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gwern comments on The Cognitive Science of Rationality - Less Wrong
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The human brain uses something like a fifth of the oxygen the body uses. The selective pressure against general intelligence would be formidable indeed.
Fun to speculate about a different biology where cognition is not so metabolically expensive, or another where it's even dearer.
Is there any comprehensive discussion of the selection pressures against intelligence? I've compiled a couple in http://www.gwern.net/Drug%20heuristics#modafinil but that's only what I've stumbled across and recognized as relevant.
I've seen some rather detailed discussion of the specific case of the enlarged human cranium being a rather tight squeeze through the pelvis, but I don't recall any more general discussion of selective pressures acting against intelligence.