I don't know if questions of human evolution or questions of environmental protection are better. But since this thread is about human evolution, you might want to start another thread if questions about environmental protection are more important to you.
You have a presupposition that evolution is blind and everything is random chance, if evolution is guided it certainly is worth pointing out the strange anomaly that evolution would unleash the potential for an enlightened havoc wreaking species to far exceed the destruction ability of just its natural prey, along with the potential to wreak havoc on the entire ecosystem. These issues are married to each other if teleology is written into nature.
Uh, no, the first apes to come out of the jungle were not John Locke or Thomas Hobbes. They were apes very similar to the apes in the jungle. They were finding food on the edges of the jungle.
In this environment, evolution found that cognitive abilities were more important for them than keen senses. In these creatures, the proportion of the brain dedicated to cognitive functions increased.
They were apes very similar to apes in the jungle? Or they were given increased cognitive abilities? Which one is it? There’s a big difference. So you are proposing incremental cognitive steps from ape to man? How many intermediate stages if so? Each intermediary step was a little smarter than apes yet still not as smart as homo sapiens is what you’re saying? I could be wrong but isn’t the dominant view today that Neanderthals and Humans were of equal intelligence?
Understood, I was not trying to say that cognitive abilities are frivolous. Rather, I was saying that, for most apes, expansion of cognitive abilities can be frivolous if it comes at the expense of decreased brainpower dedicated to the senses.
My biggest brain teaser is the “If you don’t use it you lose it” factor. If a species is given creative thinking survival abilities that are adequate for their survival then their superior senses will go into decline. But they are doomed if their senses drop off before acquiring the cognitive boost of creative thinking. Becoming enlightened first, then having the senses drop off is what makes most sense to me.
Nothing was written in the cards. Had Lucy and her kind inherited a sandy island with no rocks or predators, but plenty of bananas, evolution would have turned out much different.
I’m saying that once evolution gifted a species with the cognitive abilities it is written in the cards, no matter where you place them (IF they don’t die off of course). I’m not referring to factors that would have led to evolution going in another direction. I’m speaking of afterwards not beforehand.
But our ancestors had hands that could use tools, had increased cognitive ability, had available stones to make tools, and had huge survival benefits from tools. The result is that our ancestors became good at using simple tools.
Cognitive abilities, the design of our hands, and creative use of tools are all cut from the same cloth. This shows a brilliance in evolution, our cognitive abilities would be extremely hindered with cat paws! Give us these traits and we will start using tools on a beach, in the mountains, in a forest, etc.
This short sighted brilliance of evolution is completely at odds with it being clueless to the environmental ramifications that these evolutionary traits would introduce to the world. This world consists of one enlightened species in a sea of non-enlightened species. The entire Earth is a connected system! It makes no sense that the evolutionary mechanism of life ON EARTH would be so completely obtuse to the larger picture of the Earth which is a connected system.
I get so confused when people hold the contradictory positions that Mother Earth is a brilliantly connected system, yet the evolution of Mother Earth is blind and is totally ignorant to the complete system.
Understood. Hippos never kept up with us in brainpower.
That’s what I’m saying. Your explanation credited us being removed from trees as a major reason behind our cognitive power. But other creatures changed environments in a whole host of scenarios, yet it was an irrelevant factor because no evolutionary spark took place for them that lead to them having our cognition as well. There is no magic chain of events, in fact each chain of events was probably repeated by a million different species a million times over (without resulting in our cognition). Evolution is guided to produce an enlightened species in a sea of non-enlightened species. The consequences to Mother Earth as a result of that is part of the teleological play book. The unanimity of our higher brain power ability speaks volumes about this purpose being written into the fabric of reality. If evolution was blind this cognitive trigger would have fired off way more often.
Of all the creatures living in the African rift valley, only hominids developed high levels of cognitive brain power. There were a number of factors that all worked together to cause this, such as flexible hands that could use tools, available tools, food sources that required tools, and the ability for our ancestors' brain size to increase significantly after birth during a prolonged infancy. These were not all present in the hippo.
You are mixing up the effects of cognitive brain power with the cause. Evolution not only didn’t give the hippo our cognitive powers but it also would not have chosen to give it to the body type of a hippo because it would be rather useless. Human hands are not a blind mistake that luckily matched up with our other blind mistake of brain power. It gets very ad hoc when people try to deny teleology in nature, even to the point of scrambling up effects with a cause.
Had our larger-brained ancestors inherited an island full of fruit trees and nuts, with no predators or prey, our evolutionary history would have been much different.
This statement combines two separate things as if talking about one thing, it doesn’t matter what our “Large brained ancestors” inherited if in your own statement they are already large brained to begin the statement with. Why do you end your statement with “evolutionary history would have been different” if the beginning of your statement already has them with big brains? The evolutionary process IS the process towards the big brains. Go ahead and put them on a beach after that, it won’t matter.
We might have never learned to cook. The future of humanity was not cast in stone once our ancestors got larger brains.
It absolutely was set in stone. We would have learned to cook as long as we had the material available. How many instances do we see throughout history of civilizations of large brained mammals that thrived in a similar fashion, yet who never bumped into each other? The fact that the world was not connected long ago, and that these civilizations didn’t bump into each other is very beneficial to see this pattern as independent of environment. They just needed the cognition first. These civilizations of those with evolved brain power happened all throughout history in all types of environments.
Uh, no, I am saying that big brains uses a lot of energy. So growing a bigger brain can be a detriment to animals if the bigger brain does not give the animal more food energy than what the animal would have gotten without the enlarged brain.
And bigger brains are a major issues for primates who never had developed the trick of continuing brain development after birth through a long infancy.
I don’t know why you are fixating on long infancy periods. That is simply a trait of the species that the species must deal with. Every species is stuck with whatever they are.
For other primates to catch up with us, they would have needed to go through that process like our earlier ancestors did, or have evolution give them some other means of giving them larger brains in spite of the restrictions of the birth canal.
Catch up with us? If they evolved into having higher brain function and long infancy periods then they would be like us, they wouldn’t have done anything to get there. The only process involved is to just survive without dying off.
Evolution is blind. It has produced humans that find it far easier to fret about their local restaurant changing ownership then about the planet becoming uninhabitable for their descendents.
Well being more concerned with our local restaurant is the evolutionary default. Hippos & apes can care less beyond their local environment as well. What evolution has given us that’s novel and that extends beyond that default is the part where we can also care beyond our local restaurant.
I know that it took forever for large brained mammals to reach this level of destruction, but it’s very interesting that the tools that yield the potential for us to do so were always lying underneath the surface the entire time just waiting for us large brained mammals to uncover them (scientific revolution). I don’t really elevate the John Locks and Thomas Hobbeses of society too much because I think that such geniuses were always with us, but it was more a matter of finding Pandora’s Box (having an original idea that changes everything). The huge majority of us today can’t even understand modern physics, it only takes our brightest to change everything with one huge idea.
If I could go into a time machine and introduce the ideas of our technology to the earliest homo sapiens, the unfolding of wreaking havoc on the ecosystem would commence much quicker. If I went back and gave that same information to apes (maybe with a detailed demonstration, with lots of monkey see monkey do sign language) it would not take off. One idea of innovation changes everything (if the species has the cognition first).
But it has not prevented us from behaving wisely.
Perhaps you and I, and all others who are concerned about the environment, can prevail in keeping our planet a great place for humans to live.
Humans can’t seem to stop sociopaths from ruling, we’re always underneath a system of greed, deception, destruction, etc. I think sociopaths naturally rule because it’s in their nature to plot non-stop on how to rule, and with whatever means necessary, whereas normal people are way more passive about it.
