[ExI] comments?

[William Flynn Wallace]

Maybe you are making an argument for the opposable thumb.   bill w

On Tue, Aug 11, 2020 at 6:21 AM John Clark via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

>
> On Tue, Aug 11, 2020 at 2:25 AM Rafal Smigrodzki via extropy-chat <
> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>
> > *### I am persuaded that the decisive cognitive innovation that
>> triggered the explosion in human intelligence was the evolution of the
>> ability to learn from other humans. Subsequent increases in brain size were
>> a downstream effect, with some sexual selection accelerating the change. *
>>
>
> I'm sure sexual selection was a factor but it's a factor in all species, however
> there must be something special about humans because only they have
> developed the sort of intelligence needed to have a technological
> civilization, and I think that special thing is bipedalism. It's not
> entirely clear what Evolutionary forces caused humans to walk upright, but
> whatever it was the paleontological evidence is clear that it happened
> before the explosive growth of brain size of our Hominid ancestors.
> Intelligence is expensive, about 20% of the bodies energy is use just to
> operate the brain and I think there is a limit on how much increased
> survival value you get from intelligence if you don't have arms and hands
> they can manipulate things, A zebra couldn't make or throw a spear even if
> it was as smart as Einstein, but 3 million years ago Lucy could walk
> upright almost as well as you were I can, but her brain was no larger than
> that of a chimpanzee. And it was at that point evolution went into high
> gear and the brain size of her species started to grow very very swiftly.
>
> John K Clark
>
>
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