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Complex landscapes helped land animals evolve higher intelligence: study
- conistonwater 6y agoI do not think "pouring jet fuel on something", meaning to make it go faster, is a legitimate English idiom.
- hotz 6y agoYeah agreed, it's quite an odd use of language.
- axus 6y agoWe were able to immediately know what they meant, and also know that it didn't look like exactly what they meant. I'd have to read the article to know if language drove brain development, or vice versa.
- andi999 6y agoI didnt know what was meant. I thought they meant it was poison for evolution.
- dboreham 6y agoJet fuel is kerosene, which doesn't flash easily. So this would probably put out any fire. Perhaps that was the idiom they were going for?
- glomph 6y agoLegitimate? Since when were idioms a question of legitimacy? The only languages which do not change are dead ones. - David Crystal
- chrstphrknwtn 6y agoI suppose it’s more a question of efficacy. If an idiom obfuscates the intended meaning then it’s not very good. In this case it really does just get in the way because the metaphor doesn’t really make sense...
- 1propionyl 6y agoThe colloquial meaning is "pouring something onto a fire that is even more flammable than what was already burning".
- wastedhours 6y agoInteresting - as I've heard it used regularly in exactly that context, and wouldn't have questioned it otherwise. Then again, I was surprised when someone I knew didn't understand what "poster child" meant.
- kwistzhaderach 6y agoYou telling me, pouring jet fuel doesn’t bend steel beams faster?
- jansan 6y agoI just poured jet fuel on my brain an besides the awful smell it does not seem to have a large effect. Maybe it takes a few days, so I will leave it on for a while. In case you wondered how I got access to my brain, this old tool proved helpful: https://www.catawiki.de/l/14535665-trephine-skull-drill https://www.catawiki.de/l/14535665-trephine-skull-drill And yes, this was a joke and I do not recommend trying this at home. Ask your trusted surgeon for advice.
- cryptoz 6y agoThis whole subthread reminds me of https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HiIlJaSDPaA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HiIlJaSDPaA
- js2 6y agoThe idiom “pour/add fuel on/to the fire” means to make something worse. I understood the headline but it caused me to raise my eyebrow. It’s almost a mixed metaphor? https://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/add+fuel+to+the+fire https://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/add+fuel+to+the+fire https://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/pour+fuel+on+the+fire https://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/pour+fuel+on+the+fire I would have used “turbocharged”, “greatly sped up”, or “significantly accelerated.” If you’re literally adding fuel to a fire to make it burn hotter/faster, the energy density of jet fuel (basically kerosene) isn’t that much greater than gasoline or many other fuels, but I guess it sounds neat. https://aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/12184/what-are-the-differences-between-fuel-types-comparing-with-vehicles https://aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/12184/what-are-... https://neutrium.net/properties/specific-energy-and-energy-density-of-fuels/ https://neutrium.net/properties/specific-energy-and-energy-d... If you really want to get a fire going, use liquid oxygen: https://youtu.be/sab2Ltm1WcM https://youtu.be/sab2Ltm1WcM
- mc32 6y agoEven colloquially x on steroids would work too. I think you’re right it is a mixed metaphor with mixed attitudes.
- catalogia 6y agohttps://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/jet_fuel https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/jet_fuel > (slang, uncountable) Strong home-brewed alcoholic drink; moonshine. I posit that jet fuel is considered very powerful stuff in the general lexicon (even though it's just fancy kerosene.)
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- ardy42 6y ago> I do not think "pouring jet fuel on something", meaning to make it go faster, is a legitimate English idiom. IIRC, it is close to a legitimate Chinese idiom ("add oil"). https://zolimacitymag.com/pop-cantonese-word-of-the-month-%E5%8A%A0%E6%B2%B9-add-oil/ https://zolimacitymag.com/pop-cantonese-word-of-the-month-%E...
- dreamcompiler 6y agoIt does seem silly. Jet fuel is kerosene, which is also used in oil lamps. It's a lot less volatile than gasoline.
- frenchy 6y agoYes, the irony here is that (depending on the amount), you can easily douse a fire with jet fuel.
- pjc50 6y agoThe first thing that pops into my head was "Jet fuel can't melt steel brains", which may indicate that I've spent too long on the internet.
- dang 6y agoYes, that is a weird one. At least it was language that came from the researcher and not some manic headline writer. We replaced the title with a more representative phrase from the article.
- once-in-a-while 6y agoThere are still fools around that believe in evolutionism? In 2020? Really? If 6000 years is enough to explain everything (and it is enough), why desperately reaching out for "billions" of years, a shear infinite amount of time, escaping any imagination... Come on, use your brain, it's 2020!
- drtillberg 6y ago>> the supercomputer simulations for the new study (35 years of calculations on a single PC)... Was the simulation saved all these years on a floppy disk running on an old 386 PC? Would have liked more explanation of the quote.
- lifeisstillgood 6y agoI read it as 'we performed on our supercomputer (AWS?) the same number of calculations as would have taken 35 years on a normal PC' But yes, even I tried to rewrite that twice and still cannot get the grammar to come out correctly.
- brnt 6y agoIts one way of saying 'CPU year' I suppose.
- Timpy 6y agoIs there a level cap for fish intelligence where an individual fish won't gain any more benefit from increased intelligence? Being the smartest fish may not help you as much as swimming with the pack would help you. Are humans the same way? I feel like human intelligence is just on the verge of "knowing thyself" in a much bigger way. There are plenty of examples of super-intelligent people that can have a global platform now thanks to modernity, but until 100 years ago they may have suffered in their communities. How many would-be geniuses died without procreating because their brains were wired differently and it happened that any use for skills in which they excelled were not available to them at the time? You can't be the next Einstein if you died in the Steppes of Asia in 1292.
- folli 6y agoIt probably depends on the definition of intelligence, as it mostly does. A human capable of creative and complex problem solving might have still had an advantage in 1292 in the steps of Asia. Maybe not by creating the theory of relativity, but by inventing hunting and warfare strategy, or solving some other problems in their society.
- darepublic 6y agoEinstein might have been enlisted by one of the great Khan's to build ballistic and siege weaponry
- throwaway_pdp09 6y agoOr he might have been born a peasant or a slave, and getting out of that pit would be likely near impossible.
- SideburnsOfDoom 6y ago> Is there a level cap for fish intelligence where an individual fish won't gain any more benefit from increased intelligence? Think of it this way: intelligence has costs (metabolic, anatomical, etc) as well as benefits. At some point, costs outweigh benefits. That point is highly dependant on environment.
- sedlich 6y agoSounds like the last part of the book "Born to Run" by Christopher McDougall. How to catch an antelope. Explained by natives. Very worth reading!
- lifeisstillgood 6y agoThese sort of simulations, like much evolutionary biology, feel like they ought to come with a '... in mice' warning. We simulated 300 million years of evolution, using our own model, and proved that evolution happened because of ... ... in simulated mice ...
- vanderZwan 6y agoI'm sure the original paper has the equivalent of that, but yes, pop-science articles should start adding the IN MICE warning for sure. Also to many other categories of research findings, actually
- markdog12 6y agohttps://twitter.com/justsaysinmice https://twitter.com/justsaysinmice
- eeZah7Ux 6y agoIt's even worse. At least we can compare and contrast mice and humans, but simulating evolution is incredibly arbitrary...
- badcede 6y agoWhen I read articles like this, it seems to me that they are studying not evolution, nor animals, but computers. These are really software projects. It is a chunk of the world that software has eaten, without it having much been recognized.
- otabdeveloper4 6y ago> Ever wonder how land animals like humans evolved to become smarter than their aquatic ancestors? I'm pretty sure dolphins are smarter than cows. > And, no, dolphins and whales do not fall into the category of less intelligent sea creatures. Both are land mammals that recently (evolutionarily speaking) returned to water. Dolphins are not sea creatures now? Uh, okay. P.S. No mention of octopodes, wonder why.
- phonypc 6y agoEvolutionarily speaking, as was qualified, not really. They're more closely related to deer, pigs, camels and the like than anything else in the sea.
- throwaway_pdp09 6y agoThey can't live on land ergo they are sea creatures. ISTM it's a daft claim.
- phonypc 6y agoOnly if you ignore context. The point is they have an evolutionary history of land-living. Fish don't. Nobody is trying to say they secretly sprout legs and spend most of their time on land.
- throwaway_pdp09 6y agoBeing evolved ultimately from fish, we have an evolutionary history of sea-living. Therefore humans are sea creatures by your logic.
- phonypc 6y agoNo. The argument being made in the article is that living on land provides stimulus for developing intelligence that living in the ocean doesn't. Dolphins and humans have a history of land-living. "Sea creatures," in context, do not. Maybe it was a poor choice of words, and maybe the argument doesn't work. But it doesn't fall apart simply because dolphins live in the sea.
- douglaswlance 6y agoWhat does that mean for a space-faring civilization that can see almost infinitely farther than on land?
- inawarminister 6y agoThe smartest civilisation observes all and doesn't let itself be observed by anything else. Three-Body Problem-esque answer to the Fermi Paradox...
- inawarminister 6y agoHow does this explain Octopus and a few of the smarter never-on-land species, though? Still, that explains why amphibians are mostly... Less "smart" than reptiles.
- johnisgood 6y agoThey may not have mentioned octopuses as they live on the seabed which may share similarities to the land they have been describing and encounter the "Goldilocks zone of obstruction and terrain differentiation". Any thoughts?
- dcolkitt 6y ago> And, no, dolphins and whales do not fall into the category of less intelligent sea creatures. Both are land mammals that recently (evolutionarily speaking) returned to water. Maybe, but what about cephalopods? If aquatic seascapes are not conducive to intelligence, how do we explain octopus intelligence?