us want to be killed by new diseases as happened with very geographically isolated groups, amerids for example.
Unicellular organisms adapt to changing environments, with your logic they’re intelligent as well.
This is why your ‘intelligence is the ability to adapt’ theory is bunk.
All life forms can adapt, that’s the point of evolution. But what makes intelligence an especially adaptive adaptation is that it’s an ability to adapt itself. That is, as Santoculto implied, intelligence allows us to adapt at the individual level, not at the evolutionary level. In other words, intelligence, especially collective intelligence (culture) allows us to simulate millions of years of evolutionary change within a single generation. Instead of evolving fur, we build fur coats. Instead of evolving claws, we build knives, instead of evolving into cheetahs, we build fast cars, instead of evolving into fish, we build boats, instead of evolving into birds, we build airplanes etc. And now intelligence has even allowed us to engineer our genes so we can literally evolve into anything. Intelligence is the pinnacle of evolutionary progress because it’s the one adaptation that allows us to control evolution itself, making humans essentially Gods.
Of course intelligence is not the only ability that allows organisms to adapt at the individual level. Cuddle fish for example adapt the color of their skin immediately to hide from predators. But because intelligence allows us to adapt behavior, it’s quantum leaps more powerful.
Good points.
Except, as I keep saying, if selection against IQ occurred, we would lose intelligence.Human intelligence arose through multiple factors. If something occurred to reduce brain size and with it intelligence, this ability would diminish. That’s what I’m trying to get through to you; that the environment over time matters and organisms will evolve based on the environment. So that if the environment changes or is ever-changing, organisms will evolve so that they can increase their fitness in that environment. And when migration occurs, that population will become different due to a different environment.
When you break down evolution simply, especially to a five-year-old, you can say that it’s the physical or mental ability to adapt; but evolution is way more complex than that. As I showed yesterday, greater “complexity” (whatever that is) occurs when natural selection is weak or nonexistent.
https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn13617-evolution-myths-natural-selection-leads-to-ever-greater-complexity/
So NS isn’t the only driver, obviously, in phenotypic and genotypic differences between species and is not the only way to increase fitness for a group. Random genetic mutation plays a huge factor when NS is weak or nonexistent.
The “ability to adapt” is evolution itself, as I’ve just shown; not intelligence. Whether it is mutations not through NS or mutation or genetic drift, changes occur to species when exposed to a different environment for a certain amount of time.
Ability to adapt or survival ability is the result of intelligence, not the definition of intelligence.
I think intelligence, in physical terms, is complexity. In practical terms, intelligence is the ability to see patterns in order to solve problems.
Ability to adapt or survival ability is the result of intelligence, not the definition of intelligence.
No purely verbal definition of intelligence is going to please everyone, but behavioral adaptability is one of the most popular definitions of intelligence because it’s what distinguishes humans from other animals and because if it weren’t highly adaptive, it wouldn’t have been so favoured by evolution.
Also in common parlance, when someone says “that was a stupid thing to do” they are always describing a maladaptive behavior that turned the situation to one’s disadvantage. When they say “that was a smart thing to do”, they’re always describing adaptive behavior with a low cost/benefit ratio.
The line between what intelligence is and what intelligence does is blurry. To quote Forest Gump “stupid is as stupid does”.
I think intelligence, in physical terms, is complexity. In practical terms, intelligence is the ability to see patterns in order to solve problems.
Well problem solving is synonymous with adapting. If you’ve adapted a situation to your advantage, you’ve solved the problem you were facing. I think intelligence can be defined as the ENTIRE COGNITIVE SYSTEM that allows us to adapt or problem solve, not pattern recognition only.
Pattern recognition is basically problem solving. To be able to solve a problem you need to recognize patterns.
Intelligence is defined as the ability to acquire and apply new knowledge. Intelligence is survival. To survive is intelligent.
“complexity”
See Daniel McShea 1991. There’s no evidence for this view point.
McShea D (1991). “Complexity and evolution: What everybody knows”. Biology and Philosophy. 6 (3): 303–324.
http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2FBF00132234
There is a pdf of this paper somewhere.
I do not need a lab tests to tell me that. For me, daily life and my observations are a laboratory where I can make “scientific” conclusions.
Besides, the paper is about no evidence of complexity increasing in evolution. It does not talk about intelligence. Evolution does not necessarily result in intelligent creatures. However the universe complexity increases from the time of Big Bang, there is a point the complexity of universe maximizes and then goes back to less complex, according to some scientific ideas I used to read in the past.
Brain is the most complex matter. Therefore intelligence is complexity. To put it simply.
A stone is not that complex, no one calls a stone smart.
An insect is considered to be stupid, with a tiny brain.
We all know that our brain is our consciousness. The brain decides on everything on our body, he is the boss. And brain is definetely the most complex matter in our body, right?
“Brain is the most complex matter. Therefore intelligence is complexity. To put it simply.”
Our “complexity” (whatever that means, it’s also a question for axiology, philosophy, not science. It’s not a scientific question as it’s not quantifiable) can and will go away, as I said to PP with fewer kcal over an extended period of time.
“The brain decides on everything on our body, he is the boss. And brain is definetely the most complex matter in our body, right?”
I guess other body parts don’t matter.