Earlier quoted context omitted.
Shrinking brain strikes again
after a hard burn out I can assure you I saw that my brain actually left my skull (and is now tiny far away on the horizon)
It's been pulled by the event horizon.
Why are our brains shrinking?
181–190 of 199 posts
Re: Why are our brains shrinking?
#182I'm sure some are aware but in case you are not, Lex Friedman podcast recently had an episode with Richard Wrangham [1] where they discuss this. Wrangham is a primatologist that studied alongside Jane Goodall. His theory suggests human's show signs similar to what we see in other species that have been domesticated. This includes smaller face/jaws and smaller brains. 1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJF01_ztxwY
One point where he talks about domestication starts at 1:54:16 (half a minute earlier he goes over the decrease in brain size):
Re: Why are our brains shrinking?
#183Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Cutting-edge (heh) technology 70,000 years ago was the stone blade as well as the earliest known primitive art I think it's important to remember that technology is highly, highly iterative. It's not like if Elon Musk were born 70k years ago we'd have cavemen with electric cars. In fact, if all of us were somehow warped back in time that far, I fear we'd be even worse off. We know how to roll fiber optic networks a…
If an intelligent modern person with some knowledge of history was sent back to 70,000 years ago (70 kya) we'd probably be able to bring significant help to the group - assuming we were accepted into the group and not immediately killed by our ancestors in peak physical condition. Personally, I'd attempt to introduce: - art and culture from the far future (flutes, 42 kya; figurative art, 40 kya) - Simple ovens (29 ky…
I've sometimes wondered about this as well. We can all understand how saws work; but can you actually make one from scratch? How about a rope? Do you know where to find the right kind of fibre, how to correctly process it, and then make it in to a functional rope? Do you have the know-how to functionally domesticate wild animals and cultivate crops?
I'd consider myself a pretty handy guy, but if I were whisked away to 70k years ago this very minute then I'd probably struggle with a lot of that, even though I roughly know how to do it. And that is ignore the obvious communication barriers, that you also need to spend time on basic survival, and things like that. A lot of these crafts developed over generations partly because while the concepts aren't all that complex, the actual doing of it in a way that's effective is a lot harder.
I certainly think it'll take a lot more than "days or weeks".
Re: Why are our brains shrinking?
#184Any potential explanation would have to account for the fact that this happened around the world, not only in certain sub-populations. The article isn't clear on whether it began at different times in different places, possibly because the data isn't complete enough. A start date of 70,000 years ago suggests it has something to do with human exodus from africa that occurred around that time. The difficulty is that ev…
Another question not addressed in the article is whether the shrinkage is linear or happened in spurts (and if so, when these occurred). It's entirely possible, for example, that there was some shrinkage 60-70k years ago, then noting happened for 50k years, and then some more shrinkage in the last 10k years.
Another interesting tidbit not mentioned is that you can actually remove a full half of the brain of young children (hemispherectomy) and these people have very normal lives with extremely small or no impact on their brain functions, which is pretty bonkers. This underscores that size isn't everything.
Re: Why are our brains shrinking?
#185Earlier quoted context omitted.
Same reason so many people object to censorship: nobody can be trusted with that kind of power.
Is that really why eugenics is demonized? That the human race (not any living individuals) is giving up its freedom to some sort of fallible authority? I guess, like censorship, people only object to an arbitrary subset of it. People love censorship of "really bad" ideas just as they love eugenics of "really bad" genes. Most people seem happy with asserting our authority of gene selection over animals though :P Conse…
Animal breeding is somewhat different from human breeding.
With animal breeding, there's almost always a set goal. Getting a fatter, tastier, more hardy, or in the extreme, aesthetically pleasing animal.
I doubt we'd really use eugenics for any of them. However, a pure eugenicist might say "Well, why not? Why not select for people less prone to cancer, more physically fit, with better immune systems?"
So then it comes into the question of what eugenics has historically been used for. The worst example would probably be the sterilization of gay people. We used it against mental illness in an age where lobotomy was considered a good treatment for mental illnesses such as hyperactivity.
And all of this, of course, sort of belays the fact that for humans there seems to be no reason why we couldn't use gene therapy in place of breeding programs. Why do we need eugenics when we can directly target the aspects we want in the future generation (and quite a few people would opt in for those changes).
We already seem some of this just in genetic testing of embryos and fetuses. When people know a fetus has downs syndrome, they get abortions and try again. I could see the same with a whole host of chronic illnesses.
Re: Why are our brains shrinking?
#186Earlier quoted context omitted.
That wasn't the argument. You seem to be saying that the increasing volume of digital information will require new cognitive adaptations and I'm saying that's not the case because I don't need to be as smart to appear smart on a digital medium, I can just rely on external cognitive aids like google.
> You seem to be saying I'm not.
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Re: Why are our brains shrinking?
#187Re: Why are our brains shrinking?
#188Earlier quoted context omitted.
I question the intelligence of a human species that does not reproduce.
By what metric are you making the claim that humanity does not reproduce? To my eye we’ve simply unlocked medical science and have taken control of reproduction to the point where it’s not critical to the species for everyone to reproduce. I’d be more concerned about all the plastics and chemicals that are now circulating in our bodies slowly decreasing our ability to reproduce than us as a species being too dumb to…
> By what metric are you making the claim that humanity does not reproduce?
I'm not. I was replying to the following question:
> What if there's a level of intelligence above which humans decide not to reproduce?
It seems obvious to me that a species that drives itself to extinction cannot be considered intelligent. Doubly so if it does that due to lack of reproduction.
> it’s not critical to the species for everyone to reproduce
It is. Every couple must have a certain amount of children in order to simply maintain a stable population.
Re: Why are our brains shrinking?
#189Earlier quoted context omitted.
That wasn't the argument. You seem to be saying that the increasing volume of digital information will require new cognitive adaptations and I'm saying that's not the case because I don't need to be as smart to appear smart on a digital medium, I can just rely on external cognitive aids like google.
> You seem to be saying I'm not.
Then we don't really have anything to discuss.
Re: Why are our brains shrinking?
#190Earlier quoted context omitted.
I knew a professor that loved getting freshmen classes because he could disabuse them their Yankee in king Arthur's court ideas about how easy it'd be to bring technology back to the past. He had a whole slew of experiments that would explore path dependence and the difficulties of creating technologies with the available resources. Nominally this was to help them not underestimate the intelligence of early humans, b…
I feel like the pendulum has swing too far in the other direction on this topic, actually. Yes people in the past weren't dumb, and shouldn't be under-estimated, but even a normal person could provide huge gains to any pre-modern society. Their understanding of mathematics, biology, evolution, medicine, astronomy, economics, reading+writing, organization, etc. are immeasurably valuable. I don't think people appreciat…
I don't think they'd remember the tips about smallpox, considering it hadn't evolved yet. As for iron smelting, we have a wealth of experimental archaeology on the subject under much easier constraints than you're proposing. The DARCs team [1] took 4 years to figure out a usable bloomery based on archaeologically known designs and years of prior experience, and it took a decade more to get all the modern materials out of the design. You could certainly cold-work iron if you could identify the right meteors, but those are rare and notoriously difficult to find [2].
All I'm saying is that you're vastly underestimating the knowledge, skill, and cultural context that went into these technologies.
[1] http://www.warehamforge.ca/ironsmelting/
[2] https://sites.wustl.edu/meteoritesite/items/some-meteorite-r...