Intellectual Abundance
 

Most species seemed to have evolved without much waste. Take a lion's resources for instance. It's speed, power, and stalking abilities are just about exactly what it needs to survive. No more. No less. Likewise, healthy prey seemed to have developed just enough speed, camoflauge, and defense systems to stay just ahead of the game and continue producing offspring.

But one creature seems to have an evolutionary feature which has exploded well beyond evolutionary design for survival.

Of course, I'm referring to the human brain. Among the first few posts I read on SMP had DS weighing the significance on the utter importance of what high IQ people thought the chances of God were to what average IQ people thought and I had to chuckle. Because one thing is certain. Even the lowest IQ person (who is not otherwise mentally impaired), is still light years smarter than the next most intelligent known thing in the universe!

C'mon! We could get by on just a little over half as much intelligence that the average gibbon possesses. What evolutionary purpose is served by our being intelligent enough to send one of our own to the moon? What do we gain by having the intelligence to invent and partake in games like chess, or to calculate interplanetary distances, gravitional forces, to understand quantum mechanics, etc.,etc.? Why such an excess in potency of our main survival skill? Does anyone have any guesses?

In this one respect, I have to give in to theists on this one. Man, is special, unique, and gifted like no other creature on the planet.

Re: Intellectual Abundance
 

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Most species seemed to have evolved without much waste. Take a lion's resources for instance. It's speed, power, and stalking abilities are just about exactly what it needs to survive. No more. No less. Likewise, healthy prey seemed to have developed just enough speed, camoflauge, and defense systems to stay just ahead of the game and continue producing offspring.

But one creature seems to have an evolutionary feature which has exploded well beyond evolutionary design for survival.

Of course, I'm referring to the human brain. Among the first few posts I read on SMP had DS weighing the significance on the utter importance of what high IQ people thought the chances of God were to what average IQ people thought and I had to chuckle. Because one thing is certain. Even the lowest IQ person (who is not otherwise mentally impaired), is still light years smarter than the next most intelligent known thing in the universe!

C'mon! We could get by on just a little over half as much intelligence that the average gibbon possesses. What evolutionary purpose is served by our being intelligent enough to send one of our own to the moon? What do we gain by having the intelligence to invent and partake in games like chess, or to calculate interplanetary distances, gravitional forces, to understand quantum mechanics, etc.,etc.? Why such an excess in potency of our main survival skill? Does anyone have any guesses?

In this one respect, I have to give in to theists on this one. Man, is special, unique, and gifted like no other creature on the planet.

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One theory discussed before is memes and natural selection. link

Re: Intellectual Abundance
 

Smarter = better use of tools = better chance of survival and reproduction. As far as the really complicated stuff goes (i.e. theoretical physics, advanced mathematics, etc) this is just a direct consequence of the larger and more efficient brain. Also, our intelligence allows us to create better healthcare and medicines, giving us longer lifespans and, more importantly, vastly greater health. Also, let's not forget the advancement of agriculture and industry. These both lead to a much larger ceiling for population growth, leading to greater dispersal of genes. All of these things are consequences of our larger brains.

Re: Intellectual Abundance
 

I see what you're saying. I suppose advancements in agriculture is a way of using our resources that is not much different than say, a beaver building a dam. But I still say we don't need NEAR the intelligence we currently possess in order to survive and propagate on this planet. I understand our need for a larger brain given our inadequancies in other areas. But man's brain power is over-the-top.

Re: Intellectual Abundance
 

I wonder if the peacock is pondering.

Selection pressures come at us from all sides. So, besides the obvious 'it was for other uses', such as language, trajectories, large social structure to track, etc, it's possible it's even more frivolous, such as 'quicker wit', or better story teller.

I'm not convinced we don't need it all. People with 90 IQ would be in pretty tough shape in a less coddling society. Evolution can be very slow and if was more impoprtant 5000 years ago we'd still be enjoying the benefits of it.

Re: Intellectual Abundance
 

Lestat,
I think another good way to look at it is as follows:

When choosing a mate, intelligence has always been a positive quality, as it gives a higher probability of success to your offspring. Both in terms of the genes they get and the resources your mate can provide with his/her higher than normal intelligance. Even if there is no environmental selection pressuring for a higher and higher IQ, there is still sexual selection going on. When the more highly intelligent members of the species are favored, this leads to selection of their "high IQ" genes.

I think this may be more along the lines of what you were looking for. Once you get past the ability to use tools, there isn't much environmental selection going on for smarter individuals (e.g. we're not getting any reproductive advantage by formulating quantum mechanics). But, there is still sexual selection occuring for the more fit members, and intelligence is highly correlated with "fitness".

Re: Intellectual Abundance
 

I believe that it has been suggested to you before but let me also encourage you to read The Ancestors Tale by Dawkins. In particular I recommend The Peacocks Tale where he lays out his theories for why the human brain is the way it is.

One of the best things about this book and Dawkins in particular is he is very honest and upfront about what science knows and can know. On this issue there is no consensus or even widely accepted position. Dawkins lays out a convincing case that our brain power is largely the result of sexual selection. I cant do it justice here and wont attempt to but like I said I recommend the book.

One other interesting point that Dawkins makes is very realted to your lion v prey scenerio of co-evolutionary harmony. There are recuring themes and patterns in evolution, prey and predator each get faster, bigger teeth for lions and predators result in thicker skins for prey, etc. When you find something in nature that is unique theres a good chance that sexual selection played a big role. Sexual selection kind of sends species shooting down evolutionary paths that are not expected and dont necassarily serve any survival purposes.

All that being said I dont know if I even addressed your main point. I dont know if I would agree with the theists but I do think there is something other than just increased intelligence that seperates us from animals. The soul and related concepts I dont think anyone has a good answer or explanation for. However, I do think that Dawkins and materialists like him are much closer to the truth than any theist. I suspect that whatever power of awareness that we have is also present in animals to some lesser degree.

Re: Intellectual Abundance
 

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Lestat,
I think another good way to look at it is as follows:

When choosing a mate, intelligence has always been a positive quality, as it gives a higher probability of success to your offspring. Both in terms of the genes they get and the resources your mate can provide with his/her higher than normal intelligance. Even if there is no environmental selection pressuring for a higher and higher IQ, there is still sexual selection going on. When the more highly intelligent members of the species are favored, this leads to selection of their "high IQ" genes.

I think this may be more along the lines of what you were looking for. Once you get past the ability to use tools, there isn't much environmental selection going on for smarter individuals (e.g. we're not getting any reproductive advantage by formulating quantum mechanics). But, there is still sexual selection occuring for the more fit members, and intelligence is highly correlated with "fitness".

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Well, this kind of throws my whole theorum of full figured blonde girls out the window. [img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img] (sorry, I couldn't resist).

Re: Intellectual Abundance
 

<font color="blue"> Selection pressures come at us from all sides. So, besides the obvious 'it was for other uses', such as language, trajectories, large social structure to track, etc, it's possible it's even more frivolous, such as 'quicker wit', or better story teller. </font>

Language, trajectories and tracking social structure were obviously very important to our evolutionary advancement. I can also see how quicker wit and story telling may have played a role. But do you think evolution has a place for frivolousness? And this is really the point of my post...

Yes, we developed our overly large brains for specific reasons and specialized survival purposes. But is the rest just frivolous fluff? Or do we continue to get smarter and integrate new knowledge and intellectual skills in our evolutionary development? We are so far past the next highest species in the food chain, it's a joke. We have long since surpassed the threat from packs of carniverous predators. We have found ways to settle on all corners of the globe. Our biggest fear is man himself. Have we become our own predator? Do we now need to develop intellecutally (build war machines), in order to survive to survive as a species? Is our species looking to segregate? Is religion and/or other belief systems our way of breaking away so that one particular group will survive to higher evolutionary ground?

What other purposes does evolution have in store for all this intelligence?

Re: Intellectual Abundance
 

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<font color="blue"> Selection pressures come at us from all sides. So, besides the obvious 'it was for other uses', such as language, trajectories, large social structure to track, etc, it's possible it's even more frivolous, such as 'quicker wit', or better story teller. </font>

Language, trajectories and tracking social structure were obviously very important to our evolutionary advancement. I can also see how quicker wit and story telling may have played a role. But do you think evolution has a place for frivolousness? And this is really the point of my post...

Yes, we developed our overly large brains for specific reasons and specialized survival purposes. But is the rest just frivolous fluff? Or do we continue to get smarter and integrate new knowledge and intellectual skills in our evolutionary development? We are so far past the next highest species in the food chain, it's a joke. We have long since surpassed the threat from packs of carniverous predators. We have found ways to settle on all corners of the globe. Our biggest fear is man himself. Have we become our own predator? Do we now need to develop intellecutally (build war machines), in order to survive to survive as a species? Is our species looking to segregate? Is religion and/or other belief systems our way of breaking away so that one particular group will survive to higher evolutionary ground?

What other purposes does evolution have in store for all this intelligence?

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Evolution doesn't have "purposes in store" for anything - that's not how it works. It often appears that way because of the principle of survival of the fittest, but evolutionary processes aren't designed to do anything - not even to eliminate defects, etc. - that's just what happens. In the case of humans, there's no "purpose" for having incredible intellect any more than there's a purpose for having five fingers on each hand and not six; that's just the way it's worked out. Sexual selection seems like a very plausible explanation for this phenomenon.

Re: Intellectual Abundance
 

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We are so far past the next highest species in the food chain, it's a joke.

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Sorry to digress from the original topic, but this has been bugging me for a while. What do you mean by the "highest species in the food chain"? Or, put another way, what's eating you right now?

Re: Intellectual Abundance
 

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intelligence is highly correlated with "fitness".

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Well, this kind of throws my whole theorum of full figured blonde girls out the window. [img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img] (sorry, I couldn't resist).

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An intelligent person who finds you "fit" is more likely to successfully convince you that you have found a full-figured blonde girl, even if the person is actually middle-aged, portly, and balding.

Re: Intellectual Abundance
 

Humanity is the universe trying to understand itself.

Re: Intellectual Abundance
 

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C'mon! We could get by on just a little over half as much intelligence that the average gibbon possesses.

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I doubt it. The world could not support the population without the aid of human intelligence. Diseases, hunger, etc. would simply kill us off and we would dwindle down to a few hundred million people if that. Seems like we need all the intelligence we can get.

That said, I grant you that the average person never faces intellectual challenges that affect our species' survival. However, some of us do, and the genes for this person have to come from somewhere. So the genes are spread throughout the population, from which certain individuals are born who do take on these issues. In short, we need a large mass of genes to produce the few of us who do take on these issues.

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What evolutionary purpose is served by our being intelligent enough to send one of our own to the moon?

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If humanity does not learn to colonize other worlds, it will certainly perish. Maybe not tomorrow, but in the context of billions of years its inevitable. Even if we attain a balance of resources, what about things like astroids, gamma outbursts, the fact that the Earth's oceans will eventually evaporate away, etc.

Re: Intellectual Abundance
 

What do we gain by having the intelligence to invent and partake in games like chess, or to calculate interplanetary distances, gravitional forces, to understand quantum mechanics, etc.,etc.? Why such an excess in potency of our main survival skill? Does anyone have any guesses?

In "The Age of Spritual Machines:, Kurzweil suggests that by the middle of this century we will have attained the ability to control the direction of our own evolution.

"and the evening and the morning was the eighth day" [img]/images/graemlins/cool.gif[/img]

Re: Intellectual Abundance
 

nice post lestat

Re: Intellectual Abundance
 

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What other purposes does evolution have in store for all this intelligence?

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I think it's just a big experiment, the outcome of which is not known yet. Dinosaurs represented the experiment of whether size and strength were the most important. Their eventual plight showed that the answer was "no". Now the grand jury in the sky, be it God, Mother Nature or whatever, is deliberating on whether extreme intelligence will be shown to be the ulitimate asset. So far it seems like it might be, but there are some areas of doubt.

We seem to be lacking overall purpose. Mere survival is trivially easy to accomplish while higher-level goals cannot be agreed upon. We have some duking out amongst ourselves to do before we can embark on the important mission of what's best for the human race.

Probably a major event or two that will serve to control the growth of (or maybe even reduce) the population of humans will be the necessary first step. The next step will depend on how the first step pans out.

Re: Intellectual Abundance
 

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In "The Age of Spritual Machines:, Kurzweil suggests that by the middle of this century we will have attained the ability to control the direction of our own evolution.

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By "our own evolution", do you mean humanity's cumulative evolution? Or evolution on an individual basis?

The telescoping nature of technological development is squeezing more and more advancement into smaller and smaller periods of time.
Soon we will be able to pick and choose these advancements to meet certain goals, much like a tech-tree for Real-Time strategy games, or even like researching things in X-COM.

Hell, we're already doing that, but our vision into the future is not all that clear.

Re: Intellectual Abundance
 

If you read the book you'd know that he believes that by the end of this century cybernetic enhancements to humans will be commonplace, enabling for example the ability to learn a language by a direct software download to the brain. Also, nano-technology will create the ability for humans to direct genetic change within themselves. This genetic change can be passed on so it's obviously macro in the evolutionary sense. Once we learn to manipulate our own genetic code, we can become whatever we must become to survive.

Re: Intellectual Abundance
 

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Yes, we developed our overly large brains for specific reasons and specialized survival purposes. But is the rest just frivolous fluff? Or do we continue to get smarter and integrate new knowledge and intellectual skills in our evolutionary development?

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If somewhere in our evolutionary history we started 'noticing' ( at the gene level, not intellectually) that smarter people left more offspring, then sexual selection will do the peacocks tail trick and start selecting for evidence of intelligence rather than the direct benefits of that intelligence.

That leads to an advantage to people that exhibit intelligence in a easily noticed way. Some (but only some) of the attraction of younger women to successful-seeming older men may be attributed to this factor.
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we developed our overly large brains for specific reasons and specialized survival purposes.

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What other purposes does evolution have in store for all this intelligence?

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I hope that's all just rhetorical. Future purpose is one thing that evolution does not factor in. How could it. Even current 'purpose' is a unhelpful way of looking at current features. Features aren't evolved 'for'.