Earlier quoted context omitted.
A charitable way to put it. The more straightforward term is "just-so story".
Thanks for pointing me to that term, I've been looking for a more succinct description for this.
It's not just a term it's also a book!
The human brain grew as a result of the extinction of large animals: new paper
41–50 of 103 posts
Re: The human brain grew as a result of the extinction of large animals: new paper
#42"As they adapted to hunting... brain volume [grew] from 650cc to 1,500cc." "As humans moved into permanent settlements and became farmers, their brain size decreased to its current volume of 1300-1400cc." Its interesting that we today have smaller brains than our prehistoric ancestors. I wonder if we can look through our genetic code and find some remnants of this past, and re-engineer the relevant genes into future…
Is there a particular reason that you cite a 20-year old, paywalled study that claims black people are genetically stupider than other races here?
Polynesians have the most average CCs of brain. There's no correlation between this and smart.
Re: The human brain grew as a result of the extinction of large animals: new paper
#43This line of thinking falls into a common issue I have with evo-psych work. The paper proposes a mechanism that could select for intelligence, but doesn't provide evidence that the mechanism caused humans to evolve to be intelligent. It's the equivalent of the "Is-Ought" fallacy for empirical sciences.
I wonder what caused dolphins to evolve their intelligence. I don't think they hunted underwater mammoths :)
Re: The human brain grew as a result of the extinction of large animals: new paper
#44> In recent years more and more evidence has been accumulated to the effect that humans were a major factor in the extinction of large animals
What about this? https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-21201-8
I think "climate change" is potentially an important confounding variable here.
Also I thought "animals" would link to a source but it just searches their site for the word "animals".
Re: The human brain grew as a result of the extinction of large animals: new paper
#45This line of thinking falls into a common issue I have with evo-psych work. The paper proposes a mechanism that could select for intelligence, but doesn't provide evidence that the mechanism caused humans to evolve to be intelligent. It's the equivalent of the "Is-Ought" fallacy for empirical sciences.
I often find it "justifying human exceptionalism" presented as science. The unstated assumption is that humans are somehow better than chimpanzees (here, it is almost literally stated), and therefore that we must reverse engineer and fill in the gaps to justify this. It strikes me that I have no reason to believe the assumption, nor any way of reverse engineering the random process of natural selection. In my opinion…
>I often find it "justifying human exceptionalism" presented as science. The unstated assumption is that humans are somehow better than chimpanzee
You find it unscientific to observe that humans are exceptional for being the only known species with the ability to dominate and shape any environment, create, process, and communicate abstract thought, practice science, generate art, communicate across the planet instantly, travel to the bottom of the ocean and to space, with technology that other humans conceived of, designed, and built?
If that isn't scientifically provable exceptionalism, I don't know what is. "Better" is a loaded term because you can weasel in talk of destroying the environment and what not - but I don't think there's any argument against obvious and overwhelming human exceptionalism, the origin of which unquestionably begs exploration and explanation.
Re: The human brain grew as a result of the extinction of large animals: new paper
#46Imo, most of the evolution science of today is about inventing a cool story to justify the very little data we have. We have what, a bit over ten thousand years of definitive history with solid data, and based on this tiny slice of history we invent grandiose theories of where the man's intelligence came from.
Re: The human brain grew as a result of the extinction of large animals: new paper
#47This line of thinking falls into a common issue I have with evo-psych work. The paper proposes a mechanism that could select for intelligence, but doesn't provide evidence that the mechanism caused humans to evolve to be intelligent. It's the equivalent of the "Is-Ought" fallacy for empirical sciences.
I agree with your criticism.
Still, I'm trying to figure out exactly what my issue is with evo-psych claims that I don't have with e.g. physics claims.
There seem to be some commonalities between the two fields: developing models to explain empirical data. And when working with their models, they're willing to assume a certain degree of causality.
I wonder if my issue is that evo-psych is a lot more like history than like physics, in that it's really hard to do repeatable experiments to vet their theories? So when we hear an evo-psych theory stated with confidence, it discredits the speaker?
Re: The human brain grew as a result of the extinction of large animals: new paper
#48"As they adapted to hunting... brain volume [grew] from 650cc to 1,500cc." "As humans moved into permanent settlements and became farmers, their brain size decreased to its current volume of 1300-1400cc." Its interesting that we today have smaller brains than our prehistoric ancestors. I wonder if we can look through our genetic code and find some remnants of this past, and re-engineer the relevant genes into future…
Another thing to be cautious of is that brain volume is only a proxy for e.g. neuron count, which is itself a proxy for intelligence.
Volume may be the only archaeological data available, but whales (8kg) and elephants (5kg) have brains many times larger than ours (~1.3kg), and even adjusting for body mass doesn’t make humans top of the pile — famously, the brain-to-body mass ratio of shrews is higher than humans’.
Re: The human brain grew as a result of the extinction of large animals: new paper
#49> enabled more efficient hunting of medium-sized and small animals—until these populations also dwindled
This means humans have been decimating wild animal populations for a very long time, we are accustomed to it.
But we need to stop it now.
Re: The human brain grew as a result of the extinction of large animals: new paper
#50> enabled more efficient hunting of medium-sized and small animals—until these populations also dwindled This means humans have been decimating wild animal populations for a very long time, we are accustomed to it. But we need to stop it now.
No problem! There are hardly any wild animals now. Their body mass represents 4% of the world total animal body mass. Humans are 25%, and our farmed animals the rest.