If the human brains adapted that much genetically during the existing relatively fast ramping up of civilization, powered by cheap accessible energy sources, then it can unadapt in the event of collapse and subsequent slower ramp up, starved of cheap energy.
If a form of civilization based on agriculture is maintained after the technological fallback
Cheap energy had very little to do with our massive changes. We are talking about consistent trend of people getting more adapted to civilization from the Neolithic through the Iron age and up until the 19th century. Freeze technology in any point between, humans would keep adapting to that level. And as long as populations continued to rise and new long distance trade links where being established, according to the 10k explosion hypothesis, faster. But I see your point, eventually as humans reached a new equilibrium and became decently adpated to life in static civilization and since there wouldn’t be a lot of change, intelligence may no longer be needed for stuff like farming, human evolution would start slowing down and veering into odd directions. I’m just not sure this [stagnant civ] would actually happen given the absence of say fossil fuels.
Arguably genes for high IQ became maladaptive basically at the same time when we got cheap energy and launched the industrial revolution. Sure there is the possibility that evolution goes ahead and changes us into something like farming, herding mammalian ants in the absence of cheap energy, but why is this so much more likley than say the idiocracy scenario of Azatoth doing horrible things to us in the presence of cheap energy? (depending on how one interprets history we may have evidence in favour of both btw)
We demonstrably are not pretty good at finding substitutes! Look at how well the existing highly experienced and technically sophisticated civilization has done at the task!
On a time-scale of what, a century? In the absence of oil and coal I can’t imagine say 18th century European civilization stagnating on a time scale of millennia. These are cosmic eye blinks. Canals, wind-power and watermills had already basically created a mini industrial revolution in some places. I also can’t imagine say Aztec civilization stagnating in the absence of easily obtainable gold or copper.
On the grand scale, over time carrying capacities will generally rise as the crops and animals used are improved, people will get better at living in cities, merchant and priestly casts will keep getting smarter, farmers and herders will keep getting more resistant to infectious diseases and better adapted to their diets. And this should accelerate as long as population keeps getting larger.
Writing will be developed and continental scale empires may rise, if no earlier (because of say lack of iron) then when horse/camel/animal X riding hordes start extracting tribute from cities, or very very virulent religious memeplexes arise. The Mongolian peace and the Arab golden age where basically what happens when you tap into and connect a whole bunch of lands with differing intellectual traditions and make trade safe between them.
Eventually civilization will spread to harsh places like say parts Africa or Siberia where gold, silver, gems and even iron are still to be found. If scrap metals have been something known for millennia, and have probably become very high status items, how long before these smarter, perhaps more profit minded humans (at least their merchant caste) don’t eventually find a way to smelt them?
And you still have human selecting animals and plants. Combine this with an 19th or even 18th century of knowledge of heredity and you will be able to do really amazing things with domesticated animals on time scales of millennia. I wouldn’t put things like dogs breeds that specialize in sniffing out cancer, or parrots that are very very good at simple arithmetic and can be trained to communicate this beyond such a civilization. Not to mention all manners of beasts of burden or very fast birds with very good sense of direction that deliver messages across vast distances. And remember like dogs have been all these animals would basically be developing a human friendly user interface (behaviour a very simple understanding of how humans behave) over time. All of these examples are things that have sort of been done with animals, but we barley got started on before they became obsolete. Remember given enough time speciation would have occured between the breeds. What exactly are the limits?
Even places where not many animals where available for this such as the Americas, things like guinea pigs where domesticated. As long as you have at least one domesticated mammal or perhaps bird, your options are huge on the time-scale of a few thousand years (thing for a second of how dogs in various environments and of differing breeds have been used for everything from food to source of energy for transportation). So the process could easily eventually get started and I think once it does sooner or later, given writing and decent IQs, the knowledge of heredity will follow.
On the grand scale, over time carrying capacities will generally rise as the crops and animals used are improved, people will get better at living in cities, merchant and priestly casts will keep getting smarter, farmers and herders will keep getting more resistant to infectious diseases and better adapted to their diets. And this should accelerate as long as population keeps getting larger.
Carrying capacities may increase, but so what? You don’t see a whole lot of innovation out of Africa. Per capita is what matters, and per capita there is no long-term upwards trend. To quote Clark’s Farewell to Alms:
The wage quotes from 1780–1800 do seem to confirm that technological sophistication is not the determinant of wages. English wages, for example, are above average in the table, but not any higher than for such technological backwaters of 1800 as Istanbul, Cairo, and Warsaw.7 English wages in 1800 on average were about the same as those for ancient Babylon and Assyria, despite the great technological gains of the intervening thousands of years.
On a time-scale of what, a century? In the absence of oil and coal I can’t imagine say 18th century European civilization stagnating on a time scale of millennia. These are cosmic eye blinks. Canals, wind-power and watermills had already basically created a mini industrial revolution in some places. I also can’t imagine say Aztec civilization stagnating in the absence of easily obtainable gold or copper.
I disagree. 18th century Europe (by which I mean, of course, England, as the starter of the Industrial Revolution) was already dependent on non-renewable energy, and had been since roughly the late 1650s. Look at the charts in http://www.voxeu.org/index.php?q=node/6781 and notice where ‘coal’ exceeds firewood+water+other-renewables. (Firewood began falling in absolute terms; Easter Island comes to mind.)
I just realized we may be arguing about different things. I tought we where arguing about technologically progressing civilization that eventually leads to an intelligence explosion or life leaving Earth, while you may have thought we where arguing about escaping the Malthusian trap and increasing average living standards beyond sustenance.
Carrying capacities may increase, but so what? You don’t see a whole lot of innovation out of Africa. Per capita is what matters, and per capita there is no long-term upwards trend. To quote Clark’s Farewell to Alms:
Carrying capacities matter because according to the 10k model, larger populations in novel environment > faster biological evolution.
More people > more brains > bigger economy
And this should accelerate as long as population keeps getting larger.
I was referring to the speed of their adaptation.
Carrying capacities may increase, but so what? You don’t see a whole lot of innovation out of Africa.
Don’t see why Africa matters here. India and China created plenty of innovation. Higher IQ in the priestly and merchant classes will drive technological, scientific and memetic innovation. It will not be as explosive as the historic development of European civilization, but then again that’s pretty anomalous.
Cheap energy had very little to do with our massive changes. We are talking about consistent trend of people getting more adapted to civilization from the Neolithic through the Iron age and up until the 19th century. Freeze technology in any point between, humans would keep adapting to that level. And as long as populations continued to rise and new long distance trade links where being established, according to the 10k explosion hypothesis, faster. But I see your point, eventually as humans reached a new equilibrium and became decently adpated to life in static civilization and since there wouldn’t be a lot of change, intelligence may no longer be needed for stuff like farming, human evolution would start slowing down and veering into odd directions. I’m just not sure this [stagnant civ] would actually happen given the absence of say fossil fuels.
Arguably genes for high IQ became maladaptive basically at the same time when we got cheap energy and launched the industrial revolution. Sure there is the possibility that evolution goes ahead and changes us into something like farming, herding mammalian ants in the absence of cheap energy, but why is this so much more likley than say the idiocracy scenario of Azatoth doing horrible things to us in the presence of cheap energy? (depending on how one interprets history we may have evidence in favour of both btw)
On a time-scale of what, a century? In the absence of oil and coal I can’t imagine say 18th century European civilization stagnating on a time scale of millennia. These are cosmic eye blinks. Canals, wind-power and watermills had already basically created a mini industrial revolution in some places. I also can’t imagine say Aztec civilization stagnating in the absence of easily obtainable gold or copper.
On the grand scale, over time carrying capacities will generally rise as the crops and animals used are improved, people will get better at living in cities, merchant and priestly casts will keep getting smarter, farmers and herders will keep getting more resistant to infectious diseases and better adapted to their diets. And this should accelerate as long as population keeps getting larger.
Writing will be developed and continental scale empires may rise, if no earlier (because of say lack of iron) then when horse/camel/animal X riding hordes start extracting tribute from cities, or very very virulent religious memeplexes arise. The Mongolian peace and the Arab golden age where basically what happens when you tap into and connect a whole bunch of lands with differing intellectual traditions and make trade safe between them.
Eventually civilization will spread to harsh places like say parts Africa or Siberia where gold, silver, gems and even iron are still to be found. If scrap metals have been something known for millennia, and have probably become very high status items, how long before these smarter, perhaps more profit minded humans (at least their merchant caste) don’t eventually find a way to smelt them?
And you still have human selecting animals and plants. Combine this with an 19th or even 18th century of knowledge of heredity and you will be able to do really amazing things with domesticated animals on time scales of millennia. I wouldn’t put things like dogs breeds that specialize in sniffing out cancer, or parrots that are very very good at simple arithmetic and can be trained to communicate this beyond such a civilization. Not to mention all manners of beasts of burden or very fast birds with very good sense of direction that deliver messages across vast distances. And remember like dogs have been all these animals would basically be developing a human friendly user interface (behaviour a very simple understanding of how humans behave) over time. All of these examples are things that have sort of been done with animals, but we barley got started on before they became obsolete. Remember given enough time speciation would have occured between the breeds. What exactly are the limits?
Even places where not many animals where available for this such as the Americas, things like guinea pigs where domesticated. As long as you have at least one domesticated mammal or perhaps bird, your options are huge on the time-scale of a few thousand years (thing for a second of how dogs in various environments and of differing breeds have been used for everything from food to source of energy for transportation). So the process could easily eventually get started and I think once it does sooner or later, given writing and decent IQs, the knowledge of heredity will follow.
Carrying capacities may increase, but so what? You don’t see a whole lot of innovation out of Africa. Per capita is what matters, and per capita there is no long-term upwards trend. To quote Clark’s Farewell to Alms:
I disagree. 18th century Europe (by which I mean, of course, England, as the starter of the Industrial Revolution) was already dependent on non-renewable energy, and had been since roughly the late 1650s. Look at the charts in http://www.voxeu.org/index.php?q=node/6781 and notice where ‘coal’ exceeds firewood+water+other-renewables. (Firewood began falling in absolute terms; Easter Island comes to mind.)
I just realized we may be arguing about different things. I tought we where arguing about technologically progressing civilization that eventually leads to an intelligence explosion or life leaving Earth, while you may have thought we where arguing about escaping the Malthusian trap and increasing average living standards beyond sustenance.
Carrying capacities matter because according to the 10k model, larger populations in novel environment > faster biological evolution.
More people > more brains > bigger economy
I was referring to the speed of their adaptation.
Don’t see why Africa matters here. India and China created plenty of innovation. Higher IQ in the priestly and merchant classes will drive technological, scientific and memetic innovation. It will not be as explosive as the historic development of European civilization, but then again that’s pretty anomalous.