3 ms·
I would imagine their intelligence is directly proportional to the so many degrees of freedom the arms have for grasping, but don't ask which one came first, ch
by fmjrey 1mo ago
I would imagine their intelligence is directly proportional to the so many degrees of freedom the arms have for grasping, but don't ask which one came first, chicken or egg?
- pryce 1mo agothe history of how people have conceived of causality between human intelligence and human hands (and in which direction dependency may lie) is quite interesting. "It is by having hands that man is the most intelligent of animals." —Anaxagoras, circa 450 BCE.
- slowin 1mo agoVery insightful given that hands do have massive over representation in our brains: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cortical_homunculus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cortical_homunculus
- abeppu 1mo agoWhy should intelligence _other_ than motor-planning be tied to the degrees of freedom of their movement? - snakes have a high number of degrees of freedom but aren't especially bright - squid have 2 more limbs than octopuses and aren't as smart I think the shallow-water vs deep-water thing mentioned in the article is important; reef and similar environments give a lot more opportunities for smart camouflage, complex navigation, tool-use opportunities etc than the open ocean.
- teravor 1mo agomost likely the enormous control surfaces their biology acquired required distributed neuronal mass and once that mass existed further intelligence became advantageous because it was a minor change at that point (switches during embryology increasing neuron counts and other aspects).
- make3 1mo agowhy chicken or egg? it's way to imagine both evolving together in a mutually reinforcing relationship where the gains in one are direct incentives for the other to continue to evolve, etc