Brain volume isn't necessarily a very good proxy, some animals are significantly smarter than other animals which have larger brains. Rats, for instance, may be more intelligent than some animals which are capable of eating rats, and have much larger brains due to greater body volume.
The vast majority of the difference between dogs and wolves isn't due to mutation, but selective concentration of genes which already existed within the grey wolf gene pool.
The vast majority of the difference between dogs and wolves isn't due to mutation, but selective concentration of genes which already existed within the grey wolf gene pool.
As far as I remember, dogs are NOT domesticated wolves. Dogs and wolves have a common ancestor, but they diverged quite a while ago, possibly even before domestication. I vaguely recall that jackals were also somehow involved in dog ancestry.
A long blog post explains why the author, a feminist, is not comfortable with the rationalist community despite thinking it is "super cool and interesting". It's directed specifically at Yvain, but it's probably general enough to be of some interest here.
http://apophemi.wordpress.com/2014/01/04/why-im-not-on-the-rationalist-masterlist/
I'm not sure if I can summarize this fairly but the main thrust seems to be that we are overly willing to entertain offensive/taboo/hurtful ideas and this drives off many types of people. Here's a quote:
The author perceives a link between LW type open discourse and danger to minority groups. I'm not sure whether that's true or not. Take race. Many LWers are willing to entertain ideas about the existence and possible importance of average group differences in psychological traits. So, maybe LWers are racists. But they're racists who continually obsess over optimizing their philanthropic contributions to African charities. So, maybe not racists in a dangerous way?
An overly rosy view, perhaps, and I don't want to deny the reality of the blogger's experience. Clearly, the person is intelligent and attracted to some aspects of LW discourse while turned off by other aspects.