4 ms·

Hmmm. I think there's been a lot of speculation about human musical tendencies and the relationship to speech and intelligence. Idk if it's wise to hypothesis

by netcan 5y ago

Hmmm. I think there's been a lot of speculation about human musical tendencies and the relationship to speech and intelligence. Idk if it's wise to hypothesise that "intelligence" arises at any point. We don't have very good definitions of intelligence. Also, brain size of all homo species is massive relative to ancestral species and that seems likely to be related. Certain types of human intelligence abilities are pretty tightly coupled with speech, articulated or otherwise. Also, most primates vocalize communication and even have some vocabulary of semantic words. So, it didn't arise suddenly out of nowhere. All interesting stuff. I'll check out Jordania.

wahern 5y ago
What most intrigued me about Jordania's theory is that it's one of the first and few I've encountered that provides a comprehensive model for the emergence and maintenance of strong, non-kin altruism within a classical genetic evolutionary model. Jordania's complex, unified group singing and dancing displays operate to exclude free riders. If you don't strongly share both the ability to perform the display and to spontaneously exhibit the display in unison, you get eaten. (IOW, no group selection required--just basic selfish gene theory filtering out the non-cooperators.) Furthermore, the neurological mutations that developed to promote these displays would be fundamental to enhanced empathy and, in particular, the capacity and predisposition to strongly conflate group identity with individual identity--again, all with selfish gene theory. Another way of putting it is that strong socialization evolved first and drove intelligence, rather than intelligence driving stronger socialization. This explains how the trajectory of hominin intelligence broke away from other apes and mammals--nature first had to overcome the altruism barrier, which is fundamentally limited by basic sexual fitness and kinship. (Closest examples of pervasive altruism elsewhere in nature tend to revolve around kin matriarchies--bonobos, naked mole rats, and of course colony insects--and are simply modulated by genetic relatedness as would be expected by selfish gene theory.) I have no clue how probable is Jordania's theory, but it's relatively unique in comprehensively providing a plausible and distinguishable (i.e. exactly why it was serendipitous without being a miracle) pathway for the development of human altruism. And I tend to believe that strong altruism is the prerequisite for human-level intelligence. If it weren't, I fail to see how human-level intelligence wouldn't have quickly arisen many times over long before hominins. Strong, non-kin altruism and its capacity for socialization provides a unique ecological niche unto itself into which ever greater intelligence provides the enhanced degree of sexual fitness that it couldn't (and hasn't) otherwise.
- netcan 5y ago
  I'll definitely check it out. True, verifiable or not... even the most speculative theories are interesting to me. I'm even (especially) a fan of Julian Jaynes, and his strongest claims are flat wrong. Music is certainly a wild card in the human story, and I'm interested to hear how it can be woven into our superhero origin.

by netcan 5y ago

wahern 5y ago

What most intrigued me about Jordania's theory is that it's one of the first and few I've encountered that provides a comprehensive model for the emergence and maintenance of strong, non-kin altruism within a classical genetic evolutionary model. Jordania's complex, unified group singing and dancing displays operate to exclude free riders. If you don't strongly share both the ability to perform the display and to spontaneously exhibit the display in unison, you get eaten. (IOW, no group selection required--just basic selfish gene theory filtering out the non-cooperators.) Furthermore, the neurological mutations that developed to promote these displays would be fundamental to enhanced empathy and, in particular, the capacity and predisposition to strongly conflate group identity with individual identity--again, all with selfish gene theory. Another way of putting it is that strong socialization evolved first and drove intelligence, rather than intelligence driving stronger socialization. This explains how the trajectory of hominin intelligence broke away from other apes and mammals--nature first had to overcome the altruism barrier, which is fundamentally limited by basic sexual fitness and kinship. (Closest examples of pervasive altruism elsewhere in nature tend to revolve around kin matriarchies--bonobos, naked mole rats, and of course colony insects--and are simply modulated by genetic relatedness as would be expected by selfish gene theory.) I have no clue how probable is Jordania's theory, but it's relatively unique in comprehensively providing a plausible and distinguishable (i.e. exactly why it was serendipitous without being a miracle) pathway for the development of human altruism. And I tend to believe that strong altruism is the prerequisite for human-level intelligence. If it weren't, I fail to see how human-level intelligence wouldn't have quickly arisen many times over long before hominins. Strong, non-kin altruism and its capacity for socialization provides a unique ecological niche unto itself into which ever greater intelligence provides the enhanced degree of sexual fitness that it couldn't (and hasn't) otherwise.

netcan 5y ago
I'll definitely check it out. True, verifiable or not... even the most speculative theories are interesting to me. I'm even (especially) a fan of Julian Jaynes, and his strongest claims are flat wrong. Music is certainly a wild card in the human story, and I'm interested to hear how it can be woven into our superhero origin.