Why Are We So Intelligent?

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S-man10

Yes with that I agree that we mechanically do use all of our brain to relay electronic signals to my body.

However the human mind is different. Never has the mind said "hard drive full" like a computer when you learned something new. And then you see all the people with the incredible abilities to do mental math or to remember everything.

You think with the mind not the brain. And the thought you are capable of far exceeds your current capabilities.

Btw I apologize I misquoted, it is actually about 2%. That is for the average person.

You're still yet to provide source for this percentage, btw.

And I must warn you, you're speaking to an eliminative materialist. The 'mind' is spawned out of the brain and is therefore constrained by it. There is nothing more than the matter in your skull; there is no spiritual extramatter that forms the 'mind'. You have a brain and nothing more. The mind is an illusion which is the byproduct of the brain.

You also seem to be going against all of cognitive psychology which presents the 'mind' as a limited capacity processor. All cognitive modules have limitations and quickly fail when they meet their capacity. I assume that here you are referring to long-term memory? Yes, this is also capacity limited (albeit a very vast capacity). Memories are frequently forgotton and consolidated through loss of detail which is replaced by schemas and top-down processing to present the illusion of a 'full memory'.

So what exactly is your magical 2% referring to? First you referred it to usage or activity, now you appear to be relating it to capacity. I still haven't seen a source for this figure that you appear to have pulled out of a Cosmo magazine.

Reply 61

mikeylfc1989

Phobia27

I think we're a long way from defining humans as intelligent overall, you only have to walk down a street in a major city to see a bunch of chavs mugging you, or a binge drinker binge drinking, or a young teenage girl knocked up.

Language is evidence of intelligence in my opinion, but you're right. My main point was probably that the advancement of our society is not wholly representative of the intelligence of the individual. The former being down to recording, improvement, recording and further improvement. Which succeeded from our opposable thumbs :biggrin:

Reply 62

maximusbarr

You're wrong OP, human beings are not as intelligent as you're making out. Just look on TSR.

Reply 63

GodspeedGehenna

S-man10

www.megagenius.com

Have a look at this site. A year ago when I discovered this I also thought this was complete bull but just look at it with an open mind.

LOL. GTFO. Try an academic source and not some website trying to flog materials to 'mega boost ur IQ lolz only 2% bein used use 100% with our megascamUKnigeriaIQboosterPRO2000 training schemees!!11"

Reply 64

mikeylfc1989

GottaLovePhysics! :)

I agree with you Op somewhat; I think the need for intellegence is not usefull untill we have bodys able to apply it to our surroundings.

That was pretty much my only point. The difference between us and other primates with opposable thumbs though was down to the development of our frontal lobes. Someone said, this might have been caused by ours species standing up. I've heard that before but I don't know accurate that is. But nonetheless, our more developed frontal lobes(not so in much size, but more in organisation/specialisation) were essential in developing those skills I mentioned in the OP.

Reply 65

mikeylfc1989

S-man10

OP, with all due respect, we as a species are not at all intelligent. Because we only have a minimal understanding of the world around us and within us.

For a simple example, on this forum we neg, and in doing so we demonstrate ignorance. So is that intelligent?

Plus scientists have said that we only use about 1% of our minds. With that, consider what you potential could be.

Pseudo-scientists say 10%. That's not really true though. We can't use 100% because it is to a large degree specialised in terms of function. We actually use all of it, just not as a whole unit.

Ok bro, but I'm comparing us to other animals on this planet. If my dog decided to neg someone, tagged with a racist comment. I'd be somewhat in impressed...

Reply 66

mikeylfc1989

S-man10

The eighteenth century French writer François Voltaire noted, "If God created us in his own image, we have more than reciprocated."

Oh lord... :biggrin:

Reply 67

GottaLovePhysics! :)

mikeylfc1989

I guess I did just rephrase exactly what you said :p:

But im tired and monged so its not my fault :gthumb:

Reply 68

GodspeedGehenna

mikeylfc1989

Clearly evolution of the brain is the medium by which human intelligence has developed, but this does not explain 'why' as I said in a previous post. It explains 'how' we are intelligent.

As we know, evolutionary pressures are driven by environmental pressures. Elaborating on what these pressures were would explain the 'why' we are intelligent. I would imagine there was a huge variety of interacting pressures as well as biological foundations of the primate brain which made evolution in this way possible in the first place.

I once wrote an essay on human brain evolution; it's really interesting stuff. I looked at how the brain evolved, but I'm unaware of the pressures which drove it. We need some anthros up in this thread.

Reply 69

S-man10

mikeylfc1989

With respect to animals, yes we are intelligent. If an average person dropped about 50 points off there IQ, the dog might relate to human fabulously.

2 pages I have read before, have a quick glance and see what you think.

http://www.paulcooijmans.com/intelligence/iq_ranges.html

http://www.paulcooijmans.com/evolution/human_degeneration.html

Reply 70

mikeylfc1989

MC REN

No but that is how evolution works, if only the 'intelligent' humans are capable of surviving in a world where they are otherwise relatively weak then what he said follows...

Intelligence needs to develop first, before natural selection allows the evolution of such trait.

Anyway, other creatures are empathetic (without thumbs), other creatures have opposable thumbs and haven't created societies. It's the evolution of our brain which did it, which has maybe tripled in size over the last 2 million years or so....

Other creatures are empathetic. However, the area of our brain which is highly involved in the empathy process is more organised/specialised to carry the task out more effectively, a lot of empathy with other animals is down to family/attachment. This is more genetic than cognition (vasopressin/oxytocin). I won't go into that though. We are more cognitively aware of those of whom, we have no attachment to whatsoever.

The size of our brains has hardly changed in size that much. I've kind of explained why other creatures haven't developed in the same way, but it's not definitive. My point still stands though, without our thumbs, we wouldn't have a civilization so advanced.

Reply 71

S-man10

GodspeedGehenna

LOL. GTFO. Try an academic source and not some website trying to flog materials to 'mega boost ur IQ lolz only 2% bein used use 100% with our megascamUKnigeriaIQboosterPRO2000 training schemees!!11"

Dude suit yourself. I am not encouraging you go about and buy the lectures on the site. Just sharing a useful resource.

I say this because I have heard the first lecture series and I am adamant that the person is an expert on intelligence because he does know what he is talking about.

Whatever you choose to believe then.

Reply 72

mikeylfc1989

GodspeedGehenna

Yeah, was really expecting some interesting ideas. Instead, people have just said 'lulz, we're not that intelligent, just look at this forum'. No offence to those people :biggrin:

Reply 73

Jeremy_Whiskers

Innate capacity for language, a huge cognitive capacity, and an ability to co-operate.

Reply 74

innerhollow

mikeylfc1989

It's all explained...

I welcome other ideas though...

There are various hypotheses surrounding the vastly superior intelligence possessed by humans.

Opposable thumbs are definitely a vital component of humans being the dominant species. However opposable thumbs on their own are not enough to explain- there are several species which have opposable thumbs, and they're not proving rivals for humanity.

One interesting hypothesis I remember being told is that humans had a much higher level of meat in their diet than other primates. In particular they consumed a lot more fish- which contains compounds which stimulate brain development. The presence of more meat in the diet lead to humans being able to support larger brains.

It's only a hypothesis, though, and one that I don't expect will have received a lot of scientific support. Don't take anything from it apart from mild intrigue.

Reply 75

Onearmedbandit

S-man10

www.megagenius.com

Have a look at this site. A year ago when I discovered this I also thought this was complete bull but just look at it with an open mind.

lol at this website! Possibly the biggest pile of crap I've ever seen.

Reply 76

Liquidus Zeromus

I have a good idea as to why humans are so much smarter than other animals. We can self-evolve and have been doing so since we or our evolutionary ancestors learned to cook meat, at the very earliest (cooking meat increased the energy it released). Languages have also made us much more intelligent. Before language, there were grunts and hands-on learning, communication may still have been advanced though. It's impossible to tell when the first languages were developed, but it's plausible that our ancestors had primitive languages.

Reply 77

S-man10

Onearmedbandit

lol at this website! Possibly the biggest pile of crap I've ever seen.

I dont blame you, I said the same thing when I first saw it.

Reply 78

MC REN

mikeylfc1989

The size of our brains has hardly changed in size that much. I've kind of explained why other creatures haven't developed in the same way, but it's not definitive. My point still stands though, without our thumbs, we wouldn't have a civilization so advanced.

Yes it has (it's not just a size thing though, structure is just as important)

You've explained nothing, without our thumbs we'd have a different society, but we could conceivably have an equally advanced society.

And there was some initial intelligence, which has evolved in humans the same way any other characteristic would have evolved, and in my opinion would have happened with or without the thumbs.

Reply 79

mikeylfc1989

MC REN

That graph doesn't really go against what I'm saying? I mentioned, humans from an early period to to now, there's not much difference in brain structure size. Not apes to us, I admitted we had more specialisation/organisation in the our frontal lobes? How we got to that, I want to know. How we got from there to today...

...opposable thumbs!!!!!111

I really doubt that, opposable thumbs helped develop our planning, organisation and inventive skills. No matter what way you look at it, we wouldn't have the technology we have today brah.