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A blue whale's brain weighs in at around 15lbs. Mine is roughly 3.3lbs. I suspect size isn't everything. You are unlikely to receive a response from a blue w

A blue whale's brain weighs in at around 15lbs. Mine is roughly 3.3lbs. I suspect size isn't everything. You are unlikely to receive a response from a blue whale. Can you imagine trying to type on a keyboard with As you say, corvids, octopi and others have recently been interacted with in such a way as to be shown to demonstrate unexpectedly complex behaviour. Brain size doesn't seem to be quite as important as you might think. Note my brain is about a fifth the size of a blue whale's brain. Now I am absolutely useless at living within the sea and I have no idea how complicated it is but I suspect that based on our relative brain size, that it can be very complicated compared to what we land lubbers get up to. Evolution doesn't leave rubbish lying around unless it does not impair things.

localplume 3y ago
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BurningFrog 3y ago
I think most of the brain manages the physical body. This is why it's size is roughly proportional to the body weight. I don'y know how much of the brain is used for "thinking", and I suspect science doesn't either.
- pdonis 3y ago
  I don't think it's quite that bad. I don't have my copy of Richard Dawkins' The Ancestor's Tale handy, but I remember it discusses research into the relationship between brain size and body size. The two key findings that I remember are: (1) The scaling law. One might think brain size should scale as body size, if the key is simply weight, or number of neurons; or one might think brain size should scale as the 2/3 power of body size, if one takes into account the square-cube law. The research Dawkins describes found that the actual scaling was in between the two: brain size generally scales as the 3/4 power of body size. (2) Differences between groupings of animals. This basically affects the constant that multiplies (body size to the 3/4 power) in the equation for expected brain size. IIRC primates have the largest constant, cetaceans have the second largest, but octopuses and squids also have a fairly high constant. I don't remember seeing any data on corvids.
  - xvilka 3y ago
    This kind of scaling applies well beyond brain. I recommend checking out the book Scale by Geoffrey West[1] for more examples. [1] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/31670196-scale https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/31670196-scale
  - LightBug1 3y ago
    Adding a drive-by comment about those stories you read where a person has had a significant X% of their brain removed due to illness, and they still function normally. All is not what it seems.
stevenwoo 3y ago
Also the way octopi can adapt their camouflage and topography of octopi brains/nerve cells suggest their brains may not work like ours, and that Pitt, et al paper about frog vision https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/4065609 https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/4065609 strongly hints our first intuitive assumptions about how things work may not be correct.
Legend2440 3y ago
I suspect what makes humans special is our combination of intelligence and communication. Society is kind of like a superorganism, we get to learn from the sum of all human knowledge. Most of the things I know came from other humans who died long before I was born. I get to benefit from all their brainpower indirectly. I'd be much dumber on my own.
- somenameforme 3y ago
  Humans are certainly the absolute kings of tool usage. Examples in the animal world that we find impressive are things that even a human infant will trivialize in short order. And if you think about it in this context, communication itself is really just another tool. It's taking something that's not particularly useful, the ability to make the same sounding grunt repeatedly, and turning it into something useful. Any animal that can move its body in a consistent way, make the same noise repeatedly, or do any other sort of repeated 'thing' has the ability to create an arbitrarily complex language. But they lack something enabling them to do that, and it seems whatever this something is - it probably wouldn't be terribly far from the same thing that enables meaningful, complex, and intricate tool creation.
  - Legend2440 3y ago
    Right, but how many of these tools could you have invented (or even learned to use) by yourself, with no prior knowledge about tools to guide you? Even "primitive" tools like wooden bows and stone arrowheads are the result of generations of accumulated knowledge. You are as smart as you are because other humans taught you.
    - flangola7 3y ago
      More than generations. The hand axe, a sharpened rock with no handle, was the apex of human technology for over one hundred thousand years. Even fire took tens of thousands of years to become a widespread tool.
      - 3y ago
User23 3y ago
Brain size correlates to cognitive ability quite well within a species. Outside of species, it gets much murkier on account of glial:neuron ratios among other confounds. As for whale brains, well who knows. Evolution isn't an optimizing force as you appear to believe, rather it is the tyranny of the merely adequate. The oceans are full of remarkably stupid creatures that haven't changed in hundreds of millions of years on account of having a lot of teeth and swimming well has proved sufficient. And of course there's the interesting question of size efficiency. Vacuum tubes are considerably bigger than transistors, which in turn are considerably bigger than ICs. Perhaps raw size isn't really an interesting metric for cross-architectural brains either?
- rramadass 3y ago
  > Brain size correlates to cognitive ability quite well within a species. Not quite; it is much more nuanced and not settled - https://neuroscience.stanford.edu/news/ask-neuroscientist-does-bigger-brain-make-you-smarter https://neuroscience.stanford.edu/news/ask-neuroscientist-do...
  - concordDance 3y ago
    0.3-0.4 is a decent correlation, though obviously there are other bigger factors.
    - rramadass 3y ago
      The very next para points to the problems associated with forming such a correlation; To be honest, I find these correlation a bit unsettling. Clearly, there is more to intelligence than brain size, or classic geniuses like Albert Einstein, who had an average-sized brain, would have been out of luck! It is important think about how we should actually define intelligence, and to keep in mind that the studies cited above only show a correlation between brain size and a person’s score on an intelligence quotient test. Although IQ is historically the most widely used intelligence measure, by no means does it account for all aspects of human intelligence, nor is it an entirely consistent readout of cognitive ability between individuals. Furthermore, a closer look at the results of the gene-association study reveal that most of the relationship the authors found between HMGA2 gene variations and cranial size could be accounted for by the fact that the gene is also correlated with human height. Correlational studies have only established a weak to moderate linear relationship between brain size an intelligence, which is enough fuel to ensure that the brain size and intelligence hypothesis doesn’t burn out, but does little to explain the true basis of human cognitive capacity. You might also want to look at the paper Decreases in Brain Size and Encephalization in Anatomically Modern Humans i have linked here - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36833133 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36833133

localplume 3y ago

[dead]

BurningFrog 3y ago

I think most of the brain manages the physical body. This is why it's size is roughly proportional to the body weight. I don'y know how much of the brain is used for "thinking", and I suspect science doesn't either.

pdonis 3y ago
I don't think it's quite that bad. I don't have my copy of Richard Dawkins' The Ancestor's Tale handy, but I remember it discusses research into the relationship between brain size and body size. The two key findings that I remember are: (1) The scaling law. One might think brain size should scale as body size, if the key is simply weight, or number of neurons; or one might think brain size should scale as the 2/3 power of body size, if one takes into account the square-cube law. The research Dawkins describes found that the actual scaling was in between the two: brain size generally scales as the 3/4 power of body size. (2) Differences between groupings of animals. This basically affects the constant that multiplies (body size to the 3/4 power) in the equation for expected brain size. IIRC primates have the largest constant, cetaceans have the second largest, but octopuses and squids also have a fairly high constant. I don't remember seeing any data on corvids.
- xvilka 3y ago
  This kind of scaling applies well beyond brain. I recommend checking out the book Scale by Geoffrey West[1] for more examples. [1] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/31670196-scale https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/31670196-scale
- LightBug1 3y ago
  Adding a drive-by comment about those stories you read where a person has had a significant X% of their brain removed due to illness, and they still function normally. All is not what it seems.

stevenwoo 3y ago

Also the way octopi can adapt their camouflage and topography of octopi brains/nerve cells suggest their brains may not work like ours, and that Pitt, et al paper about frog vision https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/4065609 https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/4065609 strongly hints our first intuitive assumptions about how things work may not be correct.

Legend2440 3y ago

I suspect what makes humans special is our combination of intelligence and communication. Society is kind of like a superorganism, we get to learn from the sum of all human knowledge. Most of the things I know came from other humans who died long before I was born. I get to benefit from all their brainpower indirectly. I'd be much dumber on my own.

somenameforme 3y ago
Humans are certainly the absolute kings of tool usage. Examples in the animal world that we find impressive are things that even a human infant will trivialize in short order. And if you think about it in this context, communication itself is really just another tool. It's taking something that's not particularly useful, the ability to make the same sounding grunt repeatedly, and turning it into something useful. Any animal that can move its body in a consistent way, make the same noise repeatedly, or do any other sort of repeated 'thing' has the ability to create an arbitrarily complex language. But they lack something enabling them to do that, and it seems whatever this something is - it probably wouldn't be terribly far from the same thing that enables meaningful, complex, and intricate tool creation.
- Legend2440 3y ago
  Right, but how many of these tools could you have invented (or even learned to use) by yourself, with no prior knowledge about tools to guide you? Even "primitive" tools like wooden bows and stone arrowheads are the result of generations of accumulated knowledge. You are as smart as you are because other humans taught you.
  - flangola7 3y ago
    More than generations. The hand axe, a sharpened rock with no handle, was the apex of human technology for over one hundred thousand years. Even fire took tens of thousands of years to become a widespread tool.
    - 3y ago

User23 3y ago

Brain size correlates to cognitive ability quite well within a species. Outside of species, it gets much murkier on account of glial:neuron ratios among other confounds. As for whale brains, well who knows. Evolution isn't an optimizing force as you appear to believe, rather it is the tyranny of the merely adequate. The oceans are full of remarkably stupid creatures that haven't changed in hundreds of millions of years on account of having a lot of teeth and swimming well has proved sufficient. And of course there's the interesting question of size efficiency. Vacuum tubes are considerably bigger than transistors, which in turn are considerably bigger than ICs. Perhaps raw size isn't really an interesting metric for cross-architectural brains either?

rramadass 3y ago
> Brain size correlates to cognitive ability quite well within a species. Not quite; it is much more nuanced and not settled - https://neuroscience.stanford.edu/news/ask-neuroscientist-does-bigger-brain-make-you-smarter https://neuroscience.stanford.edu/news/ask-neuroscientist-do...
- concordDance 3y ago
  0.3-0.4 is a decent correlation, though obviously there are other bigger factors.
  - rramadass 3y ago
    The very next para points to the problems associated with forming such a correlation; To be honest, I find these correlation a bit unsettling. Clearly, there is more to intelligence than brain size, or classic geniuses like Albert Einstein, who had an average-sized brain, would have been out of luck! It is important think about how we should actually define intelligence, and to keep in mind that the studies cited above only show a correlation between brain size and a person’s score on an intelligence quotient test. Although IQ is historically the most widely used intelligence measure, by no means does it account for all aspects of human intelligence, nor is it an entirely consistent readout of cognitive ability between individuals. Furthermore, a closer look at the results of the gene-association study reveal that most of the relationship the authors found between HMGA2 gene variations and cranial size could be accounted for by the fact that the gene is also correlated with human height. Correlational studies have only established a weak to moderate linear relationship between brain size an intelligence, which is enough fuel to ensure that the brain size and intelligence hypothesis doesn’t burn out, but does little to explain the true basis of human cognitive capacity. You might also want to look at the paper Decreases in Brain Size and Encephalization in Anatomically Modern Humans i have linked here - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36833133 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36833133