DanArmak comments on Talking Snakes: A Cautionary Tale - Less Wrong

107 Post author: Yvain 13 March 2009 01:41AM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Comments (226)

You are viewing a single comment's thread. Show more comments above.

Comment author: DanArmak 09 May 2016 07:46:25PM 0 points [-]

We now know that talking requires a big fancy brain, such as humans have and snakes conspicuously don't (and don't have room for)

Nitpick:

Talking the way we do maybe requires a big brain. We have no reason to think talking in general requires one. AFAIK, there's no consensus on when language evolved, but many or most scientists seem to think it was after the human brain grew to its present size, not before.

New Caledonian crows have intelligence generally comparable to that of chimpanzees; not as great as, but not much less than either. Yet their brains weigh only 7-8 grams. Large snakes can have much larger brains than that. Anyway, brain size is relative to body weight; EQ is a better measure.