# Stuff and Things > HISTORY, veterans & science >  Evolution of intelligence

## UKSmartypants

Our ancestors diets changed dramatically over the course of the past 2.5 million years, and one research team thinks that profoundly affected our evolution.

According to a team including Miki Ben-Dor and Ran Barkai at Tel Aviv University in Israel, hominin diets were once so dominated by meat from massive animals that the hunters caused some of those species to go extinct. This, in turn, forced our ancestors to develop more sophisticated hunting techniques to bring down smaller, more elusive prey, leading to greater intelligence and the evolution of modern humans.

The key idea is that just one ecological driver drove all of human evolution, says Ben-Dor. The one driver is the decline in prey size.

The team has drawn on an impressive range of evidence, says Sherry Nelson at the University of New Mexico. But I wasnt convinced, she says, arguing that too often the researchers cited a paper in support of their hypothesis without considering alternative hypotheses.

Modern humans (Homo sapiens) have been around for about 300,000 years. We evolved from earlier members of the Homo genus, like Homo erectus, which are thought to have arisen from the more ape-like Australopithecus hominins. The earliest known Homo remains are 2.8 million years old.

Ben-Dor and his colleagues compiled evidence on what past hominins ate. This included traces of foods preserved on teeth, animal bones with cut marks suggesting butchery and chemical analyses of preserved hominin protein.
Read more: Men and women in early Americas shared hunting duties equally

They concluded that Australopithecus ate mostly plants. However, early Homo species ate more meat, with H. erectus  the first species known to have expanded beyond Africa  consuming the most meat of all. When our species first appeared, meat was still a large dietary component, but within the past 50,000 years, we began eating less.

In a second study, published in February, Ben-Dor and Barkai argue that early hominins like H. erectus were mostly hunting very large animals like elephants. This, they say, only required simple weapons like wooden spears. You probably need more courage to hunt an elephant than to hunt a zebra, but its less complex, says Ben-Dor.

However, he points to a 2019 study that found that the populations of such megafauna were declining in east Africa, beginning 4.5 million years ago. He argues that hunting by hominins contributed to that decline. As the largest animals became rarer, hominins had to hunt smaller, nimbler animals. That required better technology, such as the bows and arrows used by present-day hunter-gatherers, which necessitated the evolution of greater intelligence.

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donttread (03-18-2021),Fall River (03-20-2021),nonsqtr (03-16-2021),Northern Rivers (03-16-2021),Rutabaga (03-16-2021)

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## East of the Beast

Like the first single cell that miraculously came to be in the alleged primordial soup.Also became miraculously self aware and said ,"hey, I think I'll make 2 of me."

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Authentic (03-16-2021),nonsqtr (03-16-2021),Rutabaga (03-16-2021)

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## UKSmartypants

> Like the first single cell that miraculously came to be in the alleged primordial soup.Also became miraculously self aware and said ,"hey, I think I'll make 2 of me."



Well single cell animals wern't the start of life, it goes back to RNA strands which can self replicate, which are assembled from amino acids and proteins  which are demonstrably created in space in the savage ultraviolet C light  of star nurseries, and then carried out across the universe on comets and meteors, showering the planetary bodies of the universe with the building blocks of life. Self awareness didnt occur until we got to higher mammals.

So literally every single word in your post was incorrect and showed an utter lack of knowledge about how life evolved.

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## UKSmartypants

Places like this:



The region, called RCW120, is about 4200 light years from Earth, towards the constellation of Scorpius. A hot, massive star in its centre is emitting huge amounts of staggeringly intense ultraviolet radiation, which ionises the surrounding gas, stripping the electrons from hydrogen atoms and producing the characteristic red glow of so-called H-alpha emission.  The UV is so intense if you were stood in the middle of this is would literally crisp you up in seconds.


Further out, the shock wave compresses hydrogen down into denser clouds, and the UV then  initiates chemical reactions with the other existing elements from the interstellar gas to form hydrocarbons, amino acids and some proteins. All can be seen in the spectra of the light in the outer layers.  These  building blocks of RNA and DNA are then spread out over the universe . No god required.  and if be grateful if you'd keep religion out of this science thread, i dont want my thread wrecking with it as per normal.  if you want to debate this go start a thread in the religion forum.  Not interested.



So back to the thread topic.


Notice the veggie eating hominids  died out and the most carnivorous ones spread out and dominated?   What does that tell you about vegetarian diets?

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Rutabaga (03-16-2021)

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## East of the Beast

> Well single cell animals wern't the start of life, it goes back to RNA strands which can self replicate, which are assembled from amino acids and proteins  which are demonstrably created in space in the savage ultraviolet C light  of star nurseries, and then carried out across the universe on comets and meteors, showering the planetary bodies of the universe with the building blocks of life. Self awareness didnt occur until we got to higher mammals.
> 
> So literally every single word in your post was incorrect and showed an utter lack of knowledge about how life evolved.


Ok if it is that simple why can't it be replicated in the laboratory?.......self replicating?......doesn't that go to my statement that said, "hey I think I'll make two of me?"....that was my point....No, every word I stated was true.....And you have now more idea how we came to be than anyone.....it's all theory and postulation.

You are the one who is lost in your own perceived superiority..

Just because I do not use the prescribed terminology does not mean I lack understanding.

I understand the futility of trying explain how we became self aware out of nothing.

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Authentic (03-16-2021),Rutabaga (03-16-2021)

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## UKSmartypants

> Ok if it is that simple why can't it be replicated in the laboratory?.......self replicating?......doesn't that go to my statement that said, "hey I think I'll make two of me?"....that was my point....No, every word I stated was true.....And you have now more idea how we came to be than anyone.....it's all theory and postulation.



No , you dont need to be 'self aware' to replicate, its a simple chemical process. everything to do with life boils down to chemical interactions.  The simplest form of life is a RNA Virus, and it does two things, it assembles randomly, and then  it attracts  an inverse copy of itself, which then unzips and breaks off and does the opposite.  Its precisely how some vaccines are made, and its precidely how you and I ar emade from DNA .. The assembly of  proteins and amino acids, which demonstrably takes place in star fields, is  hard to replicate on earth because you cant create the same conditions as you get in a star fields, ie a pressure of 10 ATOMS of hydrogen per cubic Metre, which equates to  a vacuum thousands of times harder than anything we ever made on earth, plus a low magnetic field and a flood of ultraviolet light so intense we have also never made anything like that intense., There's been experiments  such as passing an electrical spark through a mix of hydrocarbon under a vaccum, for a couple of months, that have produced similar results. 


RNA Virus Replication. 
Self-replicating alphavirus RNA vaccines - PubMed

Stop trying  to divert and wreck this thread. Discuss the OP or fuck off.  We are talking about how humans got smarter. And im not prepared to talk about anything else. If you dont subscribe to the theory, then bugger off out the science forum, which is what this is, and go and make your own thread elsewhere   .

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Fall River (03-20-2021)

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## Oceander

Human intelligence.  Wouldn't that be nice!  When's it supposed to happen?

/jk

 :Smiley ROFLMAO:

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East of the Beast (03-16-2021),nonsqtr (03-16-2021),Rutabaga (03-16-2021)

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## UKSmartypants

> Human intelligence.  Wouldn't that be nice!  When's it supposed to happen?
> 
> /jk



Its quite possible we're going backwards, and H G Wells was correct about the Eloi and Moorlocks

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Oceander (03-16-2021)

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## Oceander

> Its quite possible we're going backwards, and H G Wells was correct about the Eloi and Moorlocks


On the basis of the current political situation in the U.S. - I would agree wholeheartedly.

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## Canadianeye

> Its quite possible we're going backwards, and H G Wells was correct about the Eloi and Moorlocks


I recall calling a friend of FGC an Eloi close to 2 decades ago. Once she looked it up, she was pissed.

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## UKSmartypants

> On the basis of the current political situation in the U.S. - I would agree wholeheartedly.



Seriously.......

We are now in the position we can determine our own genetic destiny. Darwinian Evolution no longer works in humans.

For example, we now keep alive babies that have otherwise fatal genetic disorders, and then allow them to breed.

We can now create designer babies stating with an egg.

This is a dangerous time ,we could end up creating fatal genetic changes in humans, that spread through the population and we only discover them too late.

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nonsqtr (03-16-2021),Rutabaga (03-16-2021)

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## teeceetx

Humans are currently in the process of DEVOLVING.

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Canadianeye (03-16-2021),Rutabaga (03-16-2021)

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## Rutabaga

bell curve.

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## Canadianeye

> Humans are currently in the process of DEVOLVING.


Interesting and tricky word choice.  :Thumbsup20: 

Advanced western social democracies are certainly in serious trouble, as far as civilizations go, IMHO.

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## Rutabaga

> Seriously.......
> 
> We are now in the position we can determine our own genetic destiny. Darwinian Evolution no longer works in humans.
> 
> For example, we now keep alive babies that have otherwise fatal genetic disorders, and then allow them to breed.
> 
> We can now create designer babies stating with an egg.
> 
> *This is a dangerous time ,we could end up creating fatal genetic changes in humans, that spread through the population and we only discover them too late.*


*
*

like through a vaccine?

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## Canadianeye

> bell curve.


Trouble with the Curve.  :Cool20:

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Rutabaga (03-16-2021)

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## Rutabaga

> Trouble with the Curve.


the science deniers always deny truths that dont fit their social agenda.

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## Canadianeye

> the science deniers always deny truths that dont fit their social agenda.


That is the frightening part of the civilization cycle. Look at it this way.

We had science deniers a plenty on the planet, and we slowly advanced. This one particular group of hard line, serf overlording, dark age masters, eventual freedom relishing, white science deniers, kicked the shit out of, and kept at bay, the brown and black maniacal insane, murderous thugs, tyrannical, never freedom loving, terroristic use your kids as weapons - science deniers group.

Remembering of course, those science deniers held a domination of certain areas of civilization, apart from far eastern science and emperor deity embracers...but the fact is, they are both cycling back towards dominance of civilizations.

Think there is another cycle several thousand years from now, where our future ancestors survive to get to us freedom loving, rights championing, Christian based societal values (minus the horror show previous pathing as learned and remembered experiences) as white folks - with another shot at showing how to do a freedom based civilization the right way?

Probably not. They bred into our societies when we invited them to our multicultural suicidal beds...and I'm don't think there is recovery from that.

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## nonsqtr

Human beings are unique, we have TWO areas that process social logic. The entire orbitofrontal system seems to have been duplicated in human beings. Humans, unlike many other advanced life forms, have to "grow into" their culture.

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Canadianeye (03-16-2021)

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## nonsqtr

> Like the first single cell that miraculously came to be in the alleged primordial soup.Also became miraculously self aware and said ,"hey, I think I'll make 2 of me."


Single celled bacteria sense food in the environment and hover over it so they can consume it.

They don't have any nerve cells....

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UKSmartypants (03-17-2021)

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## Canadianeye

> Human beings are unique, we have TWO areas that process social logic. The entire orbitofrontal system seems to have been duplicated in human beings. Humans, unlike many other advanced life forms, have to "grow into" their culture.


Is the instinct portion of the brain located in either of those, that process social logic? Just curious.

Looked it up. Hind.

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## East of the Beast

> Single celled bacteria sense food in the environment and hover over it so they can consume it.
> 
> They don't have any nerve cells....


Ya know my whole point is, I do not deny science.As a matter of fact it fascinates me.The thing is, I do not think  that science stands alone as the answer on the origins of life ....it is only the evidence of it. In my mind ,we cannot duplicate or create life,we can imitate it but not create it.What animates us,what makes self aware,what gives us our being is beyond our capacity to comprehend.

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Authentic (03-16-2021)

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## East of the Beast

> No , you dont need to be 'self aware' to replicate, its a simple chemical process. everything to do with life boils down to chemical interactions.  The simplest form of life is a RNA Virus, and it does two things, it assembles randomly, and then  it attracts  an inverse copy of itself, which then unzips and breaks off and does the opposite.  Its precisely how some vaccines are made, and its precidely how you and I ar emade from DNA .. The assembly of  proteins and amino acids, which demonstrably takes place in star fields, is  hard to replicate on earth because you cant create the same conditions as you get in a star fields, ie a pressure of 10 ATOMS of hydrogen per cubic Metre, which equates to  a vacuum thousands of times harder than anything we ever made on earth, plus a low magnetic field and a flood of ultraviolet light so intense we have also never made anything like that intense., There's been experiments  such as passing an electrical spark through a mix of hydrocarbon under a vaccum, for a couple of months, that have produced similar results. 
> 
> 
> RNA Virus Replication. 
> Self-replicating alphavirus RNA vaccines - PubMed
> 
> Stop trying  to divert and wreck this thread. Discuss the OP or fuck off.  We are talking about how humans got smarter. And im not prepared to talk about anything else. If you dont subscribe to the theory, then bugger off out the science forum, which is what this is, and go and make your own thread elsewhere   .


Tell me how to recreate life and I'll gladly acknowledge your superior intellect. asshole

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## East of the Beast

> Human beings are unique, we have TWO areas that process social logic. The entire orbitofrontal system seems to have been duplicated in human beings. Humans, unlike many other advanced life forms, have to "grow into" their culture.


Intelligent design?

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## Authentic

You are debating evolution with a Brit who wrings his hands at what happened to the American Indians. I guess that he doesn't like natural selection when it isn't politically correct.

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## nonsqtr

> Is the instinct portion of the brain located in either of those, that process social logic? Just curious.
> 
> Looked it up. Hind.


The most complex "instincts" are in the amygdala, where fight-or-flight is handled. There are connections from there into the cerebral cortex, that are dysfunctional in psychopaths.

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Canadianeye (03-16-2021)

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## Canadianeye

> The most complex "instincts" are in the amygdala, where fight-or-flight is handled. There are connections from there into the cerebral cortex, that are dysfunctional in psychopaths.


I have a friend who is brain injured from a car accident. Fight or flight was damaged. Turn in a second with no real control from spitting furious to overwhelmingly apologetic and/or backing down on something. Any little thing triggers a reaction. Unpredictable.

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nonsqtr (03-16-2021)

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## ruthless terrier

> Notice the veggie eating hominids died out and the most carnivorous ones spread out and dominated? What does that tell you about vegetarian diets?



tells you we are meat eaters. always have been and always will. not to say a bowl of oatmeal or some guacamole ain't a good thing thumb.gif

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## nonsqtr

> I have a friend who is brain injured from a car accident. Fight or flight was damaged. Turn in a second with no real control from spitting furious to overwhelmingly apologetic and/or backing down on something. Any little thing triggers a reaction. Unpredictable.


Yes. Frontal lobe? The amygdala creates signals for "things to pay attention to", like, "hey this might be a threat over here". The cerebral cortex tempers those signals, like, "whew... nah, no there there", so it's kind of a "gate", and that's where the starting and stopping of behavior is negotiated.

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## Authentic

> Places like this:
> 
> 
> 
> The region, called RCW120, is about 4200 light years from Earth, towards the constellation of Scorpius. A hot, massive star in its centre is emitting huge amounts of staggeringly intense ultraviolet radiation, which ionises the surrounding gas, stripping the electrons from hydrogen atoms and producing the characteristic red glow of so-called H-alpha emission.  The UV is so intense if you were stood in the middle of this is would literally crisp you up in seconds.
> 
> 
> Further out, the shock wave compresses hydrogen down into denser clouds, and the UV then  initiates chemical reactions with the other existing elements from the interstellar gas to form hydrocarbons, amino acids and some proteins. All can be seen in the spectra of the light in the outer layers.  These  building blocks of RNA and DNA are then spread out over the universe . *No god required.  and if be grateful if you'd keep religion out of this science thread, i dont want my thread wrecking with it as per normal.  if you want to debate this go start a thread in the religion forum.  Not interested
> *
> ...


YOU mentioned God first in this thread, right in the bold.

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## nonsqtr

> Ya know my whole point is, I do not deny science.As a matter of fact it fascinates me.The thing is, I do not think  that science stands alone as the answer on the origins of life ....it is only the evidence of it. In my mind ,we cannot duplicate or create life,we can imitate it but not create it.What animates us,what makes self aware,what gives us our being is beyond our capacity to comprehend.


Here is a scale of complexity:

1
10. <=== this is our understanding
100
1000
10000
100000
1000000
10^7 <=== this is evolution
10^8
....

Surely it would be unreasonable to expect us to go from 0 to 60 in a microsecond.

Have you ever seen a case of "wet brain"? It's called Korsakoff's syndrome, alcoholics get it, it's a near-total destruction of the hippocampus. It's quite impressive, wet brainers aren't aware of much of anything, can't remember anything, ...

Currently, we are able to surgically replace the entire hippocampus in a rat, with a computer. The rat is still a rat, it continues to function. It learns mazes, it mates, it socializes.

From this exercise we learned about "dynamic assemblies", these are groups of nerve cells that "temporarily" cooperate with each other and function as a computational unit. When we "pay attention" to something, these dynamic assemblies are attached to the objects and events of interest.

Because we know about these, we can keep a rat "aware" even when its entire hippocampus has been destroyed.

We are essentially restoring an organism from a wet brain, to normal. With a computer chip.

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Oceander (03-16-2021)

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## nonsqtr

> Intelligent design?


Let's start here:

"The purpose of the brain is to optimize the behavior of the organism, in real time".

Let's do the mechanistic part first, before we speculate - that way we can ask the right questions.

A neural network is inherently time-symmetric. What happens is, causality is "induced" or "imposed" on the network, by the unidirectional flow of environmental events. The upper layers learn, that a sensory signal always follows a motor action. The network learns that you can't eat till the food is in front of you. The relational primitives like "requires" are encoded ("represented") in the network.

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## nonsqtr

> Intelligent design?


The biggest deal in neurophysics is the reaction rate, quaintly known as the time constant.

A network can have lots and lots of neurons, but if they all have the same kinetics, nothing happens.

Where this matters is, for example, "learning". Learning in a neural network specifically means a change in connection strength on the basis of environmental input. "Connection strength" is determined at the synapse, and it has to do with how many ion channels are opened in response to a single molecule of neurotransmitter. What we're dealing with is a "conformational change in a membrane protein", and those things are never permanent, they always have a time course.

Even a simple organism like C elegans (whose genome and nervous system are completely mapped) has multiple synaptic time constants.

The Connectome Debate: Is Mapping the Mind of a Worm Worth It? - Scientific American

The C elegans hermaphrodite has exactly 302 neurons, the male has 383. We know quite a bit about the adaptation and potentiation mechanisms.

Memory in Caenorhabditis elegans is Mediated By NMDA-Type Ionotropic Glutamate Receptors

DEFINE_ME

We know a lot about how these time constants develop, too.

Developmental trajectory of Caenorhabditis elegans nervous system governs its structural organization

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## East of the Beast

> The biggest deal in neurophysics is the reaction rate, quaintly known as the time constant.
> 
> A network can have lots and lots of neurons, but if they all have the same kinetics, nothing happens.
> 
> Where this matters is, for example, "learning". Learning in a neural network specifically means a change in connection strength on the basis of environmental input. "Connection strength" is determined at the synapse, and it has to do with how many ion channels are opened in response to a single molecule of neurotransmitter. What we're dealing with is a "conformational change in a membrane protein", and those things are never permanent, they always have a time course.
> 
> Even a simple organism like C elegans (whose genome and nervous system are completely mapped) has multiple synaptic time constants.
> 
> The Connectome Debate: Is Mapping the Mind of a Worm Worth It? - Scientific American
> ...


I admire your IQ.When it comes to this you are next level.I think if I had studied this stuff earlier in my life I'd have  somewhat of a handle on what your saying, but I don't.

All I know is that in all of this complexity you are only stating what is and what it does.Not how it came to be.You can theorize.....There has to be a beginning.

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BooBoo (03-17-2021)

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## nonsqtr

> I admire your IQ.When it comes to this you are next level.I think if I had studied this stuff earlier in my life I'd have  somewhat of a handle on what your saying, but I don't.
> 
> All I know is that in all of this complexity you are only stating what is and what it does.Not how it came to be.You can theorize.....There has to be a beginning.


Well, so, put on your research hat for a minute.

The two biggest arguments I heard in favor of a Creator were complexity and root causality.

I think I've shown reasonably well and thoroughly, that we understand how the complexity part works, or let's say we're pretty close to understanding that.

The "root causality" is the part you're talking about, and that's a lot harder. Because we have a long thread of history that we can only see a tiny part of, and we have to infer the rest.

And, we can't infer on the basis of wild conjecture, we have to "constrain" our guesses with evidence. Did you know there's an amoeba with more DNA than a human? Seriously - it has thousands of chromosomes. There's all kinds of oddball stuff out there, check for example Oxytricha trifallax.

The question of origin is a deep, deep question. It goes to the heart of the very nature of time in physics. Which is looking stranger and stranger by the minute, it's like we're back in the 1800's trying to figure out scattering.

We have to understand what we're looking at, before we can ask the right questions. Right now, you can say, "there has to be a beginning", but you don't REALLY know what that word "beginning" means. We already know for example, that quantum superpositions "exist" in a state of indefinite causality. It's like there is no time - at all! The effect might happen before the cause, we never know in these situations. And that, is f*cking wierd, pardon my French.

So, in studying these things we need an "accessible" experimental platform, and right now the brain is a whole lot more accessible than Planck scale physics - which is one of the reasons I'm in biology and not high energy physics. I study "nonlinearity", which colloquially means not smooth, and any beginning would be "not smooth", right?

There are millions of eyes on this stuff, all over the world. It's a burning question, for sure. We just need to know more before we can ask it the right way.

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East of the Beast (03-17-2021)

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## Authentic

> Well, so, put on your research hat for a minute.
> 
> The two biggest arguments I heard in favor of a Creator were complexity and root causality.
> 
> I think I've shown reasonably well and thoroughly, that we understand how the complexity part works, or let's say we're pretty close to understanding that.
> 
> The "root causality" is the part you're talking about, and that's a lot harder. Because we have a long thread of history that we can only see a tiny part of, and we have to infer the rest.
> 
> And, we can't infer on the basis of wild conjecture, we have to "constrain" our guesses with evidence. Did you know there's an amoeba with more DNA than a human? Seriously - it has thousands of chromosomes. There's all kinds of oddball stuff out there, check for example Oxytricha trifallax.
> ...


Maybe we are not meant to know.

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## East of the Beast

I do agree that time is a human construct.....or more accurately a construct made for man.

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BooBoo (03-17-2021)

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## nonsqtr

> Maybe we are not meant to know.


Meeeep.... buzz.... gong.... next contestant please...  :Grin: 

Ha ha - we're NOT that stupid!  :Headbang: 

Check this out: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loop_(topology)

Loop space - Wikipedia

Looks pretty simple, right?

You're probably saying "so what", right?

 :Smile: 

The brain has a loop topology relative to time.

Why does that matter?

Fundamental group - Wikipedia

"Groups" mean symmetry. And symmetries mean conservation laws.

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## nonsqtr

> I do agree that time is a human construct.....or more accurately a construct made for man.


<puts on best Reagan voice>

Wellllll......  :Grin: 

All of physics "assumes" the concept of f(t). And that's mainly because of "periodicity".

But the reality seems to be closer to f(T), where t is a function of T. And T isn't linear, it's a "lift", an embedding.

For example - let's say, that "time" really lives at the Planck scale, and what WE see as time is just an optimization process that occurs over several orders of magnitude. Well, that means, if we can isolate the "quanta" of time we can put them together in different ways than the universe does.

One of the reasons I'm interested in time in the brain, is the processing is discrete and combinatoric. What happens is the brain creates lots of little graphs of all the possible causal pathways, and then it optimizes those around an information metric that no one can describe yet. We're looking over to physics to see if there's anything like it, and so far there isn't, but we can't really see down into the resolution where it might live yet.

So far what we know is, the brain can support a state of indefinite causality just like quantum superpositions can - we just don't know what it means yet

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## UKSmartypants

> Tell me how to recreate life and I'll gladly acknowledge your superior intellect. asshole



Weird synthetic proteins could let us build new kinds of life | WIRED UK


We have already created new unique life that hasnt existed anywhere on earth at any time, by creating new rna protiens.

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## UKSmartypants

> I do agree that time is a human construct.....or more accurately a construct made for man.



Nope it isnt, its nothing to do with humans. Otherwise  the universe wouldn't have got past the big bang.

I am of the school that says time is a local phenomenon, independent of observation, and is created by increasingly larger scale collapse of quantum wave  functions originating  in Penrose's 2D spin networks. The rest of physics is slowly starting to agree. Non time symmetric wave function collapses ripple upwards in scale and create local patches of time.  This is why time is relative.....

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BooBoo (03-17-2021),nonsqtr (03-17-2021)

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## nonsqtr

> Nope it isnt, its nothing to do with humans. Otherwise  the universe wouldn't have got past the big bang.
> 
> I am of the school that says time is a local phenomenon, independent of observation, and is created by increasingly larger scale collapse of quantum wave  functions originating  in Penrose's 2D spin networks. The rest of physics is slowly starting to agree. Non time symmetric wave function collapses ripple upwards in scale and create local patches of time.  This is why time is relative.....


What do you mean "ripple upwards"? What is that exactly?

And, when you say "patches", do you mean smoothly like the patches are joined together? Perhaps in some larger structure?

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BooBoo (03-17-2021)

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## East of the Beast

*Otherwise  the universe wouldn't have got past the big bang...*.......you see, that's your problem.Your whole premise of the beginning is based on a theory postulated by comparatively very limited information....So, did time begin with the "BB"  and all laws of physics began there......or are we adrift in a infinite, timeless cosmos where the laws,as we know them now, have always existed.......and our existence is just one of countless trillions of similar occurrences?

You see I might not know the quantum mechanics of things but I am a ponderer and I have a lot of questions.

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BooBoo (03-17-2021)

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## nonsqtr

> *Otherwise  the universe wouldn't have got past the big bang...*.......you see, that's your problem.Your whole premise of the beginning is based on a theory postulated by comparatively very limited information....So, did time begin with the "BB"  and all laws of physics began there......or are we adrift in a infinite, timeless cosmos where the laws,as we know them now, have always existed.......and our existence is just one of countless trillions of similar occurrences?
> 
> You see I might not know the quantum mechanics of things but I am a ponderer and I have a lot of questions.


I would say, that at the scales we can perceive, there is unquestionably an order to things. Would you agree?

But, we are 42 orders of magnitude above the Planck scale, and it's not at all clear the same physics apply at that level. Time might be like temperature, you stick a thermometer (or clock) in the oven and take a reading, but really it's the average of billions upon billions of individual events.

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BooBoo (03-17-2021)

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## BooBoo



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## UKSmartypants

> What do you mean "ripple upwards"? What is that exactly?
> 
> And, when you say "patches", do you mean smoothly like the patches are joined together? Perhaps in some larger structure?



what it says on the packet.  Wave function collapses at the Planck scale  originating in the 2D spinor network structure of 11D spacetime causes larger and larger wave function collapses on an increasingly  larger scale until they become macro sized. thus creating a macro scale momentary patch of 4D spacetime. Observation is not necessary.

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## UKSmartypants

> *Otherwise  the universe wouldn't have got past the big bang...*.......you see, that's your problem.Your whole premise of the beginning is based on a theory postulated by comparatively very limited information....So, did time begin with the "BB"  and all laws of physics began there......or are we adrift in a infinite, timeless cosmos where the laws,as we know them now, have always existed.......and our existence is just one of countless trillions of similar occurrences?
> 
> You see I might not know the quantum mechanics of things but I am a ponderer and I have a lot of questions.



oh god, weve been round on this in other threads, do i really have to go over it again?

The laws of physics relate to THIS universe. There may be other universes. They might have the same of different laws, they probably do, because the laws are finely tuned such that life is possible. In the universes where the laws are different, there may well be no spacetime or matter, so it doesn't really matter if such universes exist or not.

Where did time start?


I subscribe to the following scenario, which i think is most likely based on what we know:  Id like to point out this stuff is extremely hard to simplify, so i apologise in advance is if make a dogs dinner of it. 


Existing in an infinite but timeless, scaleless compactified 11D brane , at some stage a quantum fluctuation occurred. This spurred the creation of a mass of Spinors onj the Brane Surface, 2D objects with only spin and energy. According to Roger Penrose and his Twistor Theory (which im not going to try and explain, go google it), spinors join to create Spin Networks, area of 2D space contained as an object known as a Calabi Yau manifold. The manifold is constrained by strings of colossal tension, and since they are smaller than the Plank length, no spacetime exists that contains them. They exist as a probability peak on the original Brane. At some point the energy pumped into the Calabi Yau manifold exceeded the tension energy in the string constraining the manifold, causing the spinors to erupt to  a scale  larger than the Planck length. Three of the dimensions of the brane unpack, no more than three because there is insufficient energy to unpack more than the first three.  Time starts at soem point between this event and the next event , where the 3D fireball undergoes another quantum fluctuation and the Inflationary expansion of the area begins. That pumps spare energy back into the calabi yau manifold in a process called reheating, and a 4th dimension partially unfolds. At that stage entropy starts to act, forcing everything that follows to become time asymmetric on  any scales larger than quantum.

and thats the cut down version.



https://i.pinimg.com/564x/2e/53/54/2...d16d4e1e72.jpg

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Oceander (03-17-2021)

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## nonsqtr

How does this play in the higher dimensional picture?

https://phys.org/news/2019-04-discre...ime-world.html

Classical discrete time crystals | Nature Physics

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## UKSmartypants

> How does this play in the higher dimensional picture?
> 
> https://phys.org/news/2019-04-discre...ime-world.html
> 
> Classical discrete time crystals | Nature Physics



well i havent gone deeper into what I think about time because it muddies the water of the previous post, so i kept it simple.

Personally i think time is an illusion. There are no time dimensions. There is nothing in relativity or Quantum theory that demands the existence of time. What we perceive as time is simple one axis motion  through the next dimension up, which we can only view one Planck frame at a  time.  

So, the issue with trying to claim time is analogue is the issue that the smallest unit of spacetime is the Planck distance. Nothing can happen in 4D spacetime shorter than this.  I think it possible that time (ie 4d one axis movement) is quantised below the Planck length, at spin network level, and so merely looks analogue.

This is why 'time' is non-observational and ripple up ot create patches of time, whats really happening is its creating Planck frames of 4D space, which just look like time. It also explains why  violation of  CPT-symmetry is possible

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## Authentic

Time is racist. It is based on Planck values and Planck was white.

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## UKSmartypants

> Time is racist. It is based on Planck values and Planck was white.



plus ofc it always leans to the right, which makes it fascist.....

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Authentic (03-17-2021)

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## nonsqtr

K so, "the evolution of intelligence".

The basic layout of the brain is the same starting with about... goldfish.

There are variations in particular areas, like birds with eyes on the side have a slightly different superior colliculus and their cerebellums are a bit different, but the rest of the brain is definitely recognizable. Overall brain layout seems to be highly conserved in evolution.

One of the most important areas is the "cingulate cortex", it starts at the back end of the hippocampus and goes all the way to the front of the brain, near the midline. This is where causality is processed. The "when" of object and event configurations is passed into what amounts to a delay line, kind of like in the cerebellum.

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## nonsqtr

To understand the difference between rats and monkeys, look to areas 25 and 31 in the Brodmann classification, in the posterior cingulate cortex (technically the "retrosplenial" area).

The hippocampus is FASCINATING, it's a whole lifetime of study. You have two systems that start there, that are involved in episodic memory. One of them (the one that involves the mamillary bodies) is storage only, and the other one in the retrosplenial area involves recall. 

So like, something hits the hippocampus from sensory, say, "chair". The MB pathway says "I just saw a chair", and the RC pathway says "what do I know about chairs".

The whole system is like a "buffer" for short term memory. Sensory input causes the loading of "context" into the buffer. And, when the new information is consolidated into long term memory, it is stored "with context", so the next time you see a chair you'll remember this time as one of the examples.

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## nonsqtr

Language is intimately tied to memory.

In a human, short term memory is completely different from long term memory. Different pathways, different mechanisms. Long term memory is carefully managed. Things aren't just "stored", they're heavily preprocessed and stored in the most efficient way possible.

In semantic memory, a chair is "something to sit on", it has a generalized shape and so on, but also a part of the context is the meaning to the organism, so like, that one hurts, or that one's mine.

The time constants for short term memory hover around 30 minutes. In that time, the consolidation to long term memory is "programmed". Certain things can disrupt the consolidation, trauma for instance.

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## donttread

> Our ancestors diets changed dramatically over the course of the past 2.5 million years, and one research team thinks that profoundly affected our evolution.
> 
> According to a team including Miki Ben-Dor and Ran Barkai at Tel Aviv University in Israel, hominin diets were once so dominated by meat from massive animals that the hunters caused some of those species to go extinct. This, in turn, forced our ancestors to develop more sophisticated hunting techniques to bring down smaller, more elusive prey, leading to greater intelligence and the evolution of modern humans.
> 
> The key idea is that just one ecological driver drove all of human evolution, says Ben-Dor. The one driver is the decline in prey size.
> 
> The team has drawn on an impressive range of evidence, says Sherry Nelson at the University of New Mexico. But I wasnt convinced, she says, arguing that too often the researchers cited a paper in support of their hypothesis without considering alternative hypotheses.
> 
> Modern humans (Homo sapiens) have been around for about 300,000 years. We evolved from earlier members of the Homo genus, like Homo erectus, which are thought to have arisen from the more ape-like Australopithecus hominins. The earliest known Homo remains are 2.8 million years old.
> ...




I wonder if the vegans will try to cancel this information?

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## UKSmartypants

> K so, "the evolution of intelligence".
> 
> The basic layout of the brain is the same starting with about... goldfish.
> 
> There are variations in particular areas, like birds with eyes on the side have a slightly different superior colliculus and their cerebellums are a bit different, but the rest of the brain is definitely recognizable. Overall brain layout seems to be highly conserved in evolution.
> 
> One of the most important areas is the "cingulate cortex", it starts at the back end of the hippocampus and goes all the way to the front of the brain, near the midline. This is where causality is processed. The "when" of object and event configurations is passed into what amounts to a delay line, kind of like in the cerebellum.



Brocas Area.  That was the breakthrough.

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## UKSmartypants

> Language is intimately tied to memory.
> 
> In a human, short term memory is completely different from long term memory. Different pathways, different mechanisms. Long term memory is carefully managed. Things aren't just "stored", they're heavily preprocessed and stored in the most efficient way possible.
> 
> In semantic memory, a chair is "something to sit on", it has a generalized shape and so on, but also a part of the context is the meaning to the organism, so like, that one hurts, or that one's mine.
> 
> The time constants for short term memory hover around 30 minutes. In that time, the consolidation to long term memory is "programmed". Certain things can disrupt the consolidation, trauma for instance.



It more closely tied to writing. The way you think determines the way you write and that determines the way to percieve time(the chinese percieve the future as up and the past as down, westerners percive the right as future, arabs the left)

another side debate is what came first , language or music. The consensus these days is music came first, evolving from animal song (whales, birds) because messages can be sent to other members of the tribe as musical tunes  in whistles and grunts. Only later, because we were smarter did we evolve a smarter more complex set of musical grunt and whistles , called language. andc only when you have language can you evolve writing. 

and then some dick spoils it by inventing soap operas.

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## nonsqtr

> It more closely tied to writing. The way you think determines the way you write and that determines the way to percieve time(the chinese percieve the future as up and the past as down, westerners percive the right as future, arabs the left)
> 
> another side debate is what came first , language or music. The consensus these days is music came first, evolving from animal song (whales, birds) because messages can be sent to other members of the tribe as musical tunes  in whistles and grunts. Only later, because we were smarter did we evolve a smarter more complex set of musical grunt and whistles , called language. andc only when you have language can you evolve writing. 
> 
> and then some dick spoils it by inventing soap operas.


The argument could be made that writing is based on drawing which is equally as primitive as music. Cave drawings even precede any known music.

Writing is an "efferent" involving a capability space, just as language is. Think in terms of robotics, planning a trajectory to write a word is the same as planning a trajectory to speak a word, the ultimate result is rapid coordinated movements of the muscles.

In robotics there is the "path", which is analogous to the shape of the letter or the sound of the phoneme, and then there is the "trajectory" which is the path plus the formula for how to traverse it (velocities, etc). All the different ways to traverse it, constitute the "capability space" for that action.

When we learn representation, the auditory system develops first, before the motor system. This is why children, when they first learn to talk, "babble". It's because the auditory system isn't connected to the motor system yet. The child has to learn which vocalizations create the desired auditory pattern, and "babbling" helps with this self-organization process, which mathematically is building connections to map two manifolds.

Writing comes later, for most kids. They learn to read first, which associates the shape of the letter with the sound. You said it yourself: only when you have language can you have writing.

What is interesting, is there's an area in the frontal lobe called Broca's area that's involved in language, and there's a condition called "Broca's aphasia" when it's damaged. The verbalizations are sparse and devoid of grammar, and the patient knows what he wants to say but can't say it.

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## nonsqtr

"The evolution of intelligence"

What is also interesting, is the evolution of deceit.

A female gorilla will issue a fake mating call to lure the male away from his food. This behavior is only seen in "some" apes, not all. 

Deceit requires considerable intelligence.

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## UKSmartypants

> "The evolution of intelligence"
> 
> What is also interesting, is the evolution of deceit.
> 
> A female gorilla will issue a fake mating call to lure the male away from his food. This behavior is only seen in "some" apes, not all. 
> 
> Deceit requires considerable intelligence.



Depends what level of deceit. stick insects engage in deceit...Deciet requires you to visualise abstract concepts like "The banana is in the box, even though i cant see it, because i saw the keeper put it in there"  which is what soem chimpanzees can do. Cats and dogs can do it too, because you can teach a cat or dog to play "Find the Lady".

So by extension engaging in deceit and being able to make a drawn representative of an animal on a cave wall are just progression of the concept. I suspect all hominids past could do it.

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## nonsqtr

One more thing - "executive functions".

Consider the control of attention. If you're planning to deceive someone you're "thinking about" different things than if you're planning to make them happy. The pushing of thoughts into consciousness is an attention function, and it tends to crowd out attention to other things.

If you're planning to deceive someone, your dorsolateral prefrontal cortex is in charge and it's commanding your hippocampus to pay attention to spoken words and body language and etc

If you're planning to make someone happy your ventromedial prefrontal cortex is in charge and it's telling your hippocampus to pay attention to emotional information like smiles and frowns and etc

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## UKSmartypants

> What is interesting, is there's an area in the frontal lobe called Broca's area that's involved in language, and there's a condition called "Broca's aphasia" when it's damaged. The verbalizations are sparse and devoid of grammar, and the patient knows what he wants to say but can't say it.


I mentioned Brocas area in post 56, do keep up  :Stick Out Tongue:

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## UKSmartypants

> The argument could be made that writing is based on drawing which is equally as primitive as music. Cave drawings even precede any known music.
> .



 No its doesnt.

Birdsong.  Whalesong, to name but two.

Extremely complex forms of verbal communication based on musical tunes.   Bird song was around at least 180 million years before cave drawings, whales 50 million years....

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## Authentic

> No its doesnt.
> 
> Birdsong.  Whalesong, to name but two.
> 
> Extremely complex forms of verbal communication based on musical tunes.   Bird song was around at least 180 million years before cave drawings, whales 50 million years....


Wow, you are old!

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## nonsqtr

> No its doesnt.
> 
> Birdsong.  Whalesong, to name but two.
> 
> Extremely complex forms of verbal communication based on musical tunes.   Bird song was around at least 180 million years before cave drawings, whales 50 million years....


You need to be careful about the "communication" part. That's mostly an assumption.

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## Fall River

> Our ancestors diets changed dramatically over the course of the past 2.5 million years, and one research team thinks that profoundly affected our evolution.
> 
> According to a team including Miki Ben-Dor and Ran Barkai at Tel Aviv University in Israel, hominin diets were once so dominated by meat from massive animals that the hunters caused some of those species to go extinct. This, in turn, forced our ancestors to develop more sophisticated hunting techniques to bring down smaller, more elusive prey, leading to greater intelligence and the evolution of modern humans.
> 
> The key idea is that just one ecological driver drove all of human evolution, says Ben-Dor. The one driver is the decline in prey size.
> 
> The team has drawn on an impressive range of evidence, says Sherry Nelson at the University of New Mexico. But I wasnt convinced, she says, arguing that too often the researchers cited a paper in support of their hypothesis without considering alternative hypotheses.
> 
> Modern humans (Homo sapiens) have been around for about 300,000 years. We evolved from earlier members of the Homo genus, like Homo erectus, which are thought to have arisen from the more ape-like Australopithecus hominins. The earliest known Homo remains are 2.8 million years old.
> ...


I agree with the last sentence (which I highlighted).  The human brain is plastic (i.e., neuroplasticity)  The human brain is very plastic. / meaning - Google Search

Our brains have the ability to change throughout life. "The human brain has the amazing ability to reorganize itself by forming new connections between brain cells (neurons)." 

Brain Plasticity: How learning changes your brain - SharpBrains

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