4 ms·

My pet theory is that our advances in brain capacity improved our ability to obtain, plan, prepare and preserve food, paving the way to further brain developmen

My pet theory is that our advances in brain capacity improved our ability to obtain, plan, prepare and preserve food, paving the way to further brain development. It's a positive feedback loop. So purposeful fermentation might have played a role, just like fire, and hunting, and gathering techniques, and farming. It probably wasn't a revolutionary and sudden change, but gradual developments.

radicaldreamer 3y ago
I wonder if there are natural limits to this... brains so smart that they hinder reproduction and are selected against (maybe we're already there)
- berkes 3y ago
  That's easy: brains so smart that it eliminates all natural enemies causing an exponential population explosion. But not smart enough to overcome the challenges such an explosion must overcome It's easy because it's exactly where we are now. Strip mining natural resources, runaway climate- and ecological change. And no way to solve it.
  - rvnx 3y ago
    Wasn't it a reference to a correlation between https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fertility_and_intelligence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fertility_and_intelligence ?
    - berkes 3y ago
      Not intentional. But thanks for pointing to it. Gives me a lot of new reading material!
    - NotAnEconomis23 3y ago
      Fertility and intelligence is only half of the picture. (an important piece, though) What about intelligence and life expectancy of the individual and of children? Also, what about other types of intelligence? IQ, EQ, etc? While very complicated, a multigenerational sampling with more information is really required. There is so much more to this picture, than a negative fertility correlation.
      - kikokikokiko 3y ago
        There is only one intelligence, only one factor that can reliably predict future life outcome. It's what we meant by IQ. All the other BS is just a politically correct invention to avoid inconvenient facts. If high IQ individuals are becoming more and more rare as generations pass, the world of the future will not be a very pleasant, nor at least functional, place to live. Internet, sewage, rockets... these are not things created by "high EQ individuals".
        Anotheroneagain 3y ago
        It doesn't seem like it. First, let's say you have two brains, one has IQ 160, the other has IQ 60. They are the same volume, neither suffers any brain damage. What is the IQ 60 brain doing? Honestly, it seems like the Flynn effect has been a disaster upon the human race, when you look a bit better into history. People did live happier lives. All the supposed horrors seem to be a myth. There was more peace, love, honesty and goodness. Maybe they did know better.
  - bugbuddy 3y ago
    But I was also told by the smartest people that population declines across the world are the actual real threat. What should I believe?
    - berkes 3y ago
      A threat to what? Because it certainly is a threat to economic growth. And also a threat to "national" safety if you decline, but your neighbor grows. But it's undeniable that, on global, and millennial scale, exponential growth is unsustainable.
      - radicaldreamer 3y ago
        The neighbor thing doesn't seem like a large threat any longer, especially with WMDs (otherwise Russia would be sweating having China as its neighbor in Siberia, but it doesn't seem like a large threat due to Russia being able to defend its territory)
        psd1 3y ago
        The thing about MAD is that the button only needs to be pushed once. We're on a tight rope until we aren't.
    - tejtm 3y ago
      In an exponential growth environment, every group that does not participate in exploding, loses sooner to any group that does (modulo chance).
  - bitcurious 3y ago
    In fact, we’ve got brains so smart they lead to wealthy societies with flat to decreasing populations. Just need to get past the hump.
    - berkes 3y ago
      I truly hope we will. But the more I learn about it, the more I get convinced "we" (human civilization) won't make it through. It doesn't seem like "a hump" but more like a fundamental law of nature: exponential growth will collapse. And do so violently and with chaos. I'm not talking about "the next 25 years" but more hundreds of years. Though even the timeline makes me anxious lately. I might see parts of civilization collapse due to exponential growth hitting a roof.
- kikokikokiko 3y ago
  The invention of effective, as in ~100% effective, means of contraception marks the beginning of the Idiocracy era, the Idiocracene. Up until 60 or so years ago, even if you could foresee the risks of an unwanted pregnancy, most likely than not you would eventually end up having a child or two during your lifetime. Not anymore. You can see it clearly when you compare the average IQ of a given country's population and the demographics tendency over time. This graph could be swapped with average children per woman and it would look basically the same: https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/average-iq-by-country https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/average-i... The future belongs to the individuals, on any species, that are best adapted towards reproducing. Human beings are just another animal subjected to natural selection pressures. It seems that, usually, if you have too high of an IQ you simply refuse to have kids.
  - tsol 3y ago
    To be fair that last part was probably always true. The future belongs to the next generation, and not everyone values having kids. Probably why most major faiths encourage having kids. The people who were too smart to have kids died out along with their ideas. It's like survival of the fittest, but with ideas. I have a theory that long in our past we've went through periods of secularization like our current modern age. It's just a phase that dies out when the people who believe it do.
    - kikokikokiko 3y ago
      Even so, high IQ was a trait that was transmitted through the eons, ergo high IQ individuals in the past used to still have children. I don't think your theory reflects the differences between the past and today's contraception technology tools. Think of a high IQ man in the late 1700. He can see that having children incurs enormous costs, both financially, emotionally, in terms of time, freedom etc. He can choose to never marry, and just keep being a womanizer. He may have LOTS of unrecognized offspring, that are very hard to be attributed to him, and so pass his genes along. He just want to have sex, reproducing is not at all in his mind. Sex is good and he likes it, so he does it. That's the trick nature plays in order to make 1700 man to pass his genes. Now in the 21st century, basically no high IQ man would go around having unprotected sex, since the costs associated nowadays are still enormous, probably even more so than 300 years ago, and today those costs are easily enforceable through the judicial system. So 21st century high IQ man, on average, will have a LOT less children than he used to have in the past. Sex is still good, and he will have a lot of it. But now nature's trick stopped working. The sex drive per se is not effective anymore when coupled with a high capacity brain that wants to avoid the costs of having to care for another human beings. So, this trait, high IQ, will be selected out of the gene pool over time. In the case of high IQ women it's the same story. In the past, with a lot less effective and readily available contraceptive methods, smart women were probably a lot more at risk of having unexpected pregnancies. Nowadays, unexpected pregnancies are basically an IQ test for women.
- candiddevmike 3y ago
  There was a documentary that explored this: Idiocracy.
- Bjartr 3y ago
  Brains take a lot of energy, having a brain bigger than life demands can be a liability and less fit than a dumber, but more energy efficient, variant.
- suoduandao3 3y ago
  We're probably already at a point where we can't just make them larger - human births are horrifically dangerous compared to other animals, likely because the heads are so big. Greater neuron density is probably still possible though. Just need to evolve to normalize the greater nutrient requirements.
- saalweachter 3y ago
  It's important to remember that there's not a "make brain smarter" slider that evolution is slowly sliding to the right. Our genes code for proteins which are expressed in different quantities and have different effects on multiple parts of our biology and growth that lead to operational differences in our brains that lead to patterns that might be considered "smarter" in some circumstances and is beneficial in some environments. Take, for example, something near and dear to many of us on HN, hyperfocus. Is being prone to hyperfocus on subjects that interest us making us "smarter"? Is it "beneficial"? Well, sometimes, in some ways, in some environments. If you can hyperfocus on something that has economic value in a safe environment, you can make a lot of money and be very successful. If the things you want to hyperfocus on aren't particularly useful or you end up neglecting your actual job or relationships because of it, or if you're a caveman who was supposed to be keeping an eye out for lions and not counting how many leaves are on different kinds of plants, you'll be less successful.
Anotheroneagain 3y ago
I find it rather unlikely, considering that bears can consume bascally any other living thing, with the brain size below any homo species.
Melatonic 3y ago
Probably true. I have always also wondered if the use of natural vessels contributed to our knowledge of fermentation - early humans made extensive use of Gourds and animal products to make vessels for holding food and water. Definitely possible that natural yeasts and bacteria could have came with these natural vessels (or early humans could have even found ways to add them in a way that meshed well with the interior wall).
- alangibson 3y ago
  You dont even need to take it that far. Leave anything with sugars out for a few days and you'll get fermentation. I'd bet that humans developed intentional alcohol production before language. Leave foraged fruit in a depression in a rock and you'll have wine in a few weeks.
agumonkey 3y ago
I wonder if the main attractors are not eating, breathing, balancing.. any effort toward this has infinite budget in your decision center.

radicaldreamer 3y ago

I wonder if there are natural limits to this... brains so smart that they hinder reproduction and are selected against (maybe we're already there)

berkes 3y ago
That's easy: brains so smart that it eliminates all natural enemies causing an exponential population explosion. But not smart enough to overcome the challenges such an explosion must overcome It's easy because it's exactly where we are now. Strip mining natural resources, runaway climate- and ecological change. And no way to solve it.
- rvnx 3y ago
  Wasn't it a reference to a correlation between https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fertility_and_intelligence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fertility_and_intelligence ?
  - berkes 3y ago
    Not intentional. But thanks for pointing to it. Gives me a lot of new reading material!
  - NotAnEconomis23 3y ago
    Fertility and intelligence is only half of the picture. (an important piece, though) What about intelligence and life expectancy of the individual and of children? Also, what about other types of intelligence? IQ, EQ, etc? While very complicated, a multigenerational sampling with more information is really required. There is so much more to this picture, than a negative fertility correlation.
    - kikokikokiko 3y ago
      There is only one intelligence, only one factor that can reliably predict future life outcome. It's what we meant by IQ. All the other BS is just a politically correct invention to avoid inconvenient facts. If high IQ individuals are becoming more and more rare as generations pass, the world of the future will not be a very pleasant, nor at least functional, place to live. Internet, sewage, rockets... these are not things created by "high EQ individuals".
      - Anotheroneagain 3y ago
        It doesn't seem like it. First, let's say you have two brains, one has IQ 160, the other has IQ 60. They are the same volume, neither suffers any brain damage. What is the IQ 60 brain doing? Honestly, it seems like the Flynn effect has been a disaster upon the human race, when you look a bit better into history. People did live happier lives. All the supposed horrors seem to be a myth. There was more peace, love, honesty and goodness. Maybe they did know better.
- bugbuddy 3y ago
  But I was also told by the smartest people that population declines across the world are the actual real threat. What should I believe?
  - berkes 3y ago
    A threat to what? Because it certainly is a threat to economic growth. And also a threat to "national" safety if you decline, but your neighbor grows. But it's undeniable that, on global, and millennial scale, exponential growth is unsustainable.
    - radicaldreamer 3y ago
      The neighbor thing doesn't seem like a large threat any longer, especially with WMDs (otherwise Russia would be sweating having China as its neighbor in Siberia, but it doesn't seem like a large threat due to Russia being able to defend its territory)
      - psd1 3y ago
        The thing about MAD is that the button only needs to be pushed once. We're on a tight rope until we aren't.
  - tejtm 3y ago
    In an exponential growth environment, every group that does not participate in exploding, loses sooner to any group that does (modulo chance).
- bitcurious 3y ago
  In fact, we’ve got brains so smart they lead to wealthy societies with flat to decreasing populations. Just need to get past the hump.
  - berkes 3y ago
    I truly hope we will. But the more I learn about it, the more I get convinced "we" (human civilization) won't make it through. It doesn't seem like "a hump" but more like a fundamental law of nature: exponential growth will collapse. And do so violently and with chaos. I'm not talking about "the next 25 years" but more hundreds of years. Though even the timeline makes me anxious lately. I might see parts of civilization collapse due to exponential growth hitting a roof.
kikokikokiko 3y ago
The invention of effective, as in ~100% effective, means of contraception marks the beginning of the Idiocracy era, the Idiocracene. Up until 60 or so years ago, even if you could foresee the risks of an unwanted pregnancy, most likely than not you would eventually end up having a child or two during your lifetime. Not anymore. You can see it clearly when you compare the average IQ of a given country's population and the demographics tendency over time. This graph could be swapped with average children per woman and it would look basically the same: https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/average-iq-by-country https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/average-i... The future belongs to the individuals, on any species, that are best adapted towards reproducing. Human beings are just another animal subjected to natural selection pressures. It seems that, usually, if you have too high of an IQ you simply refuse to have kids.
- tsol 3y ago
  To be fair that last part was probably always true. The future belongs to the next generation, and not everyone values having kids. Probably why most major faiths encourage having kids. The people who were too smart to have kids died out along with their ideas. It's like survival of the fittest, but with ideas. I have a theory that long in our past we've went through periods of secularization like our current modern age. It's just a phase that dies out when the people who believe it do.
  - kikokikokiko 3y ago
    Even so, high IQ was a trait that was transmitted through the eons, ergo high IQ individuals in the past used to still have children. I don't think your theory reflects the differences between the past and today's contraception technology tools. Think of a high IQ man in the late 1700. He can see that having children incurs enormous costs, both financially, emotionally, in terms of time, freedom etc. He can choose to never marry, and just keep being a womanizer. He may have LOTS of unrecognized offspring, that are very hard to be attributed to him, and so pass his genes along. He just want to have sex, reproducing is not at all in his mind. Sex is good and he likes it, so he does it. That's the trick nature plays in order to make 1700 man to pass his genes. Now in the 21st century, basically no high IQ man would go around having unprotected sex, since the costs associated nowadays are still enormous, probably even more so than 300 years ago, and today those costs are easily enforceable through the judicial system. So 21st century high IQ man, on average, will have a LOT less children than he used to have in the past. Sex is still good, and he will have a lot of it. But now nature's trick stopped working. The sex drive per se is not effective anymore when coupled with a high capacity brain that wants to avoid the costs of having to care for another human beings. So, this trait, high IQ, will be selected out of the gene pool over time. In the case of high IQ women it's the same story. In the past, with a lot less effective and readily available contraceptive methods, smart women were probably a lot more at risk of having unexpected pregnancies. Nowadays, unexpected pregnancies are basically an IQ test for women.
candiddevmike 3y ago
There was a documentary that explored this: Idiocracy.
Bjartr 3y ago
Brains take a lot of energy, having a brain bigger than life demands can be a liability and less fit than a dumber, but more energy efficient, variant.
suoduandao3 3y ago
We're probably already at a point where we can't just make them larger - human births are horrifically dangerous compared to other animals, likely because the heads are so big. Greater neuron density is probably still possible though. Just need to evolve to normalize the greater nutrient requirements.
saalweachter 3y ago
It's important to remember that there's not a "make brain smarter" slider that evolution is slowly sliding to the right. Our genes code for proteins which are expressed in different quantities and have different effects on multiple parts of our biology and growth that lead to operational differences in our brains that lead to patterns that might be considered "smarter" in some circumstances and is beneficial in some environments. Take, for example, something near and dear to many of us on HN, hyperfocus. Is being prone to hyperfocus on subjects that interest us making us "smarter"? Is it "beneficial"? Well, sometimes, in some ways, in some environments. If you can hyperfocus on something that has economic value in a safe environment, you can make a lot of money and be very successful. If the things you want to hyperfocus on aren't particularly useful or you end up neglecting your actual job or relationships because of it, or if you're a caveman who was supposed to be keeping an eye out for lions and not counting how many leaves are on different kinds of plants, you'll be less successful.

Anotheroneagain 3y ago

I find it rather unlikely, considering that bears can consume bascally any other living thing, with the brain size below any homo species.

Melatonic 3y ago

Probably true. I have always also wondered if the use of natural vessels contributed to our knowledge of fermentation - early humans made extensive use of Gourds and animal products to make vessels for holding food and water. Definitely possible that natural yeasts and bacteria could have came with these natural vessels (or early humans could have even found ways to add them in a way that meshed well with the interior wall).

alangibson 3y ago
You dont even need to take it that far. Leave anything with sugars out for a few days and you'll get fermentation. I'd bet that humans developed intentional alcohol production before language. Leave foraged fruit in a depression in a rock and you'll have wine in a few weeks.

agumonkey 3y ago

I wonder if the main attractors are not eating, breathing, balancing.. any effort toward this has infinite budget in your decision center.