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Heck, this one got me thinking...
Is intelligence really simply an accident of evolution? Isn't it influenced by both genetic and environmental factors? Isn't intelligence relative and therefore measurable?
Meanwhile, I kind of, vaguely, understand that intelligence is not necessarily an advantage... or is it?
Food for thought

Ryo1 8 Dec 19
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9 comments

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1

With food like that the taste of thought is vapid not sapid.

2

Success may be defined in a number of ways. Homo sapiens have arisen to the top of the food chain, however we have only been around for maybe a few hundred thousand years—a small blip in the history of our planet—so it’s probably too early to claim success for our species.

There can be little doubt that cleverness conferred a survival advantage, but will it be enough in the long run? All the intelligence in the world may not save us from our own self-destructive behaviors, or perhaps the next comet or meteor that extinguishes nearly all life on the planet.

And putting on my political science hat, intelligence is not necessarily the best quality in a democracy, particularly when the majority of the electorate do not value intelligence as a positive attribute.

3

Since the ignorant and stupid have more children than intelligent people, l would say we are in deep shit!

6

Evolution has no preferred outcome.
It's about what traits are passed on to the offspring of a species.
If you're dead you no longer get to pass the genes that define those traits.
For example, lets say there's a pandemic and the least intelligent refuse to take reasonable precautions so many of them die off. This could affect the overall intelligence of the population as the more intelligent survive to mate with the surviving relatives of the dead. However if the pandemic mostly kills older members of the species that are past breeding age then the stupid genes will still be passed on because the disease didn't conceptually "sort" the species for traits other than old age.

Species like koala found evolutionary advantage in their low metabolic rate, and intelligence requires a lot of energy because brains consume a lot of energy. Consequently koala are so stupid they will starve in a room full of food because they can only recognize food if it's still attached to a eucalyptus tree. The koala is so stupid that when it shits it shits in cubes, every other species knows that if you shit like that it's uncomfortable, yet koala are an obviously successful species.

Other species like pandas decided ages ago to become vegan. Pandas are related to bears and their ancestors were as omnivorous as any existing bears are now, but for some reason they went vegan and now they're on the brink of extinction.

In elephants every time a bull grew up with great big tusk a human would kill the bull for it's tusk before it could reproduce and now bull elephants with large tusk aren't occurring as often as they once were.

This is why selective breeding is so much more of an evolutionary force than natural selection giving us hairless cats and dog breeds that have no chance of survival in the wild, their survival is based on the whims of a species of ape that has members so stupid that they don't take reasonable precautions during pandemics.

When the "dumb" blond and the "jock" became the sexual pentacle of our species it was a bad thing but probably not as bad as the time humans were horny for fat people. To be fat you have to have enough resources to get fat, so fat was an indicator of wealth. Normal people worked the fields and were thin and sun darkened, but in the 1600's the most desirable women were flabby fish belly white divas with obvious resources. Now in the 21st century western civilization is hampered by a population of fat out of shape people. Humans have reached the stage of evolution where fads can determine which way evolution takes us. So when all the "sexy" people are stupid because smart people are "nerds" becomes fully realized reality our species is in danger of going the way of the koala. As surly as when "sexy" people were fat and out of shape we were in danger of going the way of Fat Albert.

What you want to fuck has as much to do with evolution as what could kill you in less civilized times.

"The sexual pentacle of our species" and star-crossed lovers at the pinnacle of culm.

2

I think it is for other species, and used to be for humans. Not sure I believe that to be true anymore. Seems as though the skill of being convincingly deceptive is far more advantageous. We live in a post-truth world now where 'elite' and 'ivy-league' have become insults. Strictly evolutionarily speaking, the unintelligent reproduce at a far greater rate, so it would seem to be a disadvantage from that perspective, the cause of which one could only speculate, but Mike Judge makes some interesting guesses and predictions in Idiocracy.

3

It is an accurate quote and many successful organisms aren't intelligent.

Odd. I thought it was referring to intra-species intelligence, now I'm not sure.

1

IQ is the score I get on an IQ test.

I score high on such tests and much depends on how I use to my intelligence. I can get people really stirred. For instance, my saying the Big Bang story is a big fraud stirs up some people here.

1

Are you sure Asimov said that?

If so, that's one of his worst quotes.

BD66 Level 8 Dec 19, 2021

Your reason tor saying so?

@yvilletom Intelligence is a huge advantage. It's why humans are thriving and have multiplied at a rate the far exceeds all the other species on the planet.

@BD66 Ask the web what the most numrerous species is. I just did and got the reply “It is estimated that the most numerous bacteria are of a species of the Pelagibacterales (or SAR11) clade, perhaps Pelagibacter ubique, and the most numerous viruses are bacteriophages infecting these species.[17] It is estimated that the oceans contain about 2.4 × 1028 (24 billion billion billion) SAR11 cells.[18]”

@yvilletom Humans have multiplied more rapidly than almost any other species over the past 1000 years. The primary reason is our intelligence.

@BD66 Please identify your source.

@yvilletom OK [ourworldindata.org]

@BD66 Yes, but it is not always and advantage. Many creatures, especially parasites, have probably lost some intelligence, since brains are expensive to run, and sometimes the economic gains out weigh the behavioral advantages. And now that humans are becoming increasingly parasitic on our own technology ? Well who knows ? But there is some limited evidence that our brains started to shrink, following the agricultural revolution, when the ability to survive on lower value food became more important, and a celibate life may have become attractive to the more intelligent. See also JeffMurray who puts the idea in more simple terms.

@Fernapple Then you have the Harvey Danger take on it:

Been around the world and found
That only stupid people are breeding

@BD66 Ok, “...almost any other species.... “

1

Is this necessary? We have so many better things to do in life. This Asimov guy is a good journalist but this is for the academic community.

One doens't have to be academic to ponder on stuff like this. Moreover, intelligence is not limited to academic knowledge.

????
It’s for anyone who wants it.

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