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Author Topic:   What bothers me about the evolution of Man
Moon-Ra
Junior Member (Idle past 4464 days)
Posts: 16
Joined: 12-01-2011


(1)
Message 16 of 142 (642874)
12-02-2011 12:06 PM
Reply to: Message 15 by Rahvin
12-02-2011 11:47 AM


I am with Rahven in this one, I think intra-specific competition (i.e. both sexual and social selection) is what ultimately drove us to have the brain we have today. This is true for almost all "extravagant" organs in nature, do silverback gorillas "need" all that muscle? Do caribous need those huge antlers? Do birds of paradise need such extravagant feathers? All of those are are under selection by competition either between males or between individuals.

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Moon-Ra
Junior Member (Idle past 4464 days)
Posts: 16
Joined: 12-01-2011


Message 23 of 142 (642893)
12-02-2011 1:48 PM
Reply to: Message 22 by Straggler
12-02-2011 1:40 PM


Re: Size Matters
Ok, I hope this does not break any forum rules, but here: the human penis is the biggest of all the ape species in length and girth, both in absolute terms and as a proportion of body size.

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Replies to this message:
 Message 24 by Straggler, posted 12-02-2011 1:56 PM Moon-Ra has replied

  
Moon-Ra
Junior Member (Idle past 4464 days)
Posts: 16
Joined: 12-01-2011


Message 25 of 142 (642897)
12-02-2011 2:02 PM
Reply to: Message 24 by Straggler
12-02-2011 1:56 PM


Re: Size Matters
Straggler writes:
funniness and other such brain related issues (that this thread is directly about) are a way of adding metaphorical inches.....'
Haha, perfect! Or maybe we have a big brain to try to convince them that size is not all that matters!

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Moon-Ra
Junior Member (Idle past 4464 days)
Posts: 16
Joined: 12-01-2011


Message 31 of 142 (642926)
12-02-2011 4:22 PM
Reply to: Message 30 by jar
12-02-2011 4:09 PM


Re: nearest relatives that are left.
jar writes:
One thing to remember is that what we see today are only the nearest relatives left, those that did not pose a serious threat to modern humans.
That's completely true and often missed, when you say "our brain is much more powerful than our close relatives", you have to remember that there are many other lineages of humans that went extinct (think Neanderthal), not to mention the "close" relationship between us and apes dates at least 3 million years.

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 Message 30 by jar, posted 12-02-2011 4:09 PM jar has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 32 by jar, posted 12-02-2011 4:31 PM Moon-Ra has replied

  
Moon-Ra
Junior Member (Idle past 4464 days)
Posts: 16
Joined: 12-01-2011


Message 33 of 142 (642928)
12-02-2011 4:33 PM
Reply to: Message 32 by jar
12-02-2011 4:31 PM


Re: nearest relatives that are left.
Yes, the pattern is: survival of the fittest.

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Moon-Ra
Junior Member (Idle past 4464 days)
Posts: 16
Joined: 12-01-2011


(1)
Message 96 of 142 (643539)
12-07-2011 6:46 PM
Reply to: Message 95 by Panda
12-07-2011 5:51 PM


You guys are confusing things again. You have to remember that natural selection (and therefore brain evolution) stopped in humans thousands of years ago, but the brain that we have today is the same that Homo sapiens had hundreds of thousands of years ago, note the different time scales. So brain power came way before technology (which seems to be at least part of your measure of intelligence).
Now, the appearance that we are light years ahead of every animal out there in terms of intelligence is completely due to technology and cultural evolution (and not brain power). So, if you compare a hominid hundreds of thousands of years ago (but with the exact same brain that we have today) to a Gorila or Chimp you won't find that much difference in "intelligence".
What sets us apart is that we learned to store and share information like no other species. It is a simple behavioral character that revolutionized the course of our species evolution.
Now here is some food for thought, we understand very little about our brain. Some people with mental "disorders" like autism sometimes demonstrate extraordinary math skills to a point where they resolved extremely advanced math tasks without ever being taught how to.

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Replies to this message:
 Message 97 by Wounded King, posted 12-07-2011 7:10 PM Moon-Ra has replied
 Message 99 by Panda, posted 12-07-2011 7:46 PM Moon-Ra has replied
 Message 100 by Dogmafood, posted 12-07-2011 7:49 PM Moon-Ra has replied
 Message 108 by New Cat's Eye, posted 12-09-2011 10:31 AM Moon-Ra has not replied

  
Moon-Ra
Junior Member (Idle past 4464 days)
Posts: 16
Joined: 12-01-2011


Message 98 of 142 (643543)
12-07-2011 7:38 PM
Reply to: Message 97 by Wounded King
12-07-2011 7:10 PM


Re: No more human evolution
Just thousands, to be precise the last two thousand.
The population increase that humans went through in the last 2-3 thousand years has few parallels in nature, and there is plenty of evidence showing that selection does not operate in expanding populations, I can dig up refs if you want. But to put it simply, natural selection operates under the premise that some of your progeny will die (and with it presumably your "weak" genes), so in order for natural selection to operate, a certain percentage of the population has to perish. But in today's society this is not happening anymore, or in other words, both the fittest and the weakest are surviving. If both are surviving there is no selection.
Don't take me wrong, this is not a bad thing, as it allow us (as a species) to have anomalies like Einstein or Hawking, but I assure you a person with a much lower IQ left many more descendants than those two individuals somewhere else in the planet.

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Replies to this message:
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Moon-Ra
Junior Member (Idle past 4464 days)
Posts: 16
Joined: 12-01-2011


Message 101 of 142 (643546)
12-07-2011 7:55 PM
Reply to: Message 100 by Dogmafood
12-07-2011 7:49 PM


You are absolutely correct here, and we agree, I am measuring "evolution" here in the present. We know it is acting in many species as we speak, and it is not on humans now (because we are all reproducing before we die). It might very well start again in the very near future, but for now it seems not to be acting, and that is my point... Our raw "brain power" is not different from that of a cave man

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Moon-Ra
Junior Member (Idle past 4464 days)
Posts: 16
Joined: 12-01-2011


Message 102 of 142 (643547)
12-07-2011 8:00 PM
Reply to: Message 99 by Panda
12-07-2011 7:46 PM


I'm sorry I have yet to learn how to properly quote and respond messages. I meant to direct my post to Tangle
Panda writes:
This seems to be as flawed as the 'technology' argument.
In fact, the way we store and share information is mainly by using technology.
But for most of mankind's existence we have taught our young in exactly the same way that other animals do.
We may currently have very clever ways to store information, but those methods are very recent compared to the existence of humans.
So, we agree here, and this is exactly what I meant by "cultural evolution", it's a snowball effect, the better we get at transferring and storing information, the better our technology gets (and vice-versa).
Going back to Tangle's point, an interesting question would be if those aliens that he mentions arrived here not today, but 50 thousand years ago. We, as species, would have virtually the same brain (50k year old skulls are anatomically identical to ours), but would the aliens consider us any more intelligent than Gorillas and Chimps?

This message is a reply to:
 Message 99 by Panda, posted 12-07-2011 7:46 PM Panda has replied

Replies to this message:
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 Message 104 by Tangle, posted 12-08-2011 3:01 AM Moon-Ra has not replied

  
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