gwern comments on Stanislav Petrov Day - Less Wrong

35 Post author: gwern 26 September 2011 02:49PM

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Comment author: gwern 27 September 2011 05:17:57PM 5 points [-]

In the absence of civilization bigger brains where a robust trend among hominids for millions of years. Bigger can be better when it comes to smarts.

The additional marginal value of human-architectured intelligence is questionable outside of a modern context. See http://www.gwern.net/Drug%20heuristics#modafinil

And were you aware that your trend broke down 30,000 years ago, and the brain has shrunk?

Since the Late Pleistocene (approximately 30,000 years ago), human brain size decreased by approximately 10%; yet again, this decrease was paralleled by a decrease in body size

"Evolution of the human brain: is bigger better?" (this doesn't include the bigger-brained Neanderthals either)

Comment author: [deleted] 27 September 2011 08:36:09PM *  1 point [-]

And were you aware that your trend broke down 30,000 years ago, and the brain has shrunk?

Yes. ("Dataset: all measurments of moninin cranial capcity available in the literature as of September 2000, for skulls older than 10,000 years old").

Bigger can be better when it comes to smarts.

It was part of a overall argument that humans have probably been getting smarter for the past few million years. And that this trend had nothing to do with the availability of fossil fuels or iron until perhaps very recently. It seems likely that this would have continued in their absence. And it seems likley that bigger brains would translate into better tools and more complex social organisation as they tended to have in eons past.

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