Bad example?
Testies on the OUTSIDE!
steve
Bad examples of intelligent design?
by gringojj 62 Replies latest watchtower beliefs
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tetrapod.sapien
hey roy,
I just don't understand why evolution would produce a brain so complex that humans don't even use most of it?
this is not really true. i believe this urban legend that we only use a small portion of our brains, somehow got started in the 1920's and is still around. neuroscience shows that we use all of our brain.
I still don't accept that females preferred males with larger brains.
but this is exactly what makes so mch sense. why wouldn't a female prefer a smarter man. he would have been better at building tools, understanding his relationship with his environment and others better. he may even have had the ability to understand how to make fire, instead of warring with other tribes to steal it from them. he woulod have understood predators better. she would have felt safer with the paleolithic braniack, and therefore would have bred with him. also, at a certain point in early man's history, the smarter ones would have started to lead the others more efficiently, sharing brain power, and inventing things. so he would have even been more desireable. he would have been able to control the unity of the group by inventing stories for natural phenomenon. in short, it was the brains who invented god, LOL, but i digress.
there are lot's of good books on it. but even a critically aclaimed show like The Quest for Fire, by J.J. Anaud, is a brilliant and entertaining look at prehistory politics and brains.
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tetrapod.sapien
and actually, the human brain is a nice example of bad design.
over 6 million years, hominid brains grew in size in an amazing way. but in the last 30 000 years, the brain of homo sapien has shrunk somewhat, with only an increase in the cerebellum which allows people to process information faster.
however, the very fact that we experience emotions that do not aid us in survival or rational advancement, is a testiment to times long past. i mean what are emotions on an evolutionary level? they must have helped us back in pre history, but do they help us now? do they help us make scientific advancement, or do they get in the way causing all sorts of hatreds?
the brain is marvelous, don't get me wrong. but it seems like a lot of it is used for reactions that don't really do much for us anymore.
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hamsterbait
roybat -
I remember (vaguely my brain is another bad example), an Issue of New Scientist that discussed the effect on the brain and ability to stand upright of the "aquatic period" of human evolution.
Something to do with various nutrients found in the shell fish consumed.
Also the vegetarian animals on the plains would have a less difficult time adapting to changes in vegetation.
Homos had to be quick witted to work out new ways of staying alive as the climate changed quickly, they would have to be good at spotting new sources of food not seen before. Lack these skills and you died as a child before you could pass on any DNA.
HB
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FlyingHighNow
BODY HAIR
Brows help keep sweat from the eyes, and male facial hair may play a role in sexual selection, but apparently most of the hair left on the human body serves no function.
Naw, now that's not true. It's a very good ghost detector.
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roybatty
hey roy,
I just don't understand why evolution would produce a brain so complex that humans don't even use most of it?
this is not really true. i believe this urban legend that we only use a small portion of our brains, somehow got started in the 1920's and is still around. neuroscience shows that we use all of our brain.I have thought the same thing, that's it's this "urban legend" (i.e. Einstein only used 10% of his brain...etc..) If this were true, injuries to the brain wouldn't be so devastating.
I still don't accept that females preferred males with larger brains.
but this is exactly what makes so mch sense. why wouldn't a female prefer a smarter man. he would have been better at building tools, understanding his relationship with his environment and others better. he may even have had the ability to understand how to make fire, instead of warring with other tribes to steal it from them. he woulod have understood predators better. she would have felt safer with the paleolithic braniack, and therefore would have bred with him. also, at a certain point in early man's history, the smarter ones would have started to lead the others more efficiently, sharing brain power, and inventing things. so he would have even been more desireable. he would have been able to control the unity of the group by inventing stories for natural phenomenon. in short, it was the brains who invented god, LOL, but i digress.I guess I'm backing up a little further, before man waged wars or formed tribes. If our brains grew because of natural selection, wouldn't the rest of our body do the same? Wouldn't being faster and stronger also be a huge advantage? Why did we loose it while chimps and gorillas maintained it? And I hate to sound like a certain WT publication, but I still wonder how did we develop larger brains? I know, I know it's a long process but how does it happen? They're even finding out that it isn't just the size of the human brain that makes us differnt from our closest relative, the chimp, but also how our brain is wired. How did our brains become wired in such a way to allow us to use language?
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tetrapod.sapien
I guess I'm backing up a little further, before man waged wars or formed tribes. If our brains grew because of natural selection, wouldn't the rest of our body do the same? Wouldn't being faster and stronger also be a huge advantage? Why did we loose it while chimps and gorillas maintained it? And I hate to sound like a certain WT publication, but I still wonder how did we develop larger brains? I know, I know it's a long process but how does it happen? They're even finding out that it isn't just the size of the human brain that makes us differnt from our closest relative, the chimp, but also how our brain is wired. How did our brains become wired in such a way to allow us to use language?
like abaddon said, it was not really by natural selection alone. sexual selection was probably a major player, as we have already described to you.
let's also agree that this all took place over a very long period of time, like caedes brings out. now, lets talk briefly about dumb animals that are great at surviving. their brains are wired for survival via instinct, right? and once those wiring's are appreciated by females, they tend to show appreciation for those wiring's by choosing those particular males over other ones, to mate with. it's really a combo of natural selection and sexual selection. and so, you have some animals that are brilliant at hiding in order to survive, and have small brains. and then you have some animals that are brilliant at killing for survival, and still don't really have big, well wired brains like we do. they don't need those brains, because their physical abilities take care of the lack, as you bring out. so now, hominids: the common ancestor that we share with the Pan genus (eg: chimps) was by no means very intelligent. but for some reason, female Homos started valuing and appreciating smarter men, over millions of generations. why? it could be that we looked at ourselves, and realized that we really did not have much natural physical ability, and that we would have to make up for it. this wasn't a concious thought, it just happened. it could be that some natural occurrence forced us out of trees, or had to think fast for some reason. the males that thought quickly on their feet, were the ones that helped the females escape death, and therefore were valued. but ironically, it was probably the females that were the smartest, choosing, after all, the smartest of the males to mate with. it would have really started to sink in as the females looked back and saw the carcasses of the males that were kind of dense, and perhaps realized what they valued in a changing world. some more speculation (that's the problem with the historical sciences as opposed to the empirical ones like math) is that when vegetation became scarce for whatever reason, homo started following carnivores so they could scavenge off kills. this led to actually killing, and scientists think that this was a major selector in brain size too. it also favoured brains that, over time, were only slightly more adapted to communication. those few early homos that "got it", were probably the most powerful and influential pre tribe homos around. and so, they got the chicks. i mean, they were mean hunters, as they were better at working together. and guess what, so were their sons. looking at this period, perhaps just pre hunting period, when homo was just starting the scavenge: William Calvin, a neurobiologist at U. Washinton at Seattle notes that it all has to do with throwing a rock. larger brains would have been required to throw a rock accurately over long distances while coordinating muscles, visual targets the weight of objects. (source: Discover 07 05) so these are some of the early precursors to complex things such as language and symbolism. those parts of the brain came into existence due to other factors, but also translated well into areas that could be used for new abilities. like language. and now we're back at the paleolithic. so really, these things did not come into existence via a few mutations. but really came into existence over 6 million years. gradually. think of that time expanse. think about the average life span, as caedes brings out. think about things that could have happened during that period. it was a crazy cruel world. for some reason, we had satisfactory brains to begin with, but no real physical greatness that protected us. so females, started selecting traits in males based on the only things that we did have that were advantageous. our brains. meanwhile, our cousins in pan, stayed in the trees, or found other physical ways to survive. it's the luck of the draw, isn't it. i agree with you. it's almost mind boggling. almost. i mean hey, if we came from there, we'll be able to figure it out. i hope this helps.
humans are not the end all and be all of evolution. we are still at it. perhaps a future generation of species will okk at our brains and wonder how we ever survived for as long as we did. -
stevenyc
The appendix
It has no function, but is believed to be a "vestigal organ", the remains of a once functioning organ from our evolutionary past
steve
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Abaddon
Hi roy
My understanding of natural selection is that a creature with features that help it to survive and procreate have a better chance of passing along those features.
Correctomundo
I still don't accept that females preferred males with larger brains.
Ya don't have to. It's speculation as we don't know. But there are clear examples of females of other species influencing the development of the males of that species through sex-based selection, so the speculation is based on something. And remember, it wasn't the internal characteristic (large brain) that female humans would have shown a preference for, it was the external charcteristics - an intelligent communicative mate.
A process that would have ended up in the ability to say 'I love you' would have started out as a preference for males who could communicate their feelings to a potential mate in a clear and attractive manner.
Please realise the subtle interplay of different factors; evolution is not just one factor, it's many working together. For example, whatever it was that made our brains grow, grow they did. We have the fossil record showing us. Seperate to this was selection pressure on the gestation period and the female pelvic girdle. Human babies are born at a point where they can still fit through the females pelvis; they are born so early because any later and they wouldn't fit. If the female pelvis grew larger, then efficient bipedal locomotion would not be possible.
All these factors grow together, but it's not as though the big brain genes said to the pelvis girdle genes "hey, what size can you grow to without making women walk like ducks?" The end product of the process was us having helpless babies; if we were more like the chimps, we could gestate longer without the baby getting stuck.
However, super-wide pelvic girdle females had negative slection pressure due to their hindered gait, and any female who gestated too long to give birth to big brained headed babies died - a very powerful form of natural selection.
I just don't understand why evolution would produce a brain so complex that humans don't even use most of it? Why produce a brain that can split the atom when chimps and gorillas can survive with something so much less "evolved"?
Of course, there could be a god there in the background going 'shazam' at appropriate points. But we have theories that explain how complexity can arrise without complexity, as I have tried to give a taste of here. God has no theory to support him arrising without complexity.
I just don't understand why evolution would produce a brain so complex that humans don't even use most of it?
You are repeating an urban myth. There is no truth what-so-ever in the old story 'we only use 5% (or whatver) of our brains'. http://www.snopes.com/science/stats/10percnt.htm . This is the problem when you try to disprove or question evolutinary science with "a' level (as in Awake!) scientific knowledge. You have been set-up to believe in creation and are examining evolutionary theory without unlearning the erroneous or misleading information you absorbed over the years.
Why produce a brain that can split the atom when chimps and gorillas can survive with something so much less "evolved"?
As I have been trying to get over, intelligence in the form humans use it to develop technology was not what caused the development of human intelligence, otherwise dozens of species would have developed intelligence as a survival trait. Intelligence arrose in humans as a result of other selection pressures. It almost certainly caused a great change in human society when culture became verbally transmissable, as it allowed cultures to evolve along side the biological carriers of culture.
Once the brain had developed into a communicating machine that allowed cultural evolution, human intelligence became useful in a different way; as Einstein said (or was it Newton), 'we stand on the shoulders of giants'. Splitting the atom is something a 100,000 old member of the human race would probably have been able to do if they went to the right schools and were above average intelligence for their time, as there is no indication of any change in brains for 100,000 years - it's just cultural evoluton has progressed so the brains are progressively filled with more and more accurate data enabling further progress to be made building on all who went before.
I do hope I've shown in a nice way you simply need to learn about a subject before you try to disprove it.
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Abaddon
tetra
in the last 30 000 years, the brain of homo sapien has shrunk somewhat
Actually I think H. sapiens brain hasn't changed in size at all. H. neanderthal (which we now are pretty sure was H. neanderthal and not a sub-species of H. sapiens) had a larger brain, but we have no idea about it's operational efficiecny in comparison to ours (other than when we were side by side with neanderthalI they died out).
Or am I wrong? I draw a distinction between ancient H. sap and modern man, as there are differences especially around the sapiens and hidelbergensus boundary. But my understanding was anatomically modern sap has been around 100,000 years +.