I think parrots, crows and Octopus have demonstrated a small brain can still create and execute intelligent ideas. YMMV
As you say, corvids, octopi and others have recently been interacted with in such a way as to be shown to demonstrate unexpectedly complex behaviour. Brain size doesn't seem to be quite as important as you might think.
Note my brain is about a fifth the size of a blue whale's brain. Now I am absolutely useless at living within the sea and I have no idea how complicated it is but I suspect that based on our relative brain size, that it can be very complicated compared to what we land lubbers get up to. Evolution doesn't leave rubbish lying around unless it does not impair things.
I don'y know how much of the brain is used for "thinking", and I suspect science doesn't either.
(1) The scaling law. One might think brain size should scale as body size, if the key is simply weight, or number of neurons; or one might think brain size should scale as the 2/3 power of body size, if one takes into account the square-cube law. The research Dawkins describes found that the actual scaling was in between the two: brain size generally scales as the 3/4 power of body size.
(2) Differences between groupings of animals. This basically affects the constant that multiplies (body size to the 3/4 power) in the equation for expected brain size. IIRC primates have the largest constant, cetaceans have the second largest, but octopuses and squids also have a fairly high constant. I don't remember seeing any data on corvids.
All is not what it seems.
Most of the things I know came from other humans who died long before I was born. I get to benefit from all their brainpower indirectly. I'd be much dumber on my own.
Any animal that can move its body in a consistent way, make the same noise repeatedly, or do any other sort of repeated 'thing' has the ability to create an arbitrarily complex language. But they lack something enabling them to do that, and it seems whatever this something is - it probably wouldn't be terribly far from the same thing that enables meaningful, complex, and intricate tool creation.
You are as smart as you are because other humans taught you.
I would expect opportunities for any meaningful innovation to be very limited at such low densities. Anything “invented” would likely stay within your group and be lost in a few generations. Then it would have to be rediscovered several times until it caught on amongst a larger population.
Physical tools are more complicated, exist as discrete physical instances and knowledge depending upon skill to make it, component availability (needing flint for example), and mutation can occur seperately. Just because you used a partially burnt piece of wood to make a better spear doesn't mean you have the techniques for fire-hardening wooden weapons down.
With `s/humans/homo sapiens/g` in the above paragraph, I believe that H sapiens was around for approx 300k - 400k years, and thrived in a variety of environments that would have killed them off if they did not have fire or sharpened rocks (skin animals for rudimentary clothing).
This suggests, to me anyway, that your estimates might be erring on the side of caution.
[WARNING: pure speculation ahead]
Earliest H. sapiens remains in Africa date to approx 300k years ago. Around 150k years ago the climate was cold, dry and harsh (https://www.esd.ornl.gov/projects/qen/nercAFRICA.html).
If H. sapiens did not enter that climate already prepared, with generational knowledge of fire and sharp tools, they would have died out.
This makes me think that they had already had widespread use of fire and sharp tools, plus sophisticated enough communications to pass this knowledge down for multiple generations prior to the climate change.
If crows had hands at their disposal, they might have developed towards a civilized species earlier than us.
With advanced enough genetic engineering, we may yet see someone to actually try giving them hands. Not soon, certainly, but in 2050, who knows.
Edit: Look at this video.
https://www.reddit.com/r/therewasanattempt/comments/156yuj5/...
It took the guy longer to assemble the test than the raven to solve it. These are smart creatures, and they like to communicate and cooperate as well. With hands and somewhat more capable vocal chords, nothing would stop them from developing a civilization.
And of course there's the interesting question of size efficiency. Vacuum tubes are considerably bigger than transistors, which in turn are considerably bigger than ICs. Perhaps raw size isn't really an interesting metric for cross-architectural brains either?
Not quite; it is much more nuanced and not settled - https://neuroscience.stanford.edu/news/ask-neuroscientist-do...
To be honest, I find these correlation a bit unsettling. Clearly, there is more to intelligence than brain size, or classic geniuses like Albert Einstein, who had an average-sized brain, would have been out of luck! It is important think about how we should actually define intelligence, and to keep in mind that the studies cited above only show a correlation between brain size and a person’s score on an intelligence quotient test. Although IQ is historically the most widely used intelligence measure, by no means does it account for all aspects of human intelligence, nor is it an entirely consistent readout of cognitive ability between individuals. Furthermore, a closer look at the results of the gene-association study reveal that most of the relationship the authors found between HMGA2 gene variations and cranial size could be accounted for by the fact that the gene is also correlated with human height. Correlational studies have only established a weak to moderate linear relationship between brain size an intelligence, which is enough fuel to ensure that the brain size and intelligence hypothesis doesn’t burn out, but does little to explain the true basis of human cognitive capacity.
You might also want to look at the paper Decreases in Brain Size and Encephalization in Anatomically Modern Humans i have linked here - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36833133
http://bactra.org/weblog/523.html
(If you like, skip to "Correlations explain g, not the other way around").
And of course intelligence is a real and observable thing. Some people really are considerably smarter than others. They have better recall, learn faster, and are able to reach correct conclusions either more quickly or with less information than less intelligent persons. Reducing that difference to a single factor almost certainly is a simplification, but just as we can usefully talk about height without getting caught up on difference in leg, torso, and neck length, we can talk about intelligence similarly.
As for the presidential fitness exam, well that’s true but quite facile. Much like how people who have taken the Wonderlic test are considerably more likely than the general populace to be or have been in the NFL.
In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if taking aptitude tests at all regardless of score predicts above average outcomes because of a selection effect.
Right. I don’t see how any statistical analysis can tell you if a mechanism exists or what it is. Quite the opposite. The better you understand the mechanism of the process that generates your data points the higher quality your statistical analysis will be. And in the case of intelligence we know there must be an actual real underlying factor because some people are observably smarter than others.
Mensa appears to select for high aptitude and low achievement, which is a really unfortunate combination.
Today we know better; Humans are highly adaptable and everything only exists in the context of a specific environmental/cultural/social context. Genetics vs. Epigenetics, Nature vs. Nurture, Nutrition, Economic strata etc. are all inputs when it comes to our "fitness" for a particular task. We play "roles" which are context-dependent from which you cannot generalize to the "whole person".
Psychometrics has been called a "Pathological Science" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pathological_science
This article named The Myth of Measurement brings a bunch of research together to show why - https://paulenglert.com/the-myth-of-measurement/
And indeed, one can predict with accuracy better than chance how well someone will perform in a software developer job (for example) from an IQ test.
This same test may do less well in predicting the ability to hunt an antelope across the serengeti, but that still wouldn't make psychometrics pseudoscience.
Also, if there wasn't a g factor that would be fairly weird, as there are numerous little slightly deleterious mutations one could have that can minorly affect neuronal functioning. You'd genuinely expect there to be a decent correlation here.
Here is Nassim Taleb;
1) IQ is largely a pseudoscientific swindle - https://medium.com/incerto/iq-is-largely-a-pseudoscientific-...
2) Fooled by Correlation: Common Misinterpretations in Social "Science" - https://www.academia.edu/39797871/Common_Misapplications_and...
3) Correlation videos - https://nassimtaleb.org/tag/correlation/
See also :
a) The Pseudoscience of Psychometry and The Bell Curve - https://www.jstor.org/stable/2967209
b) Pseudoscience and Mental Ability: The Origins and Fallacies of the IQ Controversy. - https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED164662
I wonder how many Fields medalists score one or two standard deviations below average on the Stanford-Binet. If the measure is meaningless then roughly half should, right?
Also while I certainly respect Mr. Taleb's insights and the mass market appeal of his punchy authorial persona, based on various writings of his I conclude that he views intelligence very narrowly in the "good at trading options" sense, which coincidentally is an area where he has demonstrated ability. Funny that. And to be fair in my own trading I benefitted quite a bit from his maxim that the first goal is survival.
I'd bet that Fat Tony would probably score well above average on an IQ test too, he just wouldn't be caught dead taking one. And I don't blame him; the kind of people who mistake aptitude for achievement are generally insufferable.
Yes and No to both.
Simply put;
1) There is nothing called "General Intelligence" beyond what enables a Human to survive in his/her environmental niche (including cultural/social since we are social animals). Leaving aside obvious biological retardation, if Extraversion/Introversion, Agreeableness/Disagreeableness, etc. enables one to survive, they are equally "Intelligent". Trying to rank these attributes on a ordinal scale and do quantitative calculations on them is nonsense. See Stephen Jay Gould's The Mismeasure of Man (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mismeasure_of_Man) for convincing arguments.
2) Humans are highly adaptable and exhibit dynamic behaviour in different contexts. This "role" and hence the "exhibited intelligence" is specific to that context but if that adaptation subsumes the need for another related context then obviously one will be intelligent in both the contexts. For example London Taxi drivers actually grew their hippocampus and became more intelligent in both spatial navigation and memory recall - https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/london-taxi-memor...
3) We know that gene expression can be influenced by the environment via Epigenetics over generations (see the documentary The Ghost in your Genes). Environment (cultural/social/nutritional/economic) now becomes of paramount importance and thus a person's "fitness" for a role is dependent on Nature, Nurture and his unique Family Past history. He will now be intelligent in certain roles not so in others.
4) Wrong understanding and misuse of Statistical methods in the above scenarios. This is where Taleb's writing/videos help one to separate the wheat from the chaff.
- Notes on Taleb's article - https://supermemo.guru/wiki/Taleb:_IQ_is_a_pseudoscientific_...
- IQ is a dismal measure of intelligence - https://supermemo.guru/wiki/IQ_is_a_dismal_measure_of_intell...
No thanks. Why would I refer to a source whose author either lied to get the results that suited his politics or was completely incompetent? From the NY Times[1]:
But now physical anthropologists at the University of Pennsylvania, which owns Morton’s collection, have remeasured the skulls, and in an article that does little to burnish Dr. Gould’s reputation as a scholar, they conclude that almost every detail of his analysis is wrong.
You did nicely restate Mr. Taleb’s novel redefinition of “intelligence” as survival ability though. No doubt then Taleb believes the humble tardigrade is one of the most intelligent creatures on Earth.
Read the section on Reassessing Morton's skull measurements and follow the links as needed.
Finally, you might also want to checkout the following;
1) Triarchic theory of Intelligence - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triarchic_theory_of_intelligen...
2) Theory of multiple Intelligences - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_multiple_intelligenc...
As for the triarchic theory, it’s not even wrong. I’m completely uninterested a non-empirical “theory” of intelligence.
I will end this with the following observation;
In this modern day and age anybody who believes;
a Bedouin from the Sahara, a Aborigine from the Australian Outback, a Chukchi from the Northern Arctic, a tribal hunter from the Amazon Rainforest, a nomadic herder from the Mongolian Steppe, a Sherpa from the Himalayas, a Xhosa from Africa and a Techie from Silicon Valley
can all be ranked on a single scale using a single metric of "General Intelligence" is ... manifestly wrong and unscientific! The absurdity is self-evident.
You may as well argue that height isn’t a scientific metric because some people have longer legs and others have longer torsos so clearly any single height metric is meaningless. It’s pure flimflammery.
In any event it’s pretty clear that your beliefs on the subject of intelligence are not evidence based, so I don’t think further discussion will be intellectually satiating for either of us.
In fact, one could taboo the word "intelligence" entirely and merely say "that thing we observe where people who do better at these tests seem to also do better at these jobs and are more likely to win board games[1].". While the tails do come apart eventually, the correlation is observable up to at least 130 (there was a strong correlation at my previous work place between those who did well at board games and those who got a lot of good technical work done, these people also tended to have +2sd test scores compared to the +1sd average).
Btw: I've read Taleb's charged essay before and found it rather unconvincing. Very much "given these particular papers it's possible high IQ scores correlate with nothing other than high test scores".
[1] I'm not just basing this off my own observations, good chess players seem to have 130 level IQs: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S01602...
I think the whole discussion around intelligence suffers from a lack of clear definitions. And people often tie it to other ideas like consciousness or moral personhood, which only muddies the water further.
I have a feeling many others here have also witnessed those actions in their natural environment.
It used to be used all the time. For instance, to defend the idea that women and asians weren't as intelligent as anglo saxons because they were smaller in stature. There's plenty of other ludicrous nonsense claims that were made based on this supposed principle.
We all agree that the conclusions are nonsense but somehow we hold on to the premise.
In computers, the basic building block, an individual transistor, has shrunk by orders of magnitude since 1957.
If we, theoretically, built a computer of the size of the SAGE computer from contemporary M2 chips, it would be very computationally powerful indeed.
It's reductionist and impossible.
All kinds of animals are far better then us at specific core brain functions with way smaller brains.
Mantis shrimps are way better at vision than we are and lyre birds are way better at vocalization. (https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=VjE0Kdfos4Y)
You can find all kinds of vastly superior aspects of systems in the animal world. Ants, termites and bees for instance, are probably better at socializing.
Some supercolonies span thousands of miles with hundreds of millions of ants - rivaling the size of human countries. Ants, 0.25mg brains. So brain size doesn't seem that important in organizing or building complex networks. We're certainly not 5.2 million times better (which is our difference in brain mass)
Ants even "farm" with things like aphids and keep those colonies alive. Look it up. It's fascinating what they can do with 0.25mg.
We're the only animals that have built rocketships and computers - so there's certainly something there but it's fleeting and complicated. Reducing it to a single measurement is inherently inaccurate in the same way you cannot describe the material, color, shape and volume of 3 dimensional objects with 1 number. Brain size alone cannot be a complete or useful metric.
You could use any correlated metric then and make the same claim - people with more expensive shoes performed better - or bigger feet.
Demonstrating that people who grew up impoverished performed poorer than people who grew up wealthy, by using the proxy of the mass of their heads, isn't very convincing.
Have fun playing make believe.
Nutrition correlation? Yes. Access to education? Yes. Low stress from high income and fewer cognitive loads? Yes. These all lead to taller adults that then have "bigger brains" ... and that's it - that's why it's only detectable at all (and that's questionable depending on the metric), at very large population sizes, if any.
It's not like people who win the Nobel Prize and Fields Medals are 8 feet tall giants. We also don't see someone that's say 5'0" and 90 lbs and think "they can't possibly have anything intelligent to say! Look at their stature!"
You need to stop lying. First to yourself. Try having a factual basis for the words that you write.
Sure, in places like the US, or Apartheid-era South Africa, “race” might have enough of an impact on people's lives that controlling for it is a quick and easy way to clean up your data. But absent social factors, by itself, there's no reason to believe that it's something you need to control for; and if you have access to that information, there are always more direct factors you can control for.
To go from genes varying the amount of melanin in your skin to then divide humans into "races" is crazy. I've worked all over the world through all of my long career, with people from all over, and if there's one thing I have learned it's that people are people, everywhere, you find all kinds of personalities, but the thing is - it doesn't matter if you're looking in your neighbourhood street or somewhere on the other side of the globe.
So your reply is a complete non sequitor.
How does that mean there's nothing to compare?
Children with "bigger brains" perform better because they've matured faster and have better executive control than their peers.
That's why you can strongly correlate childhood academic performance on birth month. The ones that do better don't have "larger" brains as adults.
If you take people with equal economic opportunities and the same social advantages, you cannot stratify that population based on brain mass and correlate it with anything meaningful.
Besides, if this was true then, say the staff at MIT would be NBA sized giants working their big brains and little persons would all have severe cognitive impairments. None of this is the case.
Even on strict IQ, which is what these people like to use, it still doesn't work. The highest IQ scorers are normal sized, normal shaped people. They aren't walking around with giant deformed skulls
The logical implications of the hypothesis simply don't exist and every study I've seen that tries to demonstrate it gets criticized as actually just showing a proxy measurement for things like nutrition, age, economic status, etc
It's also why the phenomena only appears in large population studies. Taller people, on average, grew up with more advantages and access to resources which is why they're taller. As a population, they will do better then their disadvantaged peers. Duh.
Such a correlation is a very repeated finding in all sorts of data sets.
Maybe you could chase down some of the references at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuroscience_and_intelligence#... .
One interesting fact I found on that page right now is that the correlation has also been found in Chimpanzees.
The two population cohorts are 11-year olds and 17-year olds so regardless of what they say, we're still just measuring shoe size.
I'm guessing they published these two groups because their adult cohorts showed zero difference and that's not a publishable paper.
In fact, they admit it
"Two previous studies taking this approach, each with a sample size of about 35 sibling pairs, failed to find a significant correlation"
Right before they say "chill, let's cheat":
"We reexamined this empirical issue in a Human Connectome Project (HCP) (Van Essen et al., 2012; Van Essen et al., 2013) sample of 1,022 young adults"
^ it's a shoe size study from here out so of course they find something.
That must mean we have vestigial neurons.
It appears in larger populations because it's a weak proxy for other things.
It disappears in smaller populations because it's a weak proxy for other things.
The same relationship would exist with the MSRP of the car the test subject arrived in or the cost of their socks.
In a small population study you'd see no real correlation between how someone did a test and the price of their car.
But over say 100,000 people you would because the cost of someone's car weakly correlates with a number of things that are, in aggregate more advantageous for testing and so the confounding phenomena would arise.
In fact, the circumference of someone's head probably has about the same correlation with the price of their socks as it does with whatever intelligence metric your want to use because it's all measuring the same thing - social class, opportunities, economic arrangements, things like that.
It's a physical consequence of our unequal society that then gets used as if it's a biological reason for the perpetuation of the vary inequality that produced it.
Eugenicists called this biological determinism, it's an old idea that doesn't stand up to scrutiny.
Nicely put!
Now birds and octopodes etc. are a completely different story.
There's also correlations between brain size and various intelligence metrics, which, while certainly not definitive, is still strong evidence.
Of course it's not just a simple matter of size, particularly across species (e.g. a blue whale isn't smarter than a human). But it helps/enables.