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RE: Debunking Shits About Evolution - Episode 13 [Rate of evolution; moving further from natural selection]
In plain terms; evolution that was initially a purely natural selection process is now tilting towards intelligence selection.
Probably we have already passed that point. As far as know, the size of human brain reduced during last several thousand years. That's probably because we constantly outsourcing our intelligence into books, road signs, snart applications and so on.
But we all know that the size of the brain has nothing the with intelligence? or does it?
There is no definite answer why our brain is shrinking, and whether it makes us dumber, smarter or does not change our intelligence. Here is the short answer with hypotheses, here is the long one.
An interesting study (see the second link, page 2) suggests that "As complex societies emerged, the brain became smaller because people did not have to be as smart to stay alive." Others explain this in a way that we just became more efficient in using our brain: "a brain that yields the most intelligence for the least energy." But it seems to me that these two views are compatible.
On the other hand, domestic animals have smaller brains than their wild counterparts, but they don't seem to have less intelligence. They are just better at different things. So we really don't know whether we are losing intelligence or not. But if it is really politics and social interactions that play a key role in getting us smarter, then we can stop worrying (at least for the nearest future).
Not just that; we have laid less emphasis on the utilization of our brains to store up large infos and to perform complex calculations. And these would have effect on our brain size.
Imagine now, we have calculators and computing devices, but at the expense of our own computational abilities. I guess we would also have to blame the dwindling of the brain size on computational aids.
Thanks for coming