The Gamer's Quarter

[TOLLMASTER]

The recent dhex anthropology thread had me thinking about religion, which got me thinking about creationism, which got me thinking about evolution in the shower just now. Simply put, I find human intelligence to not fit into the theory of evolution that I was taught in school.

Now, I don't believe in creationism, or anything like that. In fact, I think children should be forced, perhaps by threat of bodily harm, to learn evolution, since today's population doesn't seem to have a handle on even the basic principles of the theory (it is alarming when a technological society cannot understand what is a great example of the scientific method in action). But what I learned in school was that evolution occured through gradual changes over time, with great changes in environment leading to a faster rate of evolution, as species adapted to their environments. A bird that ate fish evolved scooping beaks to better perform that task, while one that ate insects would have piercing beaks. Over a great deal of time, members that were better suited to the environment would reproduce more frequently, and thus pass down their traits over the other members, etc. blah blah blah.

Now, though, human intelligence doesn't seem to be explained by this theory very well. Species tend not to go through radical change, even over millions of years. Four-legged animals, for instance, are rather common. Mammals have a surprisingly large amount of diversity, but most have similar traits. A wolf and a rhinocerous might look very different, but both have four limbs with a hard non-skin coating on them, a head with the same features (eyes, brain, nose, etc), mostly the same internal organs, etc. In terms of eating habits, lifestyle, habitat, etc. they are very different, and are far apart on the evolutionary tree, but they have the same basic design.

Evolution doesn't create complicated things needlessly, nor does it reinvent the wheel, is what I'm saying. Which is why I'm bothered by human intelligence. The brain is extremely complex; while most organs' functions can be described as chemical processes, the brain's secret, so to speak, is currently lost on us. Thus, the few millions of years given from the time where humanity branched off from ours and the apes' common ancestor seems rather inadequate to me for such a huge difference in brain function to be possible, especially without an environmental change known that would have caused the need for intelligence to grow. While intelligence probably would not hurt a species, humanity has shown that intelligence doesn't mean we're so smart; few other species are currently know to construct spears and kill each other, for instance.

I've been trying to wrack out a solution to this using punctuated equilibrium, but even the climate change known to be going on during that period seems inadequate. Where other species might get slightly longer talons, man achieved enough intelligence to build civilization and mathematics. Apes have been shown to be able to communicate, of course, but none have shown comprehension of abstract concepts such as geometry, and it's hard to see (possibly because of our own lack of knowledge on how the brain works) how such a dramatic change would have been possible in such a (comparatively) short space in time.

Evolution, of course, still makes sense as a whole, but this is definitely one of the cases where it can be shown to be a theory continually in progress. The rest of evolutionary theory seems to mean that human development would have been almost impossible from the data we have about it, and it's a little distressing. It's like finding out that gravity applies to all mass except in this one case, where is seems to not to for no reason. There is, of course, some kind of explanation; that we exist is proof of that! But how can a theory that otherwise seems to explain so much, and have so much data supporting it, be currently wrong in what is one very important instance?

I'd do research on this, but you can't really trust books about evolution anymore, ever since the debate turned from "peer reviewed science journals" to "guys with small cocks but large amounts of poltical influence flailing with words madly." The idea of intelligence--that is, sophisticated organized response to data--is extremely fascinating to me, and I'd like to understand how intelligence might be explained by current evolution ideas. What made humans unique? Was it chance, or did humanity undergo some special sort of environmental change?

[Scratchmonkey]

Well, there's the "they ate psychedelic mushrooms" theory, thank you Terence McKenna. Feel free to research that one.

Personally, I think it's related to some of the other changes, those being an upright stance and the loss of our body hair and that those are related to climate change reducing the amount of forests in Eastern Africa and forcing the primates that weren't able to climb or fight as well as the other primates out onto the savannahs.

The reason that this would possibly influence intelligence is that when you're on the plains, as a primate, you would be incredibly vunerable, not only to predators; also to gangs of baboons, other primates, etc. Since these primates couldn't outrun, say, a lion or defeat it in single combat, what seems to be the logical defense mechanism is to work as a group -- a large group of primates armed with sticks and stones would be pretty effective, even against large predators or large groups of other animals.

And once you start benefiting from working together as a group, you benefit from more sophisticated communication and coordination, which, and this is the weak part of the whole (already crackpot) theory, seems to require more complex brain structures. It's fairly linguo-centric, which should surprise no-one.

[Ebrey]

Cheetahs are much faster than any other animal. Whales are much bigger. Why can't humans be much smarter?

Also the difference between our brains and chimps isn't that big. It's just that those small changes give us enough brainpower to speak, which is huge.

[Mr. Mechanical]

[GcDiaz]

Just think: we still can't create a blade of grass in the lab, even though we know damn near all there is to know about it. Same for embryos, if you will. If science can't explain it or reproduce it, then what does that leave? I'm not at all religious, but I do believe there's something out there.

God is cool; it's his fan club that fucks shit up.
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[Dracko]

[dhex]

and we can thank the mckenna brothers for all the 2012 wank too. actually, dennis did some very interesting work regarding ethnobotany separate from the more commercial things they've done. terrence, eh, not so much.

a friend of mine is doing his anthropology doctorate in this area, i.e. the emergence of intelligence in human groups.

the benefits of being a group animal and cooperating at such an abstract level probably had a lot to do with it. that requires some kind of language, some kind of mind that can process this kind of communication, and a physical and social system which can benefit from it as well as further adaptation.

but yeah, the whys and hows are a big hole.

[Mr. Mechanical]

You know, the origins of human intelligence and stuff have been a pretty fascinating subject for me lately. What would I have to major in during college to be able to make a living at studying/researching/thinking about it all the time?
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Mr. Mechanical

[GcDiaz]

[Scratchmonkey]

[Dracko]

[Ethoscapade]

1. there is no god.

2. evolution doesn't strictly make sense to anybody, really. you've heard the "best possible explanation" bit?

3. read everything tom robbins ever wrote just for fun.

[dhex]

we can move the metaphysics to another thread and play a unique internet game called "no ad hominems allowed" which i find makes these discussions far more difficult, because you're stuck trying to explain metaphysical mechanisms without relying on "well, their mechanism is even dumber than mine is" which is usually how these things end up.

mr. mech: human origins material is fascinating and uh, terribly general. bone up on your anatomy (har har) and biology, etc.
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[GSL]

So here's the simple answer for human evolution:

We got tired of being eaten by the better equipped and adapted predators out there. Simple, no?

And there's a single glaring omission that never ceases to amuse me whenever the creationism vs. evolution debate comes up. Fans of the former refuse to recognize the possibility and fans of the latter are too busy ridiculing fans of the former to suggest the idea. The idea is this: the concepts of creationism and evolutionism are not necessicarily mutually exclusive.

[Dracko]

Actually, they are.

You could make a somewhat reasonable argument that evolution was God's method, but again, that's unhelpful to its full understanding and so really shouldn't even be considered from a scientific stand.
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"This is the most fun I've ever had without being drenched in the blood of my enemies!"

[GSL]

No, no, no--evolution as God's method strays a bit too close to the whole Intelligent Design debacle, which no intelligent human being should believe for a moment regardless of their religious views.

Think of it this way: The vast majority of the "Creationism is the last word, evolution is the tool of the devil" concept makes no sense and relies almost explicitly on fundamentalist and very literal interpretations of the creation story. Adhering to this interpretation, the earth was also created from start to finish in just 168 hours.

Now, modern geology tells us that the world is 4.5 billion years old, and modern archaeology gives us nearly irrefutable proof that there were animals doing things on this planet long before humanity's ancestors made their debut. So right there that should knock some holes in the whole absolute creation theory.

But one thing a lot of people fail to consider is that the beginning of the Biblical book of Genesis might be something other than the literal text. If you have a belief in God, it goes without saying that He is creator of all; why is it so important that He adhere strictly to the Genesis telling of the story? Isn't it just as plausable that God could have created the material that initially led to the Big Bang, or have created the first DNA that evolved into life out of the primordial soup? I mean, I think that the misconception that science has to operate as though religion were false is pretty irresponsible and I hate to hear people get started on 'science vs. God', but science has yet to explain where the matter from the Big Bang (or whatever the current theory is; I'm not entirely up on my cosmology) came from, or how it could have come into existance in the first place. Is a divine creator really that impossible?

[dhex]

which is, broadly speaking, the catholic church's position on the matter. minus the issue of ensoulment and the like.
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[Dracko]

It's not impossible, and I don't think science says it is, but like most any other theory you could concoct, it's highly improbable, at this stage of scientific development. Just because we don't know how exactly the universe was birthed doesn't mean we can't find out later, and leaving it simply as a deus ex machina really doesn't help our further understanding of our reality.

I consider myself to be fairly atheistic. However, that doesn't mean I deny the possibility of a God. I just happen to put it on the same level as any other supernatural explanation. Once we see traces, actual traces, not clever dicky stuff like "I feel this way so it must be" or "Check out the banana, man!", then sure, you've got yourself a perfectly valid theory and all that remains is for you to prove it.
I'm not exactly against religion, or God, but such concepts, until proven, have no place anywhere near the scientific method. You may as well be arguing we're all characters in a book or brains in jars. That's all well and good, but it gets us nowhere and more often than not, implies a full stop attitude towards any form of investigation.

Basically, creationism, in whatever form, relies on faith. You can make all sorts of philosophical and metaphysical cases for faith, much like hope, but its a completely different department from reality. Faith, for better and for worse, tends to be strongly reliant on the principle that it is unquestionnably right. Why else would you follow one if you had any doubts? Science operates on the basis that all its theories are falsifiable; that is, they could potentially be proven wrong whenver evidence arises that puts it in question.

You can argue for and against both hopes and doubts, but in the end, the issue at hand is that creationism wants to pass itself off as a valid scientific theory, when its a completely different world altogether.
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"This is the most fun I've ever had without being drenched in the blood of my enemies!"

[Redeye]

Oh no!
Another one of these dreaded God/Science threads.

Just a few quickies:

1.) "God in the Gaps". Fill in the cracks with religion-putty.

2.) Emergence of DNA/etc. from Primordial Soup. Errr... "spontaneous generation".
Sounds kinda similar. See also: Abiogenesis.

3.)Coevolution of language/mind/brain. Wow, special cells that help distinguish inner and outer actions, and more.
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I felt sheer anarchic joy when I ran over my first pedestrian.

[TOLLMASTER]

[internisus]

Here are my thoughts, which are only somewhat educated -- I have a lot of relevant books still standing in line.

The gap between modern human intelligence and animal intelligence is not so great as we assume. It is fairly great, but let's cut that out for a minute and talk about the gap between animal intelligence and human intelligence contemporary to homo sapiens' branching off of the big ol' family tree. As you pointed out, Toll, there are animals we know about today that are not very far from fashioning basic weapons or practicing rudimentary agriculture. How do you suppose we started out? It's not like a bunch of humans woke up one day and were able to create things like mathematics and civilization.

Human / animal intelligence is a continuum, not a dualism. When intelligence became our defining characteristic -- our specialty -- that became the focus of our evolution, and natural selection continued to occur concerning intelligence capabilities. Over the generations, thresholds were crossed and baselines established that made race-wide projects possible. But when the first of our technologies became manifest, it is not as though they did so as careful, rational, planned projects. Agriculture, for instance, surely began as a series of happy accidents and discoveries, much like a chimpanzee happily discovers that he can cut into flesh with a sharp rock. Technologies themselves come out of behavioral evolution, thoroughly entangled in social and biological evolution.

Consider what individual qualities still raise a person to the top of our society today and think about the value given that person and the success guaranteed him in life, you can see natural selection continuing to occur. It's not as though agriculture and mathematics and the internet came bundled with the seeds of human intelligence, so, I suppose I just don't see a problem in evolutionary theory for this outcome.

By the way, Toll, I hope nothing here comes across as condescending. Your opening post shows a good understanding, as far as I can tell; I was just trying to keep basic.

[Ging]

Perhaps I'm just too ignorant to make a good judgement on this topic, but isn't the difference between a human and an ape brain basically more memory, and more connections?

I mean, a human brain is just a recorder for stimuli and responses that has continually become more and more complex, and efficient until it becomes able to function and solve problems abstractly.

And as for apes not becoming as smart, they're in a different environment, and the genetic mutation roulette may have just not worked out for them.

I suppose communication is a good enough reason for a greater intelligence to stick around as well.

[dessgeega]

yeah, i don't think intelligence is uniquely human, and as far as i understand it, the thinking brain is an evolutionary survival strategy. i'm not sure why it shouldn't work like all other evolutionary inventions?
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[GSL]

With regards to all the examples of animal behavior similar to human, there is one very important difference that has yet to be surmounted in any form, and that's language. Animals are able to communicate with each other using an amazing variety of visual, auditory, and olfactory cues, but no species has yet developed anything even closely approximating human language. Even attempts by linguists to teach our close relatives in the primate family means of communication such as sign language have met with relative failure: the subjects do develop a substantial 'vocabulary' of signs, but it is without syntax and grammar and therefore nothing more than a memorized set of signs that trigger a response with the trainers.

Linguistics as it applies to animals is fascinating, as it reveals that despite the very human behavior of some of the higher primates, the gulf that seperates them from us is much wider than we think.

[Redeye]

[Nana Komatsu]

[Redeye]

[internisus]

I don't see the difficulty in viewing the linguistic (grammatical and syntactical) difference between human and animal intelligences as a result of the human development of pattern recognition. Indeed, it has always seemed to me that a great deal of intelligence actually hinges on pattern recognition, and animals certainly have the ability to learn through such means. It just appears that human intelligence gradually crossed a threshold that allowed for comprehensive abstractions within pattern recognition as language developed. Again, it's not as if we became cognitive of or planned grammar overnight; it developed naturally as a function of natural selection as we became increasingly social creatures. I still don't understand what the difficulty is with the normal evolutionary explanation here. Am I simplifying too much?

[Scratchmonkey]

The major issue is that why we've developed abstract thought whereas no other species (to our knowledge) has. Calling it a threshold seems like it's a little misleading when it's a pretty big jump. Why did humans develop the ability to talk about things last week/next week or things that don't even exist and why only us?

I can see it being part of pattern recognition, although every time I go down that road I start thinking that the psylocibin hypothesis isn't as wacky as it initially appears and then I start the fringe-science guilt spiral.

As for the comments on the development of grammar, we have no idea how it evolved or developed. It could have been overnight. The ephemeral nature of data-collection for linguistics means that anything going past still-spoken or recorded language is wild speculation that gets exponentially more wild the farther back you go.

[internisus]

But nothing is overnight in evolution. Very slight mutations of early homo sapiens with a tiny bit greater capacity for abstract grammar probably had more successful lives through their remedial social abilities and therefore prevailed via natural selection.

An important thing to keep in mind is that the difference of intelligent capabilities associated with different physical brains is exponential.

Many creatures have developed unique anatomical emphases whose bases are only very fundamentally rooted in their related genealogical families. Why should a brain quirk be any different?

I think that the only real problem anyone actually has in explaining this is that we don't understand the brain itself very well. However, our general knowledge about its recursive structure would seem to support a conclusion that a tiny mutation has huge implications, so, again, I still see no problem with a normal evolutionary explanation.

I'm not trying to make assumptions here step beyond the bounds of our linguistic knowledge -- which has gaping temporal limitations, as you say -- but my argument is that the simplest and most consonant theory makes sense here, as is usually the case.

[Scratchmonkey]

That makes sense, the only issue is that frequently, what we logically would have assumed would have been true about our language capibilities is frequently not the case. It seems to be kind of a loopy structure, so I'm very leery of saying something almost certainly happened.

And most evolution takes place "overnight" on a geological scale, under the theory of punctuated equilibrium, which has its own issues; it's still got more going for it than the theory of gradual development.

[Redeye]

[Redeye]

Double Post.
(Unless someone posts while I am typing.)

I was thinking about the "special cells" that supposedly differentiate between "outer" and "inner" actions, so we can model what someone else probably means without having to mindread.
They are capturing a reflection and then running it as a virtual entity, apparently.
Yes, I am being super simplistic.
This seems to have a lot to do with the development of language ability, and the evolution of our social arrangements.
I have read the term "internalization of the other" and it seems from psychology information that the inability to do so, or the flawed ability to do so is connected to misunderstanding and lack of empathy.

What does it all mean?

A behaviourist activist might ask:

Do we inject the "reflection cells" into the brains of "cold fish" as "empathy therapy".

Just thinkin'

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I felt sheer anarchic joy when I ran over my first pedestrian.

[internisus]

[Redeye]

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

Also, for entertainment I offer a rambly bit of conjecture and crap in another thread here on TGQ.

It is the fifth post.
I blame Guiness, and Yuengling, and Rolling Rock, and Pabst Blue Ribbon, and Henninger.
And cheap white wine from a box.
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I felt sheer anarchic joy when I ran over my first pedestrian.

[Scratchmonkey]

To put an even shorter summary of punctuated equilibrium, in case you're afraid of clicking on links: Most evolutionary progress takes place in short bursts after a massive change of some kind or another. Outside of these "chunks", there isn't a lot of change taking place in terms of evolving.

The end of the dinosaurs is a pretty good example. The idea is that some sort of change, whether it be a meteor or a pandemic or climate change or something huge that affects most or a lot of the planet, causes a situation to arise where there's a bunch of free resources (because the organisms that were consuming them are gone). The organisms that are left then rapidly evolve in order to exploit the available resources by claiming certain niches. This rapid jump accounts for most if not all of the major jumps in terms of creating new phyla, etc.

Again, this is "rapid" on a geological scale, where thousands of years are like milliseconds.

As an aside, if anybody is really interested in Linguistics, a good starting point is Chomsky's Syntactic Structures. It lays out the foundation for modern syntactic theory, which, for better or for worse, now dominates the field of Linguistics itself. It's also only 117 pages long and may be the least dense core Linguistic text.

[Harveyjames]

[dhex]

shit, there was a naturalist from the early 20th century who was apparently a bit of a daft old man of sorts - absentminded professor, that sort of thing - who was asked to describe the creator of the universe by a student or a journalist.

he answered something like "an inordinate fondness for beetles."

that always makes me laugh.

[internisus]

If you mean by materialism something like capitalism, no, I haven't taken myself there yet. I don't think I'm ready. I can see it working out alright as a natural system, of course, but I haven't thought yet about humanity as a unified project choosing it over, say, socialism and that process of choice as natural. On this, too, I have some books lined up before I can really go there, including unweaving the rainbow.

Re: beetles, that's pretty amusing.

Re: sympathetic magic, yeah, recognizing the fundamental patterns of cognition, causality, etc. in human intelligence as linked to hard-wired physical brain structure or the brain's evolutionary development, and then applying this to anthropology, is one of the most immediately fascinating things to come out of modern science -- and that's a pretty tall list!

[dhex]

materialism: a la dawkins' "strong atheism."
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[dessgeega]

i need to finish the blind watchmaker.
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[internisus]

[dhex]

[internisus]

I'll have to look up the thread in the archives. I have a problem with speaking on my own views consistently if I try to reply on an interesting topic in a time when I'm not thinking about such things very much.

My preliminary feeling is that I likely said something about strident anti-spiritualism sucking the artistry and mystery out of life. I know I said some things about the plausibility of atheistic natural spirituality.

[dhex]

yeah, which iirc my response was uhhhhhh what?

unless you mean "spirituality" to mean something like "a sense of cosmic wonder" in which case read unweaving the rainbow.

i knew a woman years back who, after years of arguing with me (she was, of course, a wiccan) about this very topic, but when it was finally boiled down, spirituality simply meant "like, wow, man, nature is, like, wow."
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[Dracko]

[internisus]

dhex, I just posted this in the music thread as is proper, but it is an extremely relevant example of what I mean by a plausible atheist naturalistic spirituality:




At the conclusion of Bjork's "Oceania", she repeats:

Your sweat is salty;
I am why

and it's just so powerful to me. It brings me to tears.



One breath away
from Mother Oceania,
Your nimble feet make prints
in my sands.

You have done
good for yourselves
since you left my wet embrace
and crawled ashore.

Every boy is a snake is a lily;
every pearl is a lynx is a girl.

Sweet like harmony
made into flesh --
You dance by my side,
children sublime..

You show me continents;
I see the islands.
You count the centuries;
I blink my eyes.

Hawks and sparrows
race in my waters --
Stingrays are floating
across the sky...

Little ones:
My sons and my daughters,
your sweat is salty;
I am why.
I am why.
I am why.
Your sweat is salty;
I am why.
I am why.
I am why.

[dhex]

what?

magna mater = atheism?

man, i have half a mind to set a pack of wiccans on you. they will girl larp you to death, man!
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[internisus]

The personification of the ocean is a conceit and a literary technique; it does not necessarily indicate deification.

Problem solved?

[dhex]

that would be my interpretation.

problem being it sort of eliminates spirituality. not a problem on my end, but i have a rather twisted notion of that, being prone to bouts of both megalomania and goddess worship. (if the two can be separated)
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