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It feels to me like it's a coincidence of evolutionary pressures and timelines that humans evolved to a take-off level of intelligence before elephants or whale
by ianbicking 3y ago
It feels to me like it's a coincidence of evolutionary pressures and timelines that humans evolved to a take-off level of intelligence before elephants or whales. Whales especially just haven't had the time, they are a much younger species/order than primates. If humpback whales had been contemporaneous with, say, australopithecus, who knows how things would have gone. And elephants maybe just didn't win the roll of the dice, it feels like there were some very pivotal moments of evolution where our ancestors were under tremendous pressure, where small populations and a tenuous grasp on species survival led to unique intellectual adaptations.
It would be fun to imagine a world where the Americas were just out of reach of human migration, but an elephant species on the continents developed speech and abstraction. In my mind it would be a smaller species of elephant, of which there were many, and who may have more need to take advantage of intelligence to prosper.
I also think about r- and K-selected species [1]; whether the survival of a species depends on the fitness of the individual or the fitness of the parent. Humans are incredible parents (being K-selected), and we preserve our line by preserving our children. We're physically decent I suppose, but definitely not as children. Whales are similar, with small numbers of children who require almost heroic parental effort to raise. Elephants are definitely on the same spectrum.
[1] https://www2.nau.edu/lrm22/lessons/r_and_k_selection/r_and_k.html https://www2.nau.edu/lrm22/lessons/r_and_k_selection/r_and_k...
- sjducb 3y agoWhales lack hands. It's hard to build anything without hands. Without technology intelligence isn't much use.
- FredPret 3y agoHumans are incredibly badass physically once they reach adulthood. We have endurance, immune systems, and digestive systems that seem tailor-made for world domination. (you could walk a horse to death, and that's an animal we bred for endurance) The catch is you have to be smart to take advantage of these things.
- TrainedMonkey 3y agoAnd tool usage, turns out articulated appendages with articulated grippy sausages are effective, energy efficient, and can apply both power and precision.
- kfrzcode 3y agoMaybe this is why Octopi are so efficient and smart? They forgo the hinges and just have a grippy sausage tube x 8
- tourmalinetaco 3y agoRather than grippy sausage tube, I believe the proper term would be sucky sushi rolls. On a more serious note, it may be due to similar genetics to humans, specifically the LINE family of transposons.[0] Though, maybe they’re just aliens.[1] [0] - https://www.livescience.com/jumping-genes-octopus-intelligence https://www.livescience.com/jumping-genes-octopus-intelligen... [1] - https://cordis.europa.eu/article/id/123479-trending-science-do-octopuses-come-from-outer-space https://cordis.europa.eu/article/id/123479-trending-science-...
- byby 3y agoI've heard of the fact we have more endurance then the horse but walk one to death? Source? Or deeper explanation?
- DicIfTEx 3y agoI think they're referring to humans' ability to conduct persistence hunting: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persistence_hunting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persistence_hunting
- byby 3y agoI'm aware of this. We can run down a cheetah or bunny. But we can't actually run down a horse. Only top ultra marathoners can do that. But walking down a horse? Really?
- User23 3y agoHuman children, boys especially, often appear to be actively trying to get themselves maimed or killed.
- someweirdperson 3y agoThat's just part of the natural selection process.
- bilsbie 3y agoYou just can’t succeed technologically underwater. Can’t make fire. Can’t mix things, etc.
- idiotsecant 3y agoI think that 'take off' level of intelligence requires that increased intelligence lead to increased biological benefit. Those complex brains are expensive. Since elephants aren't carnivores I don't think they would get much benefit out of the reasoning skills that enabled us to be really excellent pack hunters, which was probably why more intelligent ancestors of humans managed to out-compete the less intelligent ones. If elephants gain abstract reasoning skills what does it get them? More efficient harvesting of bananas?
- ftxbro 3y agoso if we want to evolve the most intelligent ai then we should make it a carnivorous pack hunter
- swagasaurus-rex 3y agoT-800. Living tissue over a metal endoskeleton.
- ianbicking 3y agoThat's why I wonder if those times of extreme pressure, when human (or human-ancestor) populations dwindled to the thousands, cause this kind of adaptation. Like it wasn't just being carnivores or whatever, but that moment of having to rediscover survival as a species. Like maybe if the Wilson Island Mammoths [1] had just a bit easier time of it, or their populations weren't quite as small (or by luck of the dice were much smarter!) then they could have survived. In fact it would have really helped elephants if some of them were smart enough not to be made extinct by humans! Maybe if humans had been just a little less competent, pressuring but not exterminating the wooly mammoths...
- jiggawatts 3y agoI had an idle shower thought that technological restrictions might result in hyper-intelligence. E.g.: humans could reach high technology relatively easily because our environment and physiology enables tool use, etc… But if “takeoff” is blocked, and evolution continues, then it might still be possible for an aquatic species to overcome the limitations of their environment — but only once they’ve reached the much higher level of intelligence required to find workarounds for their miriad problems!
- f6v 3y ago> who knows how things would have gone There would be living ships, of course. This is a Star Maker reference.
- chatmasta 3y agoI sometimes think about how if humans were to go extinct, and some other species were to eventually develop intelligence and replace us, then there is a pair of animals walking (or swimming or flying) the earth today that would be the ancestors of that species.