Do You BELIEVE there is life outside Earth?

[KerikBalm]

Back then (neolithic), people had to master so many crafts and plan for so many contingencies. If an adult wasn't a master of all the technology of the time, they at least understood it. Stability to society brought with it the ability to get by with hard work and obedience, with only enough intelligence needed to execute orders/directions. As civilization grew people could specialize in one area - they could learn less in total and invent less in total, and still advance our tech level. Likewise, as the population grows exponentially, you have exponentially more chances for people to have a unique insight/inventive idea/ be simply exceptionally intelligent without the average intelligence increasing. With these factors in mind, the average intelligence could drop quite a bit and we'd still see rapid technological progress as knowledge accumulates, people specialize, and the population simply grows.

[magnemoe]

5 hours ago, HebaruSan said:

With all respect to Mr. Ball and his service, it's misleading to represent those as his verbatim words. From the introduction to that book:

"Mr. Fisher, (the author) intimates in his preface, what is, indeed, sufficiently obvious from the felicity of his style, that the language of the book is not that of the unlettered slave, whose adventures he records. A similar intimation might with equal propriety have been given, in reference to the various profound and interesting reflections interspersed throughout the work." (And so on.)

Who's this Mr. Fisher?   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Ball
"After several escapes and recaptures, he wrote his autobiography with the help of the white lawyer Isaac Fisher."

So your "uneducated slave" had a lawyer at the very least editing that text, if not writing it for him based on his speech. Of course it sounds good. I can't find much more info about Mr. Fisher, but I would hazard a guess that he was an abolitionist with every reason to want to see Mr. Ball represented positively in print (after all, why else would he have taken on the project?). Guess how many lawyers are helping the typical blogger proofread?

There's also the confounding effect of dialect drift over time, with older sources tending to sound more formal and proper because they use archaic vocabulary and grammar. I think this is why the King James Bible can sound particularly authoritative and elegant to us now.

At the risk of triggering a debate over the validity of IQ tests, the data that we have on this indicates an aggregate increase of 2-3 IQ points per decade.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flynn_effect

Regarding inventions in different time periods, the experiment is missing a control group. We don't face the same set of opportunities and prior art that they did. Invent a typewriter now and you'll get at most a hearty laugh.

Thanks it was the Flynn effect I referred to.
Reasons is as stated, better health and food, and no the food 200 years ago was far worse than now unless rich. 
Also better education and familiarity with tests. 
It also makes sense that the effect has stopped the last generation as the effects are used up, 

Its the general march of the moron idea I fight here, yes it was obviously lots of smart people before too obviously.
however high intelligence has never been an important selection criteria. on the other hand being very stupid is an negative one. 

[Green Baron]

<provocation>

I'd strongly consider the Flynn effect an artefact. It doesn't reflect an actual increase in intelligence(*), which is most probably not existent. Here often education is mixed with actual problem solving abilities. That the effect has stopped is just an evidence that this is exactly so. Take the education away and you end up with probably less problem solving abilities than before because few actually learnt to solve a problem, repair something, find a way, calculate numbers in the mind, remember dates, times, places, communicate, work together ...

Take the mobile phones away and see how they try to communicate . Really ...

In evolution terms: The Flynn effect, it it existed, is not an adaptation inherited to the next generation, but a modification in the individuals at lifetime.

 

Half of the community might beat me now, but i find a general problem in all things social and psychological is that gathering of data, evaluation and analysis is far too much influenced by the people who carry it through and often contradict the primacy of repeatability, if you know what i mean :-) Do social sciences execute that primacy at all ?

I'd also, as others have stated before, consider the problem solving abilities of our ancestors (pre industrial) in general superior to ours, individuals might stick out, as has always been the case. If this is built-in intelligence or "just" education, idk, but, as we all know (he, manipulative :-)), you can't teach an old dog new tricks. Germans are more direct: "What little Jack has not learnt, old Jack will never learn". Yeah yeah, a generalization, but actually in many cases observable.

</provocation>

 

Topic: This point has been a theme in humorous scifi literature, namely Stanislaw Lem (and probably others), that people with a high technological level might get so self-satisfied that the interest in the environment and further development dwindles. The window for communication closes.

 

(*) how valid are IQ tests at all ?

Edited November 15, 2017 by Green Baron

[WinkAllKerb'']

46 minutes ago, Green Baron said:

snip () , )

 

(*) how valid are IQ tests at all ?

there are valid in the sens they make work some peops and some industry ; ) somehow ; ) still they may sometime lack some layers(s)(ssss)(sssssssssssssssss) accuracies

they gonna hate me again and a gain 'sigh', nevermind used to it any ways

Edited November 15, 2017 by WinkAllKerb''

[Green Baron]

4 minutes ago, WinkAllKerb'' said:

they gonna hate me again and a gain 'sigh', nevermind used to it any ways

Nobody hates you :-)

[GoSlash27]

2 hours ago, Green Baron said:

In evolution terms: The Flynn effect, it it existed, is not an adaptation inherited to the next generation, but a modification in the individuals at lifetime.

This, and I've seen other studies that say the average IQ in western countries is decreasing, and for the same reasons as in Idiocracy.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2730791/Are-STUPID-Britons-people-IQ-decline.html

 I'm not claiming that people are getting dumber, but I do disagree with the notion that they are smarter today than they were 200 years ago.

Best,
-Slashy

[PB666]

3 hours ago, Green Baron said:

<provocation>

I'd strongly consider the Flynn effect an artefact. It doesn't reflect an actual increase in intelligence(*), which is most probably not existent. Here often education is mixed with actual problem solving abilities. That the effect has stopped is just an evidence that this is exactly so. Take the education away and you end up with probably less problem solving abilities than before because few actually learnt to solve a problem, repair something, find a way, calculate numbers in the mind, remember dates, times, places, communicate, work together ...

Take the mobile phones away and see how they try to communicate . Really ...

In evolution terms: The Flynn effect, it it existed, is not an adaptation inherited to the next generation, but a modification in the individuals at lifetime.

 

Half of the community might beat me now, but i find a general problem in all things social and psychological is that gathering of data, evaluation and analysis is far too much influenced by the people who carry it through and often contradict the primacy of repeatability, if you know what i mean :-) Do social sciences execute that primacy at all ?

I'd also, as others have stated before, consider the problem solving abilities of our ancestors (pre industrial) in general superior to ours, individuals might stick out, as has always been the case. If this is built-in intelligence or "just" education, idk, but, as we all know (he, manipulative :-)), you can't teach an old dog new tricks. Germans are more direct: "What little Jack has not learnt, old Jack will never learn". Yeah yeah, a generalization, but actually in many cases observable.

</provocation>

 

Topic: This point has been a theme in humorous scifi literature, namely Stanislaw Lem (and probably others), that people with a high technological level might get so self-satisfied that the interest in the environment and further development dwindles. The window for communication closes.

 

(*) how valid are IQ tests at all ?

I don't have mobile phone, don't face, don't tweet.  All of this stuff is brain pollution.

As far as psychological behavioral analysis I think the field would agree with you on much of the work done in the past. But now its possible to look in peoples brains. One of the things that they are finding is the areas of the brain triggered by drug use are the same areas of the brain triggered by some of these 'new-age' foods and cell phones and gambling machines. The responses fail to be planned or thought out but more or less tend to be compulsion and even if they don't enjoy the addition these compulsions can be turned on by stimuli within the environment (for example information sent to your cell phone that you are unaware of).

The software programmers are very well aware of this, they create games and apps with periodic messaging and rewards there are designed to ping the addition centers in order to retain interest.

As far as twilight societies, this always happens, and you don't need cell phones. The growth of wealth and power in society . . frequently has a downer effect. One of the greatest compulsions to learn math if you are poor is to be able to market items in order to stay alive (for instance a street vendor), you don't technically need schools to learn math.

These 21st century culture is more or less a method of compelling people to accept what corporate America wants them to be. You don't fix your car anymore, don't know what a spark plug or the oil drain plug is, you buy a cell phone but then you don't actually use the phone, everything is text or face, don't drive the car cause you are busy facing or tweeting (so you need a self-driving car). You store everything on your laptop, which really great for computer industry cause laptops and cell phones get replaced every two years, rather than 6  to 10 years like desktop. Of course you need to bundle your cable with high-speed internet and cell phone service (family of 4 may 250$/month). Ten years ago I paid 40$ a month for internet and phone service. People don't cook, they eat out or buy prepackaged food in which they have no idea how much sugar and salt is in it (More than half of Americans now suffer from some form of diabetes or high blood pressure). Then you have to buy the drugs to treat the illnesses, surgeries to treat carpul tunnel syndrome.  Then get gastric bypass surgery to treat the obesity. If we exclude the raw resource price of food and gas/electricity required to cook it, basic cost of TV and telephone service, what we see is the variable costs of living are rising at the same time wages are not rising which explains why people are not saving. People don't do their own gardening, its not even an Americans, its better fit people from Guatamala.

When I look at my fellow Americans what I see is people pointing at other people, this is not just one side, its all sides. But often they point at a problem that other group has, that they themselves have, and/or their offspring. Americans are certainly smarter than 100 years ago, but there is a certain social sense that is failing them. Just look at some of the harassment related things in the news, seriously.

 

[Green Baron]

Ok, now we scoffed at a whole branch of science and the most promising wealth we have, the younger generation. Let's wait for the mob with the pitchforks.

"Statler, err @PB666, let's go."

I still don't believe in life outside earth, but i eagerly await the new generation of telescopes with ludicrous resolution :-)

Edited November 15, 2017 by Green Baron

[PB666]

To be fair the field of sociobiology is pretty self critical, young generations of Ph.D.s can't wait to show how the woes of the older generation, after all thats how you make new grants and get money.
As far as the young generation is concerned. If its longer than a tweet then it must be in a foreign language.

 

[Diche Bach]

On 11/14/2017 at 7:41 PM, HebaruSan said:

At the risk of triggering a debate over the validity of IQ tests, the data that we have on this indicates an aggregate increase of 2-3 IQ points per decade.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flynn_effect

The more people take tests, the better they get at passing them.

We have no idea what "intelligence" is. I say this as  Ph.D. in psychological anthropology. Is there such a thing? Absolutely, in fact probably thousands, perhaps even hundreds of thousands of "things." But when we compare the "intelligence" construct to other constructs in psychology or psychobiology, it is clear that "inteligence" is one of the least agreed on. There are dozens of models and none of them can be considered to be predominant.

Another topic brought up recently: education. The value of that particular endeavour is currently in dispute. Presently in the U.S. something like 60% of all college graduates are performing occupational roles with minimum educational requirements below those they have attained. It seems to me that an education system whose core design is based on medieval religious scholarly societies MIGHT be a bit overdue for some major revolutions in a world that is now decidedly secular, computer-based and networked.

Someone else in a recent post mentioned that "we can see inside the brain." Yes, but our resolution (when I was last up-to-date, so there may be cutting edge developments underway of which I'm unaware) and synthetic analytic abilities remain insufficient to truly "see" the mind in action. We are probably within a couple decades of major breakthroughs in functional brain scanning, but complete fruition of the methods to the point where the psychobiologists have something truly useful to offer to the psychometricians might be 50 years away.

ADDIT: and one last comment to my fellow old foagies: I suspect that "Millenials" are not nearly so homogeneous and ADD as some of you allude. Based on some 15 years of teaching experience, I developed a seat of the pants model of students: a "Rule of Thirds." In most classes, students will all belong in one of three thirds: 1. Exceptionally engaged, exceptionally focused,  bright, promising and exhilarating; 2. Varying, though with solid performance enough of the time to warrant B and even A level performance; 3. Largely disengaged and failing to realize their potential. A few manage to apply themselves enough to get into the B range, but most wind up with final performance assessments distributed across C, D F letter grades.

Edited December 9, 2017 by Diche Bach

[YNM]

@Diche Bach Intelligence, indeed, is done by comparing. Hence why people sometimes point out how "boring" "education" is by how similar it still is to the past and how uniform they are.

 

Truth is, they aren't. It all depends on what you're comparing it with...

 

But yeah. It's one of the reason why I still think evolution theories are badly lacking : mind and inteligence. Jumping from great apes in cooling baths onto mountaineering bipeds is not a small change, it could be bigger than growing a leg. I guess progress will have to be done from both ends : the theory and the observation.

[kerbiloid]

4 minutes ago, YNM said:

Intelligence, indeed, is done by comparing.

Very roughly, imho. Only composing clusters of obviously wise and clever ones ("upper marginals"), more-or-less clever ones ("normal") and hopelessly stupid morons ("lower marginals").

10 minutes ago, YNM said:

think evolution theories are badly lacking : mind and inteligence.

The evolution doesn't need the whole herd/tribe to be clever. "Chief"/"Manager", "Shaman"/"IT specialist" and 3-5 "Elders"/"Engineers" are enough.

[PB666]

2 hours ago, YNM said:

@Diche Bach Intelligence, indeed, is done by comparing. Hence why people sometimes point out how "boring" "education" is by how similar it still is to the past and how uniform they are.

 

Truth is, they aren't. It all depends on what you're comparing it with...

 

But yeah. It's one of the reason why I still think evolution theories are badly lacking : mind and inteligence. Jumping from great apes in cooling baths onto mountaineering bipeds is not a small change, it could be bigger than growing a leg. I guess progress will have to be done from both ends : the theory and the observation.

Human intelligence is self-defined. To the victors go the spoils of war. If you want to go into paleoanthropology its called the encephalization quotient. Somewhere about 1 mabp hominids achieved half of the human value, about 350,000 years ago homo heidelbergensis/rhodesiensis achieved an EQ not-statistically different from our own. So from objective criteria intelligence and civilization are not well correlated with time or EQ.

What we commonly refer to as intelligence is more or less events that have occurred since the end of the last ice-age, and it largely the result of an expansive global population (something to begin with humans had little control over, although now it appears we have faulted the climate cycle and ended the transition from the mini-ice age into a full fledged ice age). The intelligence, IQ, that typically gets ranked has really more to do with socialization and communication than anything else. [Although I dare say that in the information age good information appears to be a premium]. Civilization in and of itself appears to have been problematic. During the Mesolithic-Neolithic boundary in Europe denoted by the demarcation of the dolmen and LBK cultures, the Mesolithic peoples were eating a better diet, longer lived, better bones, healthier. In the case it would appear that having more children beats having a better or more stable culture. As is the case the LBK cultures eventually collapsed, but in their wakes more resilient culture and waves of settlers came from S.Europe and Mediterranean with waves of new technology and eventually cultural replacement occurs. In fact if one looks at the historical record and historical archaeology the one consistent feature is that dominant intelligence culture of the period essentially collapse, often for internal reasons sometimes for external. We can take the zoroastrian culture, during the period of its expansion it was one of the most progressive cultures of its time, the magi became the teachers of kings well outside the area of Persian domination (these were well sought after teachers, similar to the oracles of ancient egypt). But look at the culture now, its virtually vanished from Persia, Iraq, Near East, Afganistan, Pakistan. When we talk about the emphasis of monotheism in the bible it largely is due to the influence of the Magi. 

Collective intelligence is not really about a people or civilization, as we inspect the near eastern cultures one can see that over time apex of western 'intelligence' flowed from place to place, first from Anatolia to Egypt and Mesopotamia, then to Greece and Persia, then Italy, then back across Asia and back into Italy and into the heart of Europe (with the break down of centralized religion) and then into the Americas. Centralization of control appears to be rather counter productive to the growth of modern intelligence, collective intelligence tends to flow to where it can essentially rule itself (sort of like the schools of the ancient Greek philosophers . . . and of course we know what happened to Socrates when he question the politics of his time).  The point is that no-one really owns it, if one society takes a ludite view  to science and technology (or is ruled by insecure autocrats), the apex of intelligence simply moves, some of the motion follows genetics, but alot is just flow of ideas and retrospectives on failure as the stepping stone of next apex. (We can see for instance very astronomical growth of science and technology in the East: Japan, Korea, China!!!, Vietnam, Indonesia, Taiwan. A child of the south, it is very well apparent in our system of education why the US is falling behind and Asian (non-x-ian societies are moving upwards). When I talk to my Asian friends none of them put the obstacles in front of their child's education that typical native born southerns do.   But given that communal intelligence is not necessarily genetic, if you are in proximity to an apex, the access to the intelligence increases markedly, its just no a guarantee that the intelligence of the geographically defined culture will pass to the next generation efficiently. 

I used to review alot of manuscripts from china, two decades ago the quality of submitted manuscripts was terrible, over time the number of papers submitted increased 20 fold and the quality greatly improved. With alot of plagiarization but in plagiarizing other papers it does mean that the authors are at least familiar with what  good argument is, that they choose to organize their logic according to something that has already worked. The improved science in china in the last 20 years would reflect 50 years of science evolution in the west for decades earlier.

So basically what would happen if humans and another less intelligent species came in contact, if that culture was capable of learning from humans it could advance in intelligence quickly. If that culture was not capable of learning, even if energy was put into the process then I would argue it was not capable of human intelligence. For that intelligence to persist in subsequent generations requires a genetically encoded facility to learn. Thus if the intelligence does not stick between at least one generation, it was not intelligence, just mirroring behaviors. Again how do we define intelligence, well put KSP in front of them and see if they get a kick-out-of building rockets and watching them blow up. That rise in blood pressure that happens trying to see if you have enough dV to reach orbit, or whether you began your landing burn soon enough. If that individual is putting stress on the bodies system in order to learn then the facility probably exists.

Edited December 9, 2017 by PB666

[GoSlash27]

3 hours ago, YNM said:

But yeah. It's one of the reason why I still think evolution theories are badly lacking : mind and inteligence. Jumping from great apes in cooling baths onto mountaineering bipeds is not a small change, it could be bigger than growing a leg. I guess progress will have to be done from both ends : the theory and the observation.

YNM,

 That's the thing about theories; there's always room for improvement.

The fact that there are so few intelligent species on this planet despite all the biodiversity and time leads me to conclude that intelligence is simply not something that natural selection tends to select for. Thus... the higher apes and humans must've developed the hardware for intelligence as a byproduct of some other selection, and only after began to breed to select higher intelligence.

 If that's the case then it's reasonable to conclude that, while life may be abundant on other planets, intelligent life is liable to be a fluke just as it is here.

Best,
-Slashy

[magnemoe]

33 minutes ago, GoSlash27 said:

YNM,

 That's the thing about theories; there's always room for improvement.

The fact that there are so few intelligent species on this planet despite all the biodiversity and time leads me to conclude that intelligence is simply not something that natural selection tends to select for. Thus... the higher apes and humans must've developed the hardware for intelligence as a byproduct of some other selection, and only after began to breed to select higher intelligence.

 If that's the case then it's reasonable to conclude that, while life may be abundant on other planets, intelligent life is liable to be a fluke just as it is here.

Best,
-Slashy

I say its questionable, plenty of pretty smart animals who know that would happening in 20 million years without humans. 
As I understand we got smart because at some point we got smart enough to change how we interacted, it became more an issue of social skills over raw strength. 
As PB666 says this was more an million years ago, you get some followers and you dispose the alpha in pack. And the result was that few wanted to mate an fool, we ended up smarter than we needed to be 350K years ago we was around as smart we are now but did not have the technology to use it, that would be the next step.
Language is also an major issue might well be the primarily driver, behind we getting smarter.

Now for my pet theory, humans are very good in large scale organization, this was pretty random, no reasons why it should evolve among hunter gatherers, it became critical once you made civilizations. 
You lack this and you would be stuck in an iron age village at best and it would take a long time getting there. 

Life is probably common, advanced cells are rare, intelligence is obviously rarer. Civilizations are incredible rare, now and aliens can easy run into issues we avoided. 

 

 

[GoSlash27]

57 minutes ago, magnemoe said:

I say its questionable, plenty of pretty smart animals who know that would happening in 20 million years without humans. 

magnemoe,

 We know what was going on for the 500 million years before hominids arrived; nothing. All of the higher- order animals have evolved to become stronger, faster, better- able to feed and reproduce... but they have never gotten *smarter*. If intelligence was a simple product of evolution (selected for), then there would be lots of intelligent species on this planet. 

Best,
-Slashy

Edited December 9, 2017 by GoSlash27

[PB666]

2 hours ago, magnemoe said:

I say its questionable, plenty of pretty smart animals who know that would happening in 20 million years without humans. 
As I understand we got smart because at some point we got smart enough to change how we interacted, it became more an issue of social skills over raw strength. 
As PB666 says this was more an million years ago, you get some followers and you dispose the alpha in pack. And the result was that few wanted to mate an fool, we ended up smarter than we needed to be 350K years ago we was around as smart we are now but did not have the technology to use it, that would be the next step.
Language is also an major issue might well be the primarily driver, behind we getting smarter.

Now for my pet theory, humans are very good in large scale organization, this was pretty random, no reasons why it should evolve among hunter gatherers, it became critical once you made civilizations. 
You lack this and you would be stuck in an iron age village at best and it would take a long time getting there. 

Life is probably common, advanced cells are rare, intelligence is obviously rarer. Civilizations are incredible rare, now and aliens can easy run into issues we avoided. 

 

 

Language is a problem for the intelli-genesis. The one major reason is that we don't actually know when grammatical language evolved, it was likely very long ago. There are predictions ranging from (50) 125 kabp to 1 Mapb (even 2.6 Mabp). To be certain Turkana Boy likely had a language much more sophisticated than chimpanzees. And it should be noted that somewhere between 2.1 and 1.8 M years ago turkana's ancestral population had members that ventured out an survived in places like China, the Caucasus, Indonesia (which appears to include Flores Island). When we talk about humans and our manipulative behavior a key hallmark of that behavior is to explore new habitats and exploit them creating the necessary technologies and educating other tribe members. They had it, in fact if we ask the question about what happened to the asian variants of H. erectus, at least one of the answers lies in the mitochondria of Desinovan late archaic that shares common recent genetic ancestry with Indonesians (the node is about 8%). So they had enough language to qualify them as mates for people who did speak human language. Its not clear that there was sufficient enough gene flow from africa to Asia in the 1 to 2 million year period to justify unidirectional geneflow of language from Africa to Asia. (So either they develope language independently or it existed 0.5 million years before Turkana Boy.

If you are looking for major differences between Turkana boy and Tuang Child (2.8 Mabp) you will find differences in the size of the calvara but not much else, and more importantly Tuang lived in africa at a time we first start seeing stone tool use increase (2.6 Mabp) over and above what other apes use. The importance is that the same parts of the brain used for language are also used for tool synthesis. One of the articles that studied Tuang child basically identified some slight enlargment of the Broca's region of the brain not seen in parallel or earlier lines of hominids. This area is also responsible for motor skills involved in action recognition and reproduction, something very beneficial for tool production.

So that a good guess is that an increase in crafting skills was associated with improved language over what we observe in chimpanzees and gorillas. This was followed be increases in stature of homo erectus and then increases in EQ and areas devoted by language and logic.

The process occurred rather quickly in the animal kingdom which had and EQ of 2.5 going into the process and 7.5 leaving the process in  period of 3 million years. 

OK the next reason is why. There are a couple of base reasons, between the time of gorillas and chimpanzees,  protohumans may have engaged in panspermy, that is bonobo-like mating arrangements (make love not war). Humans and chimps are certainly a departure from gorilla-like (Winner takes all, though this is in question). Panspermy increases the rate of evolution in males and the study of human-chimpanzee Y reveals a rapid acceleration of evolution. The second reason why is the movement of Miocene anthropoid apes from Asia to Africa about 10 million years ago, the rate of evolution of apes baseline mutation rate is higher in the tropics.
A third reason is about 2.5 million years ago there was a shift in the periodicity of climate cycles from short brief cycles to cycles that lasted many 10s of 1000s of years. This began to dry the climate of Africa and create more complex habitats. Water was no longer widely available, and animals became migratory. So there was a push in the change in mutation rates and a pull in the forces of selection. Despite the current modern appearance Africa continued to be the driving force human evolution even after humans left Africa, this is probably due to the hominid-technology level carrying capacity of Africa during the ice ages. Gene flow appears to generally have been from Africa outward on multiple occasions after 1.8 Mabp although counter flow is likely. Some of the most genetically isolated areas on the planet are still in Africa with still buried pockets of long-held diversity. An example of this is the recently discovered Y-chromosomal 'Adam' chromosome in an African American male whose ancestors came from central Africa. All of these signs present Africa as both a genetic and cultural pulse that at first occurred at period of 100,000s of years and later 10,000s of years. So looking at Modern Europeans there are signals of egression from the horn of Africa, from the middle east, from Morocco and as far and east as Nigeria, even within the isolate Irish population you see signs of recent contribution from West Africa. Within Asia's the highest signal from neanderthals comes from middle-east/NE Africa is found in Japanese. Later middle eastern contribution was diluted by African migration since 80000 years ago. So this is basically the intelligence pre-technology. One oddity in the data the first pottery is from the sea of Japan, but there appears to been some pottery in Africa and some form of math before 10,000 years ago. One of the ironies is that Spain, which had the last signs of Neanderthals have just about the lowest percentage of Neanderthal genes compared to other Eurasians. Spain genetically looks more like an extension of Africa than of Europe. The signs of late paleolithic African migration are far reaching including India, Pakistan, the Turkic people (but not Japanese), Australia, Indonesia Taiwan aboriginal population and even Pacific islanders. Thus each migration from Africa may have brought better mobility technologies. This is on top of technologies that allowed people to travel over the Wallace line 1.3 million years ago (in Indonesia). Its not surprising that Egyptian civilization, with an emphasis on the Nile was the first great civilization.

So in the perspective we need :
Millions of years (at least 3) and  a good baseline species
An environment that forces evolution and promotes new forms of selection
[Optional] Some sort of brain-tying of language-to-technology allowing for bipartite selection on one benefiting the other.
Places for technology to travel to and be shared.
A development of travel/trade technologies (very much favors trading but also hoarding trees-rollers- to build magnificent monoliths)
With trade comes a need for math skills
With trade comes the need for negotiating and record keeping (How many oxen do you owe me after I sold you ten carts of wheat).
With record keeping comes writing, laws, proclamations, manuscripts, papers, journals, science. . . . . . . .
--- Success of the individual in commerce being tied to success of society (efficient economies tend to build successful societies)
--- Success of the individual in matters of state and religion ~ sometimes ~ beign tied to long term success of societies.

3 million years ago it would have been very difficult to predict when a naked-ape would generate the critical mass to become sophisticated, even 100 kya it would have been difficult, there were signs (blombos cave). This is the period with the greatest change in EQ, but civilization was not inevitable, around 12,000 years ago, when you see the cultivation of rye in Greece and turkey ....and also the first carvings of the Sphinx. You can look at South America, virtually unoccupied 14000 years ago, by 12,000 years ago scientist find the remains of plants, the overwhelming majority of which are now cultivated as crops and have been so for 8000 years. 16,000 years ago in Japan, pottery; a little later pottery with covers for storing dried fish an entire winter season, beans, etc. Right there, about 12,000 years go and outsider might look and reflect that there were signs of an inflection in process.

Another issue is self-criticality are they aware that something has changed. Obviously if last year a car did not exist and this year you are driving a model -T then you probably can philosophize about it. When I was 8 I watched on TV a man land on the moon, i kind of knew from my parents that TVs were a new thing, but then I saw that an I knew humans had done something, at the age of 10 i got my first handheld transistor radio (god I wish I hadn't throw it away) for a few bucks. You know things are changing when children who, only have a few years of experience, can see it. We go back to the mythologies 4 to 6 thousand years ago . . the great flood . . . .fruit from the tree of knowledge of life .. .  the lost garden. Are these not self-recognitions that the laws and norms of the uncivilized had given way to the constrictions as well as benefits of civilized society. About the same time we see Hammurabi's stele. Laws are to prevent people from doing things you don't want them to do, often animistic things that mess up civilizations (like sneaking in the middle of the night and stealing the kings daughter as your princess). These things fall along the lines of social intelligence - - - - Do I live in a civilation, do I recognize the good it does me, do I grow/defend it, corrupt it or leave it. Obviously we are aware of the rise-and-fall of empires (Roman, Third Reich, Czarist), but its also true that the ancients were equally aware of civil faux-pas (from Samuel to the Maccabean revolt is a repeat lesson in this with a religious spin on everything) the question is whether they were aware at their time or after in the writing of philosophers and Theologians.  A key point about self-criticality is whether one or two sacrificial philosophers point out problem behaviors or the entire society is aware (example would be electing a president who has 20 claims of sexual harassment against him). Are we aware or just not enough aware to save ourselves only after the waterfall is in site, that is the question? Where do we draw the line on social intelligence. Along the way of civilization there was Samuel, Socrates and his Syracrus, Jesus and the sins of the fathers versus Nero and Emperial rome, Atilla, Khan, Richard III, Hitler, Stalin, Tojo, Pol Pot, Amin. Do societies recognize a digressive force or only when that digressive force is of immediate socially erosive nature. Have there always been benefits of such autocrats for those who support them or are they supported just because a system deems it a prerequisite.  The Ancient Greek's had a knack for painting the hero's as tragic and is probably the best evidence of self-criticality, that somehow while the god's promoted you in life, the also tied you so that your self-promotion would be your downfall. Philosophically we can paint this as a vestigial behaviors, but then we look at our most popular politicians ("this is going to be the greatest thing ever") and wonder why 'socially-intelligent' people now fall for the propaganda that a 2500 year old Greek philosopher would not fall for. This type of intellectual evolution is slow and very cyclical in its nature.   

Edited December 10, 2017 by PB666

[YNM]

6 hours ago, PB666 said:

If you want to go into paleoanthropology its called the encephalization quotient.

I don't think it's reflective - who knows whether their brain consist of mostly pons, cerebrum, or cerebellum ?

4 hours ago, GoSlash27 said:

The fact that there are so few intelligent species on this planet despite all the biodiversity and time leads me to conclude that intelligence is simply not something that natural selection tends to select for. Thus... the higher apes and humans must've developed the hardware for intelligence as a byproduct of some other selection, and only after began to breed to select higher intelligence.

Yeah. That's one of the other problem I thought. If "natural selection" were entirely employed throughout the development of intelligence, that suddenly doesn't stay true at the last step - because forget nature, let's just makes clothes or homes or weapons. And forget genes, let's talk/scribe down about that dangerous thing to the east and let everyone see it and know it.

8 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

Very roughly, imho. Only composing clusters of obviously wise and clever ones ("upper marginals"), more-or-less clever ones ("normal") and hopelessly stupid morons ("lower marginals").

The evolution doesn't need the whole herd/tribe to be clever. "Chief"/"Manager", "Shaman"/"IT specialist" and 3-5 "Elders"/"Engineers" are enough.

If a sort of "herd immunity" were to be the case, I guess it somehoe doesn't last long. But, is intelligence even genetic ?

 

 

Also, let's not forget that despite the hardware, it needs a "software" which are "installed" through interaction. You can see on some cases of "wild people" thing.

Edited December 10, 2017 by YNM

[PB666]

1 hour ago, YNM said:

I don't think it's reflective - who knows whether their brain consist of mostly pons, cerebrum, or cerebellum ?

Yeah. That's one of the other problem I thought. If "natural selection" were entirely employed throughout the development of intelligence, that suddenly doesn't stay true at the last step - because forget nature, let's just makes clothes or homes or weapons. And forget genes, let's talk/scribe down about that dangerous thing to the east and let everyone see it and know it.

If a sort of "herd immunity" were to be the case, I guess it somehoe doesn't last long. But, is intelligence even genetic ?

 

 

Also, let's not forget that despite the hardware, it needs a "software" which are "installed" through interaction. You can see on some cases of "wild people" thing.

The minimum size of a cohesive unit is about 50 individuals. The male to female rate of paleolithic societies is typically 1:2 in a reproductive unit. However in many paleolithic societies there was a tendency to matriarchy, so it would be women ruled the houses and most of the village and the men were sent out to hunt, herd, war . . . whatever. Another consistent feature is that in village massacres its the women and children that are found and not the men.

The EQ is reflective of some kind of brain power, Neandertals had a more developed occipital bun, better processing of visual data, humans in comparison are more prefrontal. Its genetic in the sense that the individuals do not see the value of the tribe and are anarchist to a fault then there is no cohesive unit. There have been arguments that bipolar disorders and types of schizophrenia  had selective value in past societies by adding drive an instability into group behaviors not to push them apart but when people are too social (like a herd of sheep) what happens is they fail to evolve in the face of variable selection.

Lets take a look at some of the stuff, In Japan apparently 30,000 years ago some people took off across the pacific ocean (about 100 kilometers) and left human remains on Islands of the Okinawana chain. It now seems likely that around 15,000 years ago people took of across a sizable voyage in the pacific traveling down the NW American coastline and rapidly b-lined to South America. No-one in their right mind says, hey lets go hunt seals off this coast 3000 maritime miles away.  We know why Leif Ericson did it, his family was basically fringe looking for someplace where he had a better rap. My opinion is behavioral variance is as much a part of the human social evolution as immune variation it apart of the 'herd immunity'. With every variable trait (afterall selection is variable) there is the good and the bad. Then gene that may have prevented shellfish sickness in mesolithic societies seems to cause T1D and celiac disease in cereal based societies. And if behavioral variance was a really bad thing why would so many societies dabble in narcotic chemicals (Vikings had mushrooms, Native americas had Cactus, Middle easterners had hemp, . . . . . ) Where would the music of the 70s be without LSD, pot, heroine . . . .but then what happened to all the greats of the 60s and 70s. . .Janice Joplin. . .Hendrix...Morrison. Creativity that we associate with intelligence is often risky. Newton apparently dabbled with Mercury and the occult. It goes back to the tragic hero painted by the Greeks.

I should point out that being raised by animals is not nearly as bad as being socially isolated in childhood by humans . Animals do have a language that humans can mirror, even twins create their own language, but isolation is probably the worst way to bootstrap the human mind. We are social creatures and social intelligence is a currency in our civilizations.

 

Edited December 10, 2017 by PB666

[KG3]

I do think it's a good idea to at least look for life.  It won't look good if it's out there in an obvious place where we could find it but we didn't bother to look. 

  Just remember that it wasn't very long ago we were asking "are there planets around other stars?".  It was assumed that there were but as far as we knew for sure there was just one star in the universe with planets.  I'm just amazed at how scientists create ways to find things out.  In the late 19th century astronomers claimed with great certainty that "we will never know what powers the sun"!  

  Some clever person or persons will figure out how to tease out the signals of life elsewhere in the universe.  I can't wait to see  how they do it!  This is why I love science.       

[YNM]

4 hours ago, KG3 said:

It won't look good if it's out there in an obvious place where we could find it but we didn't bother to look.

As I have said, it's definitely there.

[magnemoe]

9 hours ago, PB666 said:

Language is a problem for the intelli-genesis. The one major reason is that we don't actually know when grammatical language evolved, it was likely very long ago. There are predictions ranging from (50) 125 kabp to 1 Mapb (even 2.6 Mabp). To be certain Turkana Boy likely had a language much more sophisticated than chimpanzees. And it should be noted that somewhere between 2.1 and 1.8 M years ago turkana's ancestral population had members that ventured out an survived in places like China, the Caucasus, Indonesia (which appears to include Flores Island). When we talk about humans and our manipulative behavior a key hallmark of that behavior is to explore new habitats and exploit them creating the necessary technologies and educating other tribe members. They had it, in fact if we ask the question about what happened to the asian variants of H. erectus, at least one of the answers lies in the mitochondria of Desinovan late archaic that shares common recent genetic ancestry with Indonesians (the node is about 8%). So they had enough language to qualify them as mates for people who did speak human language. Its not clear that there was sufficient enough gene flow from africa to Asia in the 1 to 2 million year period to justify unidirectional geneflow of language from Africa to Asia. (So either they develope language independently or it existed 0.5 million years before Turkana Boy.

If you are looking for major differences between Turkana boy and Tuang Child (2.8 Mabp) you will find differences in the size of the calvara but not much else, and more importantly Tuang lived in africa at a time we first start seeing stone tool use increase (2.6 Mabp) over and above what other apes use. The importance is that the same parts of the brain used for language are also used for tool synthesis. One of the articles that studied Tuang child basically identified some slight enlargment of the Broca's region of the brain not seen in parallel or earlier lines of hominids. This area is also responsible for motor skills involved in action recognition and reproduction, something very beneficial for tool production.

So that a good guess is that an increase in crafting skills was associated with improved language over what we observe in chimpanzees and gorillas. This was followed be increases in stature of homo erectus and then increases in EQ and areas devoted by language and logic.

The process occurred rather quickly in the animal kingdom which had and EQ of 2.5 going into the process and 7.5 leaving the process in  period of 3 million years. 

OK the next reason is why. There are a couple of base reasons, between the time of gorillas and chimpanzees,  protohumans may have engaged in panspermy, that is bonobo-like mating arrangements (make love not war). Humans and chimps are certainly a departure from gorilla-like (Winner takes all, though this is in question). Panspermy increases the rate of evolution in males and the study of human-chimpanzee Y reveals a rapid acceleration of evolution. The second reason why is the movement of Miocene anthropoid apes from Asia to Africa about 10 million years ago, the rate of evolution of apes baseline mutation rate is higher in the tropics.
A third reason is about 2.5 million years ago there was a shift in the periodicity of climate cycles from short brief cycles to cycles that lasted many 10s of 1000s of years. This began to dry the climate of Africa and create more complex habitats. Water was no longer widely available, and animals became migratory. So there was a push in the change in mutation rates and a pull in the forces of selection. Despite the current modern appearance Africa continued to be the driving force human evolution even after humans left Africa, this is probably due to the hominid-technology level carrying capacity of Africa during the ice ages. Geneflow appears to generally have been from Africa outward on multiple occasions after 1.8 Mabp although counter flow is likely. Some of the most genetically isolated areas on the planet are still in Africa with still buried pockets of long-held diversity. An example of this is the recently discovered Y-chromosomal 'Adam' chromosome in an African American male whose ancestors came from central Africa. All of these signs present Africa as both a genetic and cultural pulse that at first occured at period of 100,000s of years and later 10,000s of years. So looking at Modern Europeans there are signals of egression from the horn of Africa, from the middle east, from Morocco and as far and east as Nigeria, even within the isolate Irish population you see signs of recent contribution from West Africa. Within Asia's the highest signal from neanderthals comes from middle-east/NE Africa is found in Japanese. Later middle eastern contribution was diluted by African migration since 80000 years ago. So this is basically the intelligence pre-technology. One oddity in the data the first pottery is from the sea of Japan, but there appears to been some pottery in Africa and some form of math before 10,000 years ago. One of the ironies is that Spain, which had the last signs of Neanderthals have just about the lowest percentage of Neanderthal genes compared to other Eurasians. Spain genetically looks more like an extension of Africa than of Europe. The signs of late paleolithic African migration are far reaching including India, Pakistan, the Turkic people (but not Japanese), Australia, Indonesia Taiwan aboriginal population and even Pacific islanders. Thus each migration from Africa may have brought better mobility technologies. This is on top of technologies that allowed people to travel over the Wallace line 1.3 million years ago (in Indonesia). Its not surprising that Egyptian civilization, with an emphasis on the Nile was the first great civilization.

So in the perspective we need :
Millions of years (at least 3) and  a good baseline species
An environment that forces evolution and promotes new forms of selection
[Optional] Some sort of brain-tying of language-to-technology allowing for bipartite selection on one benefiting the other.
Places for technology to travel to and be shared.
A development of travel/trade technologies (very much favors trading but also hoarding trees-rollers- to build magnificent monoliths)
With trade comes a need for math skills
With trade comes the need for negotiating and record keeping (How many oxen do you owe me after I sold you ten carts of wheat).
With record keeping comes writing, laws, proclamations, manuscripts, papers, journals, science. . . . . . . .
--- Success of the individual in commerce being tied to success of society (efficient economies tend to build successful societies)
--- Success of the individual in matters of state and religion ~ sometimes ~ beign tied to long term success of societies.

3 million years ago it would have been very difficult to predict when a naked-ape would generate the critical mass to become sophisticated, even 100 kya it would have been difficult, there were signs (blombos cave). This is the period with the greatest change in EQ, but civilization was not inevitable, around 12,000 years ago, when you see the cultivation of rye in greece and turkey ....and also the first carvings of the sphinx. You can look at South America, virtually unoccupied 14000 years ago, by 12,000 years ago scientist find the remains of plants the overwhelming majority of which are now cultivated as crops and have been so for 8000 years. 16,000 years ago in Japan, pottery a little later with covers for storing dried fish an entire winter season, beans, etc. Right there, about 12,000 years go and outsider might look and reflect that there were signs of an inflection in process.

Another issue is self-criticality are they aware that something has changed. Obviously if last year a car did not exist and this year you are driving a model -T then you probably can philosophize about it. When I was 8 I watched on TV a man land on the moon, i kind of knew from my parents that TVs were a new thing, but then I saw that an I knew humans had done something, at the age of 10 i got my first handheld transistor radio (god I wish I hadn't throw it away) for a few bucks. You know things are changing when children who, only have a few years of experience, can see it. We go back to the mythologies 4 to 6 thousand years ago . . the great flood . . . .fruit from the tree of knowledge of life .. .  the lost garden. Are these not self-recognitions that the laws and norms of the uncivilized had given way to the constrictions as well as benefits of civilized society. About the same time we see Hammurabi's stele. Laws are to prevent people from doing things you don't want them to do, often animistic things that mess up civilizations (like sneaking in the middle of the night and stealing the kings daughter as your princess). These things fall along the lines of social intelligence - - - - Do I live in a civilation, do I recognize the good it does me, do I grow/defend it, corrupt it or leave it. Obviously we are aware of the rise-and-fall of empires (Roman, Third Reich, Czarist), but its also true that the ancients were equally aware of civil faux-pas (from Samuel to the Maccabean revolt is a repeat lesson in this with a religious spin on everything) the question is whether they were aware at their time or after in the writing of philosophers and Theologians.  A key point about self-criticality is whether one or two sacrificial philosophers point out problem behaviors or the entire society is aware (example would be electing a president who has 20 claims of sexual harassment against him). Are we aware or just not enough aware to save ourselves only after the waterfall is in site, that is the question? Where do we draw the line on social intelligence. Along the way of civilization there was Samuel, Socrates and his Syracrus, Jesus and the sins of the fathers versus Nero and Emperial rome, Atilla, Khan, Richard III, Hitler, Stalin, Tojo, Pol Pot, Amin. Do societies recognize a digressive force or only when that digressive force is of immediate socially erosive nature. Have there always been benefits of such autocrats for those who support them or are they supported just because a system deems it a prerequisite.  The Ancient Greek's had a knack for painting the hero's as tragic and is probably the best evidence of self-criticality, that somehow while the god's promoted you in life, the also tied you so that your self-promotion would be your downfall. Philosophically we can paint this as a vestigial behaviors, but then we look at our most popular politicians ("this is going to be the greatest thing ever") and wonder why 'socially-intelligent' people now fall for the propaganda that a 2500 year old Greek philosopher would not fall for. This type of intellectual evolution is slow and very cyclical in its nature.    One of the reason I left my field of study and not to go back there was the recent rabid insistence on self-promotion . . it bothers me that they want their employees to face and tweet when I saw that as one of the biggest problems in the workplace and not surprisingly they are falling apart financially. This will be a domino effect in higher education, its coming. Social intelligence is a very plastic thing. 

Very good and filling, plenty of things I did not know some had erectus genes, well at least they can not mock Europeans for being Neanderthals. Tool use and language use the same areas in brain would be an major benefit and its also pretty random. 

On the other hand agriculture was invented independent multiple places. It needed an high enough population pressure and opportunity, early farming would be very hard work and not something you would do if you could hunt. The same for civilization, it require higher population densities and an need for large scale organization help. The rest is history
That part however is not tied to human evolution, yes you have some minor stuff like better immune system as you get far more diseases with lots of humans living close and that people who held animals for long time can drink milk as adults, groups without animals don't have this. 
 

[Green Baron]

11 hours ago, PB666 said:

The male to female rate of paleolithic societies is typically 1:2 in a reproductive unit.

It is not, it is, of course, 1:1. Palaeolithic spans 2.6 million years and different species, the concept "typical" is not applicable at all. Where is that from ? Modern day polygamic subcultures spread such nonsense.

Quote

However in many paleolithic societies there was a tendency to matriarchy,

Eh ? Source please ! We can discuss an example in the Asian solutrean where women's bones are stronger than men's, but there is no "tendency" and no "matriarchy" !

Quote

so it would be women ruled the houses

No houses in the palaeolithic, no rulers in assumed equal societies  ! The whole statement makes no sense at all.

Quote

and most of the village

And no villages ! You are confusing some very basic things here !

Quote

and the men were sent out to hunt, herd, war . . . whatever.

That is a somewhat chauvinistic view with comical elements. We do not know who hunts and there clearly is no war in the palaeolithic. Magdalenian depictions show women hunting as well. "Man, the hunter" is an outdated view strongly influenced by modern culture of the 60s, where in the public view men went to work and women stayed at home. That is modern times ! And the whole thing was of course overthrown quickly.

Quote

Another consistent feature is that in village massacres its the women and children that are found and not the men.

Again: no villages in palaeolithic, no murder. Big pile of confusion here ! If there is a consistent feature over the (Eurasian upper) palaeolithic then that of very slowly developing (10.000s of years) mobile groups and occupation of landscapes.

But i can show you neolithic (not palaeolithic) places where things are exactly opposite to what you say, women are missing !

Quote

It now seems likely that around 15,000 years ago people took of across a sizable voyage in the pacific traveling down the NW American coastline and rapidly b-lined to South America.

Source please ! Because there is an ongoing discussion in archaeology about the time when humans reached the Americas ! Human presence may be older than that and voyages across the Bering straight may have taken place several times. The concept of single groups erring around is surely not the correct view.

 

Really, sir, you should overwork this ! It is far from everything science has worked out !

 

Edited December 10, 2017 by Green Baron

[kerbiloid]

1 hour ago, Green Baron said:

We do not know who hunts and there clearly is no war in the palaeolithic. Magdalenian depictions show women hunting as well. "Man the hunter" is an outdated view strongly influenced by modern culture of the 60s, where in the public view men went to work and women stayed at home. That is modern times !

It's a little hard to hunt something being 50/100 pregnant, 50/100 milking, with several children age of 1..5 around.

(Of course, there were some women with stereotypically male-associated lifestyle, but very unlikely a lot of them per tribe).

1 hour ago, Green Baron said:

no rulers in assumed equal societies

Elders rule. Youngsters who don't obey elders live fast, die young, never become elders.
(Of course, everybody has a choice).

Edited December 10, 2017 by kerbiloid

[Green Baron]

2 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

It's a little hard to hunt something being 50/100 pregnant, 50/100 milking, with several children age of 1..5 around.

This is not how palaeolithic groups functioned. Birth control was unnecessary. This view reflects modern day living.

Palaeolithic women did not always have children, that is impossible for groups that move with the herds. Many groups actually might have had a number problem. Women did hunt at least in the upper palaeolithic.

2 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

Elders rule. Youngsters who don't obey elders live fast, die young, never become elders.

(Of course, everybody has a choice).

In a Hollywood movie or a video game they do :-) Fact is, we do not know if there were "rulers". You can study the work of last century's anthropologists to discover that these concepts are not applicable. No group member shall rise over the others, there are even rituals to secure that an exceptionally successful hunter did not carry his nose too high. Dependency on individuals would have a bad influence on the group's cohesion, the "team spirit".

It is, and that is a political statement, a fact that collaboration makes us strong, not animosities.

 

I still don't believe in Aliens :-)

Edited December 10, 2017 by Green Baron