The focus on ratio seems to me to transparently be an effort to preserve the status-ordering that humans confidently believe in rather than ceding status to elephants and other large animals. You clearly don’t need a huge computer to run a sauropod brain.
I suspect that abnormally costly brain size is a strong indicators of intelligence. If evolution increased brain size at such a large cost in order to increase intelligence it probably ALSO altered or narrowed other parameters in the brain in order to increase intelligence.
Regardless, 25% is twice the male-female brain size difference, hardly indicative of superintelligence. Within a gender, under modern conditions (which increase the heritability of g) such a size difference would predict a bit over a standard deviation increase to IQ (about 3SD above typical human brain size, 40% brain size correlation with IQ).
The focus on ratio seems to me to transparently be an effort to preserve the status-ordering that humans confidently believe in rather than ceding status to elephants and other large animals.
Yes, a lot can be explained by status-seeking. But here? Um, I think it’s more due to the lack of elephant theoretical physicists.
You clearly don’t need a huge computer to run a sauropod brain.
And you don’t need to obey the constraints of biological natural selection to run a computer.
Protein computers work differently than silicon ones. Just because you can (theoretically) build a more efficient one, doesn’t mean that actually-existing biological brains must have mass-independent efficiency.
Yes, a lot can be explained by status-seeking. But here? Um, I think it’s more due to the lack of elephant theoretical physicists.
What about the long history of phrenologists and other cranium measurers trying to show whites (and males) have bigger bigger brains than disfavored ethnicities? I hear J. Philippe Rushton is still doing that (with the slight change that East Asians are brainier still).
Sauorpods HAD biological brains. That’s the point. Tiny ones in huge bodies.
Also, theoretical physics is clearly not where most of the general demands of human cognition come in. Humans have special strengths in symbolic reasoning. It wouldn’t surprise me at all if elephants beat humans in some general measure of brain function, its just that reasoning is a very specialized part of brain function.
Sauorpods HAD biological brains. That’s the point. Tiny ones in huge bodies.
Right, so under the theory that it’s the brain mass/body mass ratio that matters, this makes perfect sense: the brains were able to handle the informational load coming from the nervous system, but not do much beyond that.
Also, theoretical physics is clearly not where most of the general demands of human cognition come in. Humans have special strengths in symbolic reasoning. It wouldn’t surprise me at all if elephants beat humans in some general measure of brain function, its just that reasoning is a very specialized part of brain function.
Sure, elephants probably do beat humans by some measures of brain function (at the very least, the metric “absolute number of neuron firings per second”). It’s just that those brain functions aren’t the things we associate with intelligence, which makes sense if the brain is all tied up sending signals to the nerves throughout the massive tissue.
Huh? My point was that tiny brains are enough to control bodies much larger than those of elephants so large bodies simply can’t need large brains in order to walk.
I was thinking more along the lines of some fairly general learning metrics such as number of patterns of sound that can be retained for 10 years.
Huh? My point was that tiny brains are enough to control bodies much larger than those of elephants so large bodies simply can’t need large brains in order to walk.
But you do need a bigger brain to handle all your body systems AND do “intelligent” things on top of the walking and mating and …
I was thinking more along the lines of some fairly general learning metrics such as number of patterns of sound that can be retained for 10 years.
So, because elephants can store more sounds over longer periods, that means they’re really more intelligent than humans, and we’re just pandering to our own status-hungry egos when we say they’re not (because it’s the ratio that matters)?
That doesn’t work. Raw storage capacity isn’t what we think of as intelligence, at least not the interesting kind we’re trying to develop. Is my 300 Gig hard drive, which can store a LOT more patterns of sound over 10 years, intelligent? No. So why would this be a relevant metric for gauging animal intelligence?
The focus on ratio seems to me to transparently be an effort to preserve the status-ordering that humans confidently believe in rather than ceding status to elephants and other large animals. You clearly don’t need a huge computer to run a sauropod brain.
I suspect that abnormally costly brain size is a strong indicators of intelligence. If evolution increased brain size at such a large cost in order to increase intelligence it probably ALSO altered or narrowed other parameters in the brain in order to increase intelligence.
Regardless, 25% is twice the male-female brain size difference, hardly indicative of superintelligence. Within a gender, under modern conditions (which increase the heritability of g) such a size difference would predict a bit over a standard deviation increase to IQ (about 3SD above typical human brain size, 40% brain size correlation with IQ).
Yes, a lot can be explained by status-seeking. But here? Um, I think it’s more due to the lack of elephant theoretical physicists.
And you don’t need to obey the constraints of biological natural selection to run a computer.
Protein computers work differently than silicon ones. Just because you can (theoretically) build a more efficient one, doesn’t mean that actually-existing biological brains must have mass-independent efficiency.
What about the long history of phrenologists and other cranium measurers trying to show whites (and males) have bigger bigger brains than disfavored ethnicities? I hear J. Philippe Rushton is still doing that (with the slight change that East Asians are brainier still).
Sauorpods HAD biological brains. That’s the point. Tiny ones in huge bodies.
Also, theoretical physics is clearly not where most of the general demands of human cognition come in. Humans have special strengths in symbolic reasoning. It wouldn’t surprise me at all if elephants beat humans in some general measure of brain function, its just that reasoning is a very specialized part of brain function.
Right, so under the theory that it’s the brain mass/body mass ratio that matters, this makes perfect sense: the brains were able to handle the informational load coming from the nervous system, but not do much beyond that.
Sure, elephants probably do beat humans by some measures of brain function (at the very least, the metric “absolute number of neuron firings per second”). It’s just that those brain functions aren’t the things we associate with intelligence, which makes sense if the brain is all tied up sending signals to the nerves throughout the massive tissue.
Huh? My point was that tiny brains are enough to control bodies much larger than those of elephants so large bodies simply can’t need large brains in order to walk.
I was thinking more along the lines of some fairly general learning metrics such as number of patterns of sound that can be retained for 10 years.
But you do need a bigger brain to handle all your body systems AND do “intelligent” things on top of the walking and mating and …
So, because elephants can store more sounds over longer periods, that means they’re really more intelligent than humans, and we’re just pandering to our own status-hungry egos when we say they’re not (because it’s the ratio that matters)?
That doesn’t work. Raw storage capacity isn’t what we think of as intelligence, at least not the interesting kind we’re trying to develop. Is my 300 Gig hard drive, which can store a LOT more patterns of sound over 10 years, intelligent? No. So why would this be a relevant metric for gauging animal intelligence?
Why would the sizes of the systems to do intelligent things and to control the body not just add up linearly?
Among humans, recognition of lots of words is a predictor of ability to do math well. A very good predictor even controlling for environment.