Ray Peat podcast...interesting!

[cherimoya_kid]

If it were indeed true that mammals naturally evolve larger brains, then I would have expected a different, non-hominid species to have at least gotten somewhere near our level of intelligence...

Give it time.  It might still happen.

And primates eat all kinds of different diets, from mostly-carnivorous, like tarsiers, to almost vegan, like gorillas.  It's ridiculous to act like diet has anything to do with primates developing larger brains, given that wide variation in primate diets.

[TylerDurden]

Give it time.  It might still happen.

And primates eat all kinds of different diets, from mostly-carnivorous, like tarsiers, to almost vegan, like gorillas.  It's ridiculous to act like diet has anything to do with primates developing larger brains, given that wide variation in primate diets.

  I don't buy it. Evolutionary pressure improves survival and intelligence does not necessarily promote survival. Indeed, many animals are far more evolved than us(ie containing far more complex DNA etc. than us) yet have no appreciable intelligence. Plus, if intelligence was so easily achievable, one would have to assume that the Earth would already have been contacted by sentient aliens ages ago(after all, radio communication started over a century ago, so any sentient civilisation within 50 light years or so should have contacted  us by now).

[cherimoya_kid]

Geoff, reptiles were developing larger and larger brains tens of millions of years ago.  It was a clear progression toward larger brains in dinosaur evolution.  Also, you completely ignored my point that primates eat many different types of diets.

As far as aliens, do you bother talking to the bacteria in your colon? No?  Why would you expect beings that can travel faster than lightspeed to bother contacting us, then?  Think about it...they are more likely to study us like we study lab rats, not TALK to us like we're their equals. ROFL

[TylerDurden]

Re aliens:- you do have a partial point, that aliens likely have no beneficial interest in us. That said, if they view us as lab-rats, then it would be highly likely that they would treat us in the same way as humans treat other species - in other words, by now, they would have wiped us out or grabbed most of the Earth's surface and kept the few, remaining humans in zoos, or kept humans as pets or domesticated animals ( neutering the majority of us like humans do to their pets).

Re reptiles:- I was under the impression that reptiles, being cold-blooded had natural limits as to how big their brains could grow.

Interesting link that claims that bigger brains did not evolve due to higher intelligence being selected for, but due to a better sense of smell etc.:-

http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2011/05/mammals-big-brains-began-with-a-.html

[Raw Kyle]

Hit it Raw, I think my analogy stands because even though humans are consciously designing engines for a fuel source their knowledge of what works is limited, especially in the beginning. So the first combustion engine was essentially trial and error, and future designers kept the parts that worked (analogous to beneficial mutations) while discarding ones that didn't (natural selection). While engineers probably believe that an engine they designed cannot run on a better fuel than they had in my I think it's pretty reasonable to say that in the vast possibilities of the universe there are probably some fuel mixtures, maybe similar or maybe very different, that would run as good or better. It just so happens that because of the availability of materials and how the human brain works we ended up with what we have.

Similarly things like refined sugar and aspiring weren't around during intensively naturally selective times in human history, but although we weren't selected for them by use that doesn't preclude them from working well.