[HN Gopher] The Human Brain in Numbers: A Linearly Scaled-Up Pri...
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The Human Brain in Numbers: A Linearly Scaled-Up Primate Brain
(2009)
Author : graderjs
Score : 38 points
Date : 2021-07-31 14:35 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov)
| Razengan wrote:
| So maybe it's not really about the hardware after all, but the
| software?
|
| e.g. Linux vs Windows on the same computer.
| graderjs wrote:
| So, basically, it's an ape brain. Figures. That's why we do so
| much ape brain shit, around the world. We don't need complex
| theories to explain why the world is, in some respects, a violent
| mess, we just need to look at how primates behave in the wild: do
| they live peaceful lives in the abundance of space they have in
| the forest? Nope. They divide up that space into little areas,
| form tribes, and then go attack and raid other areas and other
| groups: killing, maiming, raping, eating babies. All ape-brain
| shit. And we humans do basically the same thing, but we need
| "intelligence" and "sophisticated technology" to inform our
| "military strategies". But it's all ape brain shit. All the crime
| we have: ape brain shit. And even all the online warring, all the
| Twitter mobs, and MeToo movements, and fake left extremism and
| fake right extremism, all that stuff, forming little tribes, and
| going and attacking and raiding others. Dividing up the abundance
| of free space, but this time, ideological space, and going to
| attack and raid other ideological spaces, rather than just living
| in the peace and harmony that would be possible if it weren't for
| our human nature: ape brain shit. Just sublimated from "real
| violence" into ideological, emotional, reputational, verbal
| violence. But all those ideological warriors love to pretend they
| are so much better than all the rapists and murderers and war
| mongers and child molesters and all the other bad things on
| planet Earth. But they're all just doing the same thing, driven
| by the same bullshit force: ape brain shit. We don't need complex
| theories to explain the state of the world, it's just human
| nature. It's all just fucking human nature. What the fuck is
| wrong with the world? Ape brain shit. Human nature. That's it.
| agumonkey wrote:
| isn't it 'life form shit' mostly ? territorialism is survival
| trick #2
| bmitc wrote:
| Orcas are highly intelligent beings who do not seem to
| commonly engage, if at all, in territorial violence. They say
| "you eat that and I'll eat this".
| agumonkey wrote:
| that's a cool fact I didn't know but that one species with
| itself, I was more general, life is about finding your own
| needs in space, at one point you'll have to push someone
| else off a chair
| jawarner wrote:
| I'd go a step further and ask if our online interactions are
| really simulating ape tribes. The social and emotional dynamics
| online do not really substitute for real human relationships.
| Though they do serve some emotional needs, our social circuitry
| is hacked in a way by technology. We are set up to engage in an
| ideological discourse that leads to conflict. Not all human
| tribes engage in war; there is an ecological condition that
| triggers this impulse. Our digital ecology is not designed to
| be aligned with our well-being, but instead aligned with the
| interests of a capitalist system. In general, substances can be
| marketed which hack the human system and addict them to habits
| counter to their own well-being --- for instance, narcotics.
| Technology can be made to work harmoniously with human social
| orders, but doing so requires a strong model of human behavior
| in societies.
| agumonkey wrote:
| I thought about it a lot, because I used to be a complete
| recluse, avoidant, loner.. growing up half a nerd I spent a
| lot of time living online. When I tried to go back to a more
| normal social life, I realized a few differences:
|
| - online is way less intense, people assume disconnected
| chats, and transient random strangers coming on and off. face
| to face less so, if you speak to someone you don't quit all
| of a sudden for instance, you have to communicate more.
|
| - physical proximity matters a lot, you don't let people you
| don't like close, safety reflex ? some form of subconscious
| emotional match ? still, if you let someone close to you in
| the real world it's a lot more impacting (IMO) than even the
| closest people you get online.
|
| - I also feel that in real life you're naturally more social,
| you don't approach strangers like on a comment thread, trying
| to debate intense polemics out of the blue. It can happen in
| the street or at a bar, but most of the time people try to
| find nice stuff to bond around. digital makes some slightly
| egotistic part of us shine stronger.
| wincy wrote:
| We need less Chimp brain and more Bonobo brain. We'd all be
| having a better time.
| tibbydudeza wrote:
| Yes we all can do with more transactional sex.
| simonh wrote:
| Well, we only just recently developed a technological society,
| in evolutionary terms. Therefore were at the lower bound of
| being able to do so, otherwise wed have done it sooner.
| whatshisface wrote:
| That may be true, but it may also be true that systemic
| constraints (availability of arable land, climate, population
| density, the slow inter-generational process of plant and
| animal domestication that makes agriculture economical), held
| humanity back longer than would have been possible if
| millions of cavemen were appeared overnight in the Indus
| valley with modern wheat in hand.
| ASalazarMX wrote:
| This is humbling thought.
| 34qlgkaer wrote:
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| plank wrote:
| Read it. Astonishing to not read what I would have expected:
| larger animals may have larger brains then smaller animals as an
| extra gram of brain has a smaller impact on e.g. the amount of
| energy to keep it working. (To clarify: suppose a powerlaw
| exists: to be equally 'smart' one needs a brain the weight of
| A*(mass)^B, with A and B constants, e.g. B being 0.3. The 'cost'
| of having that brain is then much smaller for a large animal, so
| it can grow a larger brain without the energy needed to keep it
| going being (percentage wise) larger then the smaller animal.)
|
| And how about evolution: that really smart fish with twice the
| brainpower of the equally sized fish just vanished, as it did not
| compete energy wise with its competition.
|
| Indeed, humans may be special in that babies are more and more
| just enough developed to be born, so that they just can be born
| through normal labour.
|
| These two simple notions (perhaps not explained perfectly in a
| single comment) are absent from the article, and hence I felt
| something missing;-)
| wincy wrote:
| With C-Sections there's a good chance that like bulldogs, human
| beings are freed to have as big a brain as possible, so maybe
| we'll see an increase in brain sizes in the next thousand years
| for human beings.
|
| Where a hundred years ago the mother an infant with a giant
| cranium would have just died, now the pregnancy can be viable.
| joshmarlow wrote:
| > Indeed, humans may be special in that babies are more and
| more just enough developed to be born, so that they just can be
| born through normal labour.
|
| I think a corollary of this is maybe the simplest (while still
| compelling) argument for the possibility of greater than human
| intelligence (be it alien, modified human, AI, etc).
|
| For it to be true that greater than human intelligence is
| impossible, all of the following would have to be true:
|
| 1) after some point, bigger brains have diminishing returns wrt
| intelligence 2) the maximum beneficial brain size just happens
| to fit through a primate pelvis modified for an upright walking
| gate 3) the maximum beneficial brain size can be competitively
| powered by a hunter gatherer diet
|
| To me, that seems like a very unlikely conjunction!
| bmitc wrote:
| > 2) the maximum beneficial brain size just happens to fit
| through a primate pelvis modified for an upright walking gate
|
| I'm not sure that's a given. Whales and dolphins,
| particularly orcas are counter examples.
| ffflk3 wrote:
| I hope Fauci gets a five iron to the head walking home today.
| AbrahamParangi wrote:
| Fascinating. I'm reminded of the bitter lesson* from AI, which is
| that the scale of computation is really the only thing that
| matters.
|
| *http://incompleteideas.net/IncIdeas/BitterLesson.html
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