…and this is a 
I was going to blog along with the talks today, but my note-taking computer, a little netpc, decided to turn up dead on arrival when I sat down to start listening — I had to take notes on paper. It felt medieval. There were a bunch of good talks and I'll transcribe them later when I get a chance.
For now, I just have a brief moment before I head off to the next event, so I'll leave you with a couple of Immensely Difficult Questions for Evolution that were just sent to me.
Q1. If humans evolved from monkeys, why are there not any other intelligent beings that have evolved from other animals? Should we not see more "intelligent beings" evolving from other species?
Q2. After centuries, we have yet to reproduce any artificial system that simulates the functioning of the brain. Is it possible for such an complex organ to have evolved from simpler organisms? how could this have been possible?
Q1 is just a trivial variant of the "if we evolved from monkeys, why are there still monkeys" nonsense. We haven't evolved more intelligent species because a) intelligence seems to be an unlikely destination for an evolving species, b) there is no particular reason any particular species ought to evolve intelligence rather than, say, a better immune system or adapt to a new diet or acquire more efficient camouflage, and c) any intelligent monkey-men will be either enslaved or slaughtered by the species currently occupying the intelligent-tool-user niche, i.e., us.
Q2 is also just a variant of the "it's too complex to have evolved" argument. The human brain exists. We have evidence of predecessors with smaller brains. We can see that the brain forms by natural processes. We can see advantages to individuals in our lineage that are smarter. We can readily infer from the available evidence in anatomy, comparative biology, paleontology, molecular biology, and neuroscience that the simplest explanation, the one that requires the least invocation of mysterious, unidentified forces, is that the brain evolved. Anyone who wants to argue otherwise should provide concrete examples of other processes that could have played a role…and no, scientifically-inclined intelligent monkey-men who evolved 2 million years ago and used advanced biotechnological engineering to inflate the brains of their primitive tailless relatives is not a concrete example, unless you have real evidence of such creatures' existence.
Oh, and vaporous cosmic deities doing likewise don't count either, for the same reason.
Comments
Posted by: Eidolon | November 14, 2009 5:46 PM
Uh - did dolphins, to name just one species, just get suddenly stupid? Absence of technology is not the same as absence of intelligence. Just more anthro-centric BS from the godbots who just KNOW the latest edition of homo is the apple of Gawd's eye and so very special.
Posted by: Owlmirror | November 14, 2009 5:48 PM
What about chimpanzees, dolphins, orcas, orangutans, parrots, crows, ravens, rooks, and, of course, the noble octopus...
Posted by: Glen Davidson
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November 14, 2009 5:49 PM
First off, other intelligent species have evolved, such as cephalopods and dolphins.
Oh, but of course the first species to evolve intelligent language capabilities is supposed to explain why other intelligent language users didn't evolve earlier, or in the blink of the eye since we evolved.
Indeed, we probably killed at least some of our intelligent relatives, even if we don't know that we killed them off (the hobbit looks like it might have been).
And we're supposed to have designed in, say, 60 years (not centuries, as we didn't have the electronic capabilities) what evolution took 4 billion years to evolve. Nonetheless, computers manage to do much that human brains cannot, although they're still far from equaling us in many areas.
More importantly, why have no design processes ever mimicked the evidence for biological evolution that is predicted by the theory?
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/mxaa3p
Posted by: Beaker | November 14, 2009 5:49 PM
Devils Advocate: I'm not sure I agree completely with your answer to number 1. Surely it would be more accurate to state that intelligence is not an on/off ability but something that will be gradually increased over evolutionary time.
Given that, it would make more sense (to me) to state that we are the most intelligent creatures around at the moment but other species are probably evolving similar levels of intelligence, just at a slower rate. Give it another couple of hundred million years and we might well see a species descended from octopuses or chimps with intelligence similar to our current levels.
Posted by: MrFire
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November 14, 2009 5:51 PM
How appropriate...
Posted by: PZ Myers
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November 14, 2009 5:56 PM
Nah, I assumed the person asking the question meant human-equivalent species, not dolphins or chimpanzees (and I agree that those should be regarded as intelligent to some degree).
Posted by: Silič O'Nopolitanopoulos, Färschdbischuf Beesknees aus Ulm und Klein Elguth, Elector Pharynguline.
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November 14, 2009 5:58 PM
Re Q1: water extinguishes fire => no dolphin/octopus civilisations.
Re Q2: Will the questioner reject their god(s), when artificial intelligence is achieved? (No, I'm not a Kurtzweilian.)
Finally - I know Zeno does shorthand; anyone know of a good way to learn it?
Posted by: Glen Davidson
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November 14, 2009 6:01 PM
Sure, but it's not very intelligent to insist on one level of intelligence, when there is a range of intelligences that has evolved.
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/mxaa3p
Posted by: Biology Blogger | November 14, 2009 6:04 PM
Q1 is stupid, but it led me to think a more intelligent question.
Can we as humans, lose our intelligence through evolution??
Posted by: t3knomanser | November 14, 2009 6:11 PM
Doesn't Q2 shell Q1 below the waterline? Given that human intelligence has not been sufficient to replicate the human brain, maybe humans aren't as intelligent as people like to believe.
//I do not believe in human intelligence.
Posted by: Celtic_Evolution
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November 14, 2009 6:13 PM
A simple answer to Q1 would be that there have been other relatively similarly intelligent human-type species that evolved alongside homo sapiens for a time and then died out... Neanderthal for example IIRC...
Posted by: SLC | November 14, 2009 6:15 PM
We haven't evolved more intelligent species because a) intelligence seems to be an unlikely destination for an evolving species, b) there is no particular reason any particular species ought to evolve intelligence rather than, say, a better immune system or adapt to a new diet or acquire more efficient camouflage, and c) any intelligent monkey-men will be either enslaved or slaughtered by the species currently occupying the intelligent-tool-user niche, i.e., us.
The was such a creature. It was called Neanderthal which had a brain of Homo Sapien size. As Prof. Myers' states, it went extinct, probably in part because it was unable to compete with Homo Sapien.
Posted by: amphiox | November 14, 2009 6:22 PM
And of course our evolutionary heritage is writ large in our brains (as it is everywhere else of course).
The energy-inefficiency, tragic fragility and vulnerability, the duplication of function in newer and older structures, the often bizarre spatial arrangements of the circuitry. . . .
And the functional results? The morass of self-contradiction, compartmentalization, maladaptive responses, tendency to self-deception. . . .
The imperfections and compromises of historical contigency are everywhere.
Posted by: Abdul Alhazred
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November 14, 2009 6:22 PM
The essence of "irreducible complexity" is that the omnipotent God:
1) Chose to create the universe with physical laws that do not allow life to develop naturally.
2) Created life miraculously.
3) Created a very detailed illusion of life having developed naturally.
Posted by: Marcus Ranum | November 14, 2009 6:26 PM
How about dolphins? Of course, if they tried to compete with us, we'd wipe them out. More than we already do, that is.
Intelligent creatures must be pretty horrible to compete against. How long do you think another species on earth would survive if it wanted to compete with Homo Sapiens for, say, oil and real estate? (Dolphins probably survive because they don't want our trailer parks and we haven't squeezed them out of all the ocean real estate yet.
Posted by: Spooky | November 14, 2009 6:27 PM
Biology Blogger asked:
We'll just need to keep watching the Quiverfull movement for that. ;)
Posted by: talapus | November 14, 2009 6:28 PM
The answer to #2, I think, is that until fairly recently, we have been trying to design systems. In general, modern statistical learning models have been far more successful at making intelligent human-like decisions than the hand-coded systems of the past--think developments in robotics like self-driving vehicles.
Posted by: 'Tis Himself, Quel Dommage
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November 14, 2009 6:29 PM
Gadzooks! Isn't that the way the cavemen took notes when they were debugging fire? How utterly primitive.
Posted by: Joe | November 14, 2009 6:41 PM
Wait, what about Homo neanderthalis? Intelligent, technological, just happened to die out before us Homo sapiens.
Posted by: Azrael_Rose | November 14, 2009 6:45 PM
Indeed, I believe that this at least is clearly a contributory factor to the large number of bugs still implemented in legacy fire code. Frankly the stuff's still in beta, but the user-base is massive and only a few of them seem to want to upgrade....Posted by: MadScientist | November 14, 2009 6:51 PM
Humans evolved from monkeys? They must have been reading the Ray Comfort Guide to Imaginary Evolution - or was that bananas?
I would argue that many intelligent species did evolve and many are still extant. The Neanderthals fashioned and used tools much like their contemporary Homo Sapiens Sapiens. All apes (and most animals) exhibit some degree of intelligence. They have apparatus for manipulating their environment and they can willingly manipulate it - which is a good thing because I wouldn't want every wild animal attacking me as I walk through a forest simply because they couldn't control themselves and just had to attack every human walking by. There are some special beasts which do their best not to develop any intelligence though; they go by many names including 'creationist'.
I don't know what Q2 is all about - simulating the human brain in what way? Machines are highly specialized and in many cases can do the job of thousands of humans; the "pick-and-place" tools in the electronics industry have got to pick up very small components and accurately place them between very small wire traces on a board; those machines have been programmed to do what a human would do (they even have vision!) only much faster and extremely reliable. The early goals of computing have always included producing a machine to perform computational tasks a human can perform but faster and more reliably. If someone thinks the aim of computation is to build a machine which can think like a human, they've been watching far too much TV. Would a 'thinking machine' be possible? Sure - after all humans are proof that small changes over immense periods of time can eventually lead to a thinking entity - but at the moment we have no idea how to influence the development of the machine to get an outcome. I'd also like to point out that even if we knew how to nudge machines toward a set of outcomes, we cannot predict the actual result. (Except in the current case where our machines don't really think - we just tell them what to do and how - but to anyone who does not understand the machines, the machines are intelligent.)
Posted by: Marcus Ranum | November 14, 2009 6:53 PM
Azrael_Rose writes:
Frankly the stuff's still in beta, but the user-base is massive and only a few of them seem to want to upgrade....
Sorry, but I'm skeptical. After the first upgrade I did, my fires wouldn't work worth a damn and they wouldn't burn rock anymore. Then I fell for that Java-based version - you know - "light once, burn anything" and that was a joke. If I could find my original fire I'd go back to using it and screw "progress" it's just a trick to get your best grubs.
Posted by: Left_Wing_Fox | November 14, 2009 6:54 PM
#9: I think it's possible, just not very likely. Basically, you'd have to be in an environment where the costs of having a big brain (High nutritional energy requirements, dangerous births, long childhoods) outweighed the benefits of tool use and abstract thinking, you'd probably manage to shrink brain size considerably. In practice though, our technological sophistication provides a HELL of a selective benefit.
Posted by: amphiox | November 14, 2009 6:59 PM
One thing the ID/creo crowd always glosses over:
TOE provides both a process (common descent) to explain the diversity of species, and a series of mechanisms to explain how that process occurs (natural selection, etc)
"Intelligent" design offers a process (special creation), but never says anything about mechanism. You've got your "intelligent" designer thinking its ineffable thoughts and plucking designs out of its arse, but there's no mention of any "intelligent" bioengineers or "intelligent" biomechanics to actually build those designs, no suggestion of what tools or procedures might have been employed. And of course no hint at all of what signs or signatures such processes might have left behind that could allow one to identify where and when our "intelligent" designers/engineers/mechanics/tinkerers/ethics advisors/bureaucrats might have been at work.
Posted by: Kristian Käll | November 14, 2009 7:01 PM
Well. If they are simply referring to other branches of the humanoid lineage. Which I think is what they ask for really.
Then there's the Neanderthals. But just as PZ said. We got rid of them.
Then there's also the "Hobbit" race from that Indonesian island. Though their brains were considerably smaller than their closest ancestor (Homo Erectus)
Humanity is quite obsessed over being "king of the hill". So it should hardly be a surprise to anyone that no other humanoids have survived.
Posted by: Takma'rierah
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November 14, 2009 7:03 PM
We still haven't been able to design artificial intelligences with the intuitively reactive capacity of oh, say, a fruit fly. It's not that surprising that we haven't been able to reproduce something like a human yet.
Posted by: amphiox | November 14, 2009 7:04 PM
#9:
Stephen Baxter's novel "Evolution" proposed just such a scenario of intelligence diminishing in descendents of modern humans.
Posted by: Meredith L. Patterson
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November 14, 2009 7:09 PM
Before anyone asks Q1, there's an underlying question that has to be answered: what are the criteria for intelligence?
Most of what humans recognise as intelligence is rooted in language. This includes mathematics. We evaluate the intelligence of other human beings based on their ability to communicate with us; that ability is at its core hardwired in our genes (which we're learning more and more about; FOXP2 is involved, but there are certainly others) but must also be nurtured through the critical period of language acquisition. Asking why we don't see human-like displays of intelligence -- which is to say, displays of intelligence characterised by spoken communication -- from organisms whose ability to communicate is rooted in an entirely different set of genes is foolish and misleading. From an ant's perspective, those humans who can't follow scent trails must be real idiots.
Posted by: Epikt | November 14, 2009 7:14 PM
Marcus Ranum:
Tell me about it. I thought I'd go cheap and get by with Fire, Starter Edition. All it did was sit there and glow. So I upgraded to Fire, Home Premium Edition, and it burned ok, but it will only instantiate a single fire at a time. To go beyond that, they tell me I'll have to upgrade to Fire, Ultimate Edition, but it's too expensive. I guess I'll just wait for the next release of Red Hot Linux.
Posted by: Prometheus
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November 14, 2009 7:18 PM
Hasn't anyone heard of Blue Brain?
Posted by: John B Hodges | November 14, 2009 7:19 PM
#9 and #23; I read an SF story once where a colony ship exploring for a new home for humans found a system with two habitable planets. One was OK but generally cold and rainy, "Newfoundland", the other was like Paradise, mildly tropical everywhere, no predators dangerous to humans, essentially all the local plants and animals edible, very few even needing to be cooked. The ship sat on Paradise for awhile, until the Captain grew alarmed at the number of people going AWOL, running off to live naked in the wild instead of working to build the colony. He drugged those who remained, took them aboard and moved to the other planet, and sabotaged the ship. They mutinied and deposed him, and never forgave him, but ten thousand years later when another spaceship visited the system, they found the Paradise planet residents had lost all memory of toolmaking and their intelligence had declined, while the residents of Newfoundland had built a thriving technical civilization.
Posted by: SEF | November 14, 2009 7:29 PM
The "correct" response to the question-one-r is:
Intelligence is overrated*. Why would other animals bother with it when you've been getting along OK so far without showing much sign of having any...
* Of course, high intelligence is a really great thing to have when it matters. It's just that there are so few occasions when it does (or makes a significant difference). Mostly the world doesn't require it. And much of human activity is about ensuring that it isn't needed even where it is!
I.e. all that pandering to the unintelligent masses by giving them shortcuts and cheats for things which would otherwise require intelligence. Making stuff stupid enough for stupid people to use (because there are so many of them). Modern computers being an obvious case in point (along with an electric light switch operable by all, the pre-fabricated car with its simplified and centralised controls, weapons launchable by mere button-pushing, voting with check-boxes instead of having to understand issues well enough to state one's own position and comprehend everyone else's, etc).
Posted by: MadScientist | November 14, 2009 7:43 PM
@Biology Blogger #9:
Of course - as long as the reduction in intelligence (however the hell you measure that) doesn't provide a great disadvantage to survival. You've also got to keep in mind that such changes may occur in the population over hundreds of generations - it certainly doesn't happen overnight as creationists claim it must.
Posted by: Nic from NIcaragua | November 14, 2009 7:44 PM
”Humans evolved from monkeys?”
Yes, we apes are a branch of the monkey tree.
Posted by: Mr. Atheist | November 14, 2009 7:56 PM
Many transcription services can also type handwritten notes, and the rates are quite affordable.
Posted by: Hank Fox | November 14, 2009 8:20 PM
My good friend Carl Buell once said something funny that relates loosely to Question 1. We were watching raccoons from close range, sitting up and manipulating dog kibble with their raccoon hands, and he said:
"Give 'em 30 million years and they'll have their own space program."
Posted by: Word Slinger | November 14, 2009 8:25 PM
"Q2 is also just a variant of the "it's too complex to have evolved" argument."
That's not the argument.
The argument states "it's too complex to have evolved by random, accidental or undirected processes".
Throw ID into the mix and your problems explaining evolution will disappear.
Posted by: Peter Sloan
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November 14, 2009 8:27 PM
shorter Question 2: "minds are too complex for us to design, so... they must have been designed!"
or, in logical form (i'm being generous)
it is not the case that A is possible
therefore A!
checkmate
#creationistlogic
Posted by: Word Slinger | November 14, 2009 8:41 PM
And please don't bore me with the "natural selection is not random" gambit.
Natural selection works only on pre-existing variation. It has no creative power on its own.
Posted by: Crudely Wrott | November 14, 2009 8:41 PM
Writing notes on paper? What's the problem? I've been scribbling and jotting for so many years that it's automatic and . . . what? I'm behind the curve? Not if I can jot faster than I can type!
The only problem is that I can read my typing faster than my jotting. Maybe I should put more extra, purposeful will into evolving into a more successful note taker and become a new type of human, or a new specie altogether. Yeah. That's what I'll do . . .
Posted by: truthspeaker | November 14, 2009 8:42 PM
In my opinion, the fact that dolphins do not systematically try to attack tuna-netting boats that also kill dolphins is proof that they are not as intelligent as humans.
Posted by: truthspeaker | November 14, 2009 8:47 PM
I believe Kurt Vonnegut's "Galapogos" has a similar premise, but I haven't actually read it.
Posted by: truthspeaker | November 14, 2009 8:52 PM
Word Slinger, the creative power comes from variation and mutation.
Posted by: John Morales | November 14, 2009 9:04 PM
truthspeaker @42, yeah, and The Lurking Fear and even before that The Time Machine also featured such.
Posted by: Naked Bunny with a Whip | November 14, 2009 9:24 PM
Centuries? What, was Leonardo da Vinci an AI researcher on top of all the other stuff he did? Did Benjamin Franklin model a neural net and Charles Babbage implement it?
Sheesh.
Posted by: Somnolent Aphid
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November 14, 2009 9:24 PM
Why are there still monkeys? Why are there still monkeys? Really? Could it be that they don't taste that good compared to say salmon, and they are too hard to catch. Better question is why are there still idiots.
Posted by: Andrew | November 14, 2009 9:32 PM
"Q2. After centuries, we have yet to reproduce any artificial system that simulates the functioning of the brain."
I think Henry Markram and Blue Brain would take issue with this statement. Or at least, will in the next few years.
http://www.ted.com/talks/henry_markram_supercomputing_the_brain_s_secrets.html
Posted by: John Scanlon, FCD | November 14, 2009 9:33 PM
Somebody already mentioned Homo floresiensis which may (or may not) be descended from proportionally bigger-brained H. erectus (other options being a separate branch from an H. georgicus, H. habilis or australopithecine ancestor): apparently it underwent absolute reduction of both body and (more so) brain size, probably as a case of island dwarfing. However, I don't think we can say it was less intelligent than its bigger ancestors; its brain may have been more efficient, and in particular, given its oceanic tropical habitat the reduction of volume may have involved a reduced need for thermal buffering and heat production in the brain itself.
/speculation
Nobody suggested it was 'on its own': we see various sources of phenotypic variation (mutation and environmental) which produce ALL of the novelty in the first instance (subsequently propagated by ordinary reproduction and development), while selection is effectively not a 'single, simple' agent but the action of an unlimited number of independent agents and processes (death stalks us from all directions), each one of them involved in myriad interactions with its own environment. Unless you are totally ignorant about the theory of computation and completely lacking in imagination, there is no need to invent any supernatural source for ongoing 'creation' of adaptation, complexity and predictive power. There's enough intelligence distributed in the natural world to make your 'undesigned designer' completely superfluous.
If you are bored with natural selection, you are bored with life. Might as well get out of the way.
Posted by: 'Tis Himself, Quel Dommage
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November 14, 2009 9:39 PM
Translation: I's iggerant and proud of it.
Posted by: Naked Bunny with a Whip | November 14, 2009 9:43 PM
Sure, if you're the sort who's intellectually lazy enough to be satisfied with "a magic man done it".
Posted by: Robert H | November 14, 2009 9:52 PM
What is intelligence? If it has to do with the ability to learn from the environment and from experience (both one's own and others) then it is obvious that the author of the queries has failed to demonstrate it himself. He is parroting questions that he/she hasn't actually considered (nor is likely to), an automaton responding to the most elementary feedback loop-hector the infidel evolutionist often enough and you will feel your faith strengthen! It's like catechism for them: there is only one acceptable response to his "questions". If these people ever win back control we will be asked nicely to recant and if we refuse it will be the rack and the flames all over again.
One of the nice things about any form of fundamentalism is that it preludes the need (or the desire) to think. According to our own christian Taliban all the answers have already been worked out for us thousands of years ago by people who spent their days staring at the arse ends of sheep in the noon-day sun. Lucky them...
Posted by: A. Noyd
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November 14, 2009 9:58 PM
Word Slinger (#39)
Of course, you no doubt discard mutations as a creative power because you're a drooling moron who thinks they're only ever deleterious, and if not that, a feature coming from chance mutations would take forever to apppear, right? Well, you don't have to agree to the drooling moron bit, but if you think that about mutations, it's proof you are a drooling moron.
Posted by: Jadehawk, OM | November 14, 2009 10:00 PM
aah, such a wonderful example of the creobots inability to keep more than one variable in mind. for them, it's either all randomness, or it's not random, and there is no variation. completely incapable of realizing that FIRST there is random variation, and THEN there is non-random selecting pressures.pathetic.
Posted by: John B. Laing | November 14, 2009 10:04 PM
George Bush was elected for a SECOND term.
Now Sarah Palin's book "Going Rogue" is at the top of the list at Amazon. Yes. The top.
Every four years humans use up huge amounts of resources to build fantastic facilities to have an event involving a few young people doing sports. When it is over they tear up everything.
Four years later they do it all again in a DIFFERENT place.
We are an intelligent species?
Posted by: Jafafa Hots | November 14, 2009 10:26 PM
well... if the fact that the human brain is too complex to be created by a human brain (so far) is some sort of proof of God, then I guess worms are proof of God.
The worm brain is far too complex for the intelligence capabilities of a worm brain to create. Therefore, Goddidit,
In fact, hydrogen atoms are WAY WAY not smart enough to design hydrogen atoms,
Posted by: Marcus Ranum | November 14, 2009 10:31 PM
Who says we are intelligent? We have creos.
Posted by: Sphere Coupler | November 14, 2009 10:44 PM
Maybe they do this during violent storms so they won't be the scape goat and their will be no evidence...hah, had to say it. and no I don't believe it.Posted by: SEF | November 14, 2009 11:19 PM
The illiteracy behind Q2 puts it in the not-even-wrong category of stupid. Not only does the male Ray Comfort animal have to evolve a fresh female every time, because he's failed to notice these things are already naturally available together, but it also has to persuade some other critter to climb into its vacant brain-pan and take up specialised residence there, because creationists can't detect that feature being previously available either.
It also raises the question of whether (were the written form to be the genuinely intended one!) they might have any particular "simpler organism" in mind for this role of being in mind. Given the standard creationist misuse of "theory" (as in "just a theory"), I'm thinking it must be bunnies. Plot-bunnies perhaps.
Posted by: sioux laris | November 15, 2009 12:30 AM
Such stale "questions" lack even the juvenile wit of God's ability to create Rocks he himself cannot lift.
Of course, the Believer has one all-purpose answer (when their lack of numbers and/or weaponry will not provide a "final solution" to the questioner): "It's a mystery!"*
*Please imagine Sylvester the Cat replying thus.
Posted by: FlameDuck | November 15, 2009 2:19 AM
Q1 is fairly quickly answered since the brightest non-humans are easily an order of magnitude than the dumbest creationist. Sure Dolphins might not have as great opportunity to demonstrate their intelligence, having no fine manipulators and having to live in water, and not being abe to communicate effectively with humans, but that doesn't make them unintelligent. Ask any sailor which he would rather have around, a folk of dolphins or a flock of creationists.
Q2 is also pretty straight forward. We don't know enough about the processes in the human brain to model it effectively or completely. The processes we do know about, we can recreate as AI's very well. The problem is the brain has an enormous amount of processing power, and it's just not cost effective to buy that kind of computers, for tasks you can get people to do. For instance the Earth Sim probably has enough processing power to simulate the thought processes of a small child. It's just more cost effective to have it simulate the Earth.
Posted by: Valis | November 15, 2009 3:17 AM
Um, at the risk of derailing this thread, I feel I have to point out this one fact; dolphins are NOT intelligent. In fact, dolphins are dumber than goldfish. I doubt anyone considers goldfish intelligent.
Posted by: stormen_per | November 15, 2009 3:23 AM
When PZ throws the enslavement part into the answer to Q1 he displays a big gap in knowledge that can only be remedied by watching Planet of the Apes.
Posted by: Rorschach | November 15, 2009 3:27 AM
How is "intelligence" in animals even measured ?Interesting place to publish this sort of "research". He seems to be starting off from a funny premise, that dolphins are thought to be intelligent only because of the size of their brain.I havent heard anyone argue that actually.
And because goldfish jump out on an enclusre and dolphins don't, that makes them less intelligent?
I don't care whether this guy's claim is true or not, but I find his methods a bit questionable, to say the least.
Posted by: wendy | November 15, 2009 3:32 AM
"It has yet to be proven that intelligence has any survival value."
--Arthur C. Clarke
"Intelligence is an accident of evolution, and not necessarily an advantage."
--Isaac Asimov
Posted by: Matt | November 15, 2009 3:35 AM
Q2: We have developed incomplete models of the brain and are moving fast towards being able to completely model the brain using super computers...
http://www.ted.com/talks/henry_markram_supercomputing_the_brain_s_secrets.html
Posted by: Dania
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November 15, 2009 6:54 AM
You don't solve a problem of complexity by throwing even more complexity at it. That will just make it worse. Or do you think you can get away with "MysteriousDesignerDidIt", leaving the Mysterious Designer unexplained?
Posted by: Naked Bunny with a Whip | November 15, 2009 8:38 AM
@SEF: Bunnies will be the first to tell creationists that, if there is an intelligent designer, he's a heartless sadist.
Posted by: caseywollberg | November 15, 2009 12:31 PM
"And because goldfish jump out on an enclusre and dolphins don't, that makes them less intelligent?"
Right. Maybe dolphins in "captivity" have figured out that they've got a good gig there, and don't want to escape. Maybe the *drive* to escape is just that, not an indication of intelligence at all.
Posted by: llewelly | November 15, 2009 1:50 PM
Owlmirror | November 14, 2009 5:48 PM:
No matter what tall tales Jane Goodall tells you about chimps extracting termites with a twig, none of those animals has intelligence comparable to humans. None of them drive Hummers, write bibles, or pilgrimage to Mecca.
Posted by: amphiox | November 15, 2009 2:46 PM
"It has no creative power on its own."
Except, of course, that it does. We have seen it, in the fossil record, in the genome, in the lab, in our hospitals, in the wild, historically, and in real time, unfolding before our eyes.
"And because goldfish jump out on an enclusre and dolphins don't, that makes them less intelligent?"
That reminds me of that study that came out a while back claiming that cetaceans could not be intelligent because their brains had too much glia and not enough neurons and didn't have the same architecture associated with higher thought than primates, and one of the authors used the example of dolphins not jumping out of enclosures or over tuna nets as an example of their lack of intelligence.
To which I can only reply, if we discovered that cetacean brains were in fact 100% Swiss Cheese, all that would mean is that we would have to reconsider the computational potential of curdled milk.
Posted by: amphiox | November 15, 2009 2:53 PM
Perhaps it can be said, though I am sure there are many who can reasonably dispute this, that humans are more intelligent than they need to be. At that moment when our species made its "great leap forward" we seem to have attained intelligence in substantial excess of what we would have needed for our ecological niche at the time required, and the entire unfolding of human civilization afterwards, in all its grandeur and horror, is the result of that excess intellect trying to find some spontaneous outlet.
Whereas all the other intelligent species currently in existence on this planet (as far as we know), do not seem to have made that leap into "excess" intellect - they seem to be as intelligent as they need to be to survive in the ecological niche they currently occupy.
But so long as we are still around, an increase in intelligence in a parallel direction to our own will probably be a maladaptive trait for any other species. They might as well be painting bullseyes on their ballooning craniums.
If H. sap gets removed from the picture, though, then all bets are off.
Posted by: amphiox | November 15, 2009 2:58 PM
Actually, goldfish are in fact reasonably intelligent. You can demonstrate that they have good memory, and they can be trained to perform tasks like navigate a maze.
But when a goldfish jumps out of an enclosure in captivity, most frequently it falls out of the water and dooms itself to slow suffocation, unless some human picks it up and puts it back in its tank.
Dolphins, perhaps, are smart enough to realize this, and refrain from trying.
Posted by: DiscoveredJoys | November 15, 2009 6:15 PM
Several of my computers can go to sleep and then wake again when given a nudge. Isn't that like a brain? (hint: no, not really)
Alternatively a computer has a basic hardwired system of reflexes (BIOS), a fixed but trainable set of habitual actions to stimuli (operating system) and a highly flexible way of communicating with the external world (GUI). Isn't that like a brain? (hint: no, not really)
Or is the question just another proud display of ignorance?
Posted by: Anton Mates | November 15, 2009 7:20 PM
Dolphins are in fact really really hesitant to jump over barriers, even echolocation-transparent ones like coarse netting. I don't think it's really a rational decision on their part; it's more like a phobia. I've seen captive setups where the dolphin's completely familiar with the water on both sides of the barrier, and has all sorts of reasons (food, other dolphins, chaseable sea lions) to want to go from one side to the other, and he just doesn't.
On the other hand, it's a phobia with obvious evolutionary benefits--in the wild, if a dolphin comes across an obstacle it can't swim under or around, it's probably a bad idea to leap over it and end up beached or worse. So maybe think of it as analogous to humans' overprotectiveness of our eyes; it's not rational, as when the doctor gives you an eye pressure test and you just can't help flinching, but it's still a beneficial hangup to have 99% of the time. A human who made calm, rational decisions about whether to avoid incoming pointy objects aimed at her eyes wouldn't do nearly as well in the long term.
Posted by: amphiox | November 15, 2009 10:53 PM
"Q2. After centuries, we have yet to reproduce any artificial system that simulates the functioning of the brain."
Also, what brain are we referring to here? Because we are starting to get artificial systems capable of simulating the brains of things like C. elegans, and other similar equivalents, for example.
And of course, if one discounts the work of Babbage, we really have only been working at it for a few decades, not centuries. And even a millennia is actually a very, very, very, very short period of time.
Posted by: Richard Eis | November 16, 2009 7:04 AM
We have actually made serious headway into how our brains work. In fact our knowledge of neurology has (in my opinion) long since got rid of any notion that there can be an interfering god. Its just that the religious havn't dared notice and are still picking on long dead things. A much easier target.
Posted by: Ginger Yellow | November 16, 2009 10:00 AM
I love how self-refuting question 2 is. "Despite years of effort by super-intelligent humans, we have failed to replicate through top-down design nature's ability to create brains. Looking at all the species who have evolved brains, is it possible that the human brain evolved?"
Posted by: SEF | November 16, 2009 10:49 AM
@ Ginger Yellow #77:
Yes, they do seem quite proficient at self-deception and ignoring the obvious, eg for that one: "so what you're really telling me is that the design approach has been shown not to be able to produce brains ..."
Of course, what they want to believe is that a superbeing designer would have no trouble doing what humans can't do (yet!) - while simultaneously denying the problem of where that superbeing itself got its super-powered mind (without an uber-designer having in turn made the superbeing).
Posted by: James Sweet | November 16, 2009 11:43 AM
I disagree. The "why are there still monkeys" question is stupid on so many levels, I just can't even count them. This question, however, is in my opinion somewhat interesting. As you say, there are plenty of possible answers, but it's worth pondering.
Clearly we know that intelligence is an "unlikely destination", but that is somewhat begging the question -- why is it an unlikely destination? Given the remarkably rapid increase in cranial size once our ancestors achieved a certain threshold of abstract thought, it seems that, under the right conditions at least, there is massive selective pressure for more intelligence. (More selective pressure even than there is for a pelvis sufficiently sized for birthing our now-giant heads, as the difficulty of human births attests to) So indeed, why did it take so long for the intelligent tool user niche to be occupied, when evolution has caused a "better immune system or adapt to a new diet or acquire more efficient camouflage" time and time again?
Presumably the answer is buried in the "right conditions" that were required before our cranial ballooning really took off, but that's only a partial answer. I really believe it's a worthy question... but of course, far from being a refutation of evolution, it is a question that can only be meaningfully asked with a firm grounding in evolutionary theory!
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