Our server costs ~$56 per month to run. Please consider donating or becoming a Patron to help keep the site running. Help us gain new members by following us on Twitter and liking our page on Facebook!
Current time: March 28, 2024, 6:31 pm

Thread Rating:
  • 0 Vote(s) - 0 Average
  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5
Evolutionary fine tuning ...
#1
Evolutionary fine tuning ...
Guys, I watched a couple of fascinating vids on the human mind and how the brain is completely disconnected from the outside world in a way which hasn't occurred to me before. I don't even know why I was surprised to know that the brain is in an sealed pitch black skull all it's life. No holes to let light or sound in.
Those connections are digital in nature. IE: depending which part of the brain they connect to will determine how our mind manifests the information.
There was a couple of examples when these connections go awry. One guy after an accident recognised and acknowledged his parents but was convinced that they were perfect replicas. This was due to a severed connection which goes from the visual section to the amygdala and makes the emotional connection relating to the visual object.
They asked him to speak to his parents on the phone and everything was normal! (Different connection)
The other example was of an older man who had good vision but due to trauma lost a lot of connections and basically couldn't understand a lot of what he was seeing.
He could see everything but had trouble understanding their purpose.
They basically say that we create a personal version of our world in our mind over the years and build on that constantly. This version may have very little to do with actual reality at all as absolute accuracy it is not necessary for survival.
Upon watching the video, Pam gave me a piece of cheese to give to the cat on my lap and he sniffed all over my hand until he basically bumped into it.
Then I realised that my cat is blind as a bat! His evolutionary instincts are to detect changes in nature more so than to analyse a stationary object.
If I had thrown the cheese on the floor he would've pounced on it immediately.

My question is: What is our current evolutionary fine tuning? Has it changed at all since last century's industrial revolution. Even slightly?
Or has our intelligence blunted most of our primitive survival instincts since cooked meat and the wheel?
No God, No fear.
Know God, Know fear.
Reply
#2
RE: Evolutionary fine tuning ...
There are noticeable cognitive differences just between boomers and millennials, there's no way to tell whether or not there are cognitive differences between ourselves and people who existed before the industrial revolution - but also every reason to assume that whatever these would be are a matter of degree.
I am the Infantry. I am my country’s strength in war, her deterrent in peace. I am the heart of the fight… wherever, whenever. I carry America’s faith and honor against her enemies. I am the Queen of Battle. I am what my country expects me to be, the best trained Soldier in the world. In the race for victory, I am swift, determined, and courageous, armed with a fierce will to win. Never will I fail my country’s trust. Always I fight on…through the foe, to the objective, to triumph overall. If necessary, I will fight to my death. By my steadfast courage, I have won more than 200 years of freedom. I yield not to weakness, to hunger, to cowardice, to fatigue, to superior odds, For I am mentally tough, physically strong, and morally straight. I forsake not, my country, my mission, my comrades, my sacred duty. I am relentless. I am always there, now and forever. I AM THE INFANTRY! FOLLOW ME!
Reply
#3
RE: Evolutionary fine tuning ...
What slight innate differences have you noticed?

I see plenty, but I don't think they're evolutionary...
No God, No fear.
Know God, Know fear.
Reply
#4
RE: Evolutionary fine tuning ...
Perhaps slight shrinking of the 5th toe. We are certainly losing that useless appendage. I foresee 4 toed humans in our future. I broke mine a few weeks ago. Besides the pain, no change in my daily routine was noted. I still walked 2 miles every morning and jumped rope before work.
God thinks it's fun to confuse primates. Larsen's God!






Reply
#5
RE: Evolutionary fine tuning ...
It's not so much what I've noticed, lol..I don't run cognitive assays.  The most pronounced (in that test results have made it all the way down to practical application in employment assessments) is that boomers are routinely more capable of tasks that require sustained focus whereas millennials are basely incompetent at this - instead leaning on an equally pronounced ability to multitask.  This tells us that through either inheritance or conditioning (likely both) the process our minds use to problem solve is changing as the problems we face change.  Over time, those that rely on focus will be or have been less successful than those who multitask - this is natural selection at work.

The indicator, btw, that it's not solely conditioning is the inability of boomers - even with training- to perform in multitasking environments commensurate to their millennial peers. A literal inability to teach an old dog a new trick. Whereas the reverse is not true. Millennials can and do increase their ability to perform in focus related tasks through training. Meanwhile, age does not seem to be an indicator of competence or inability in other cognitive tasks. Initially, age and memory loss was pointed to as a possible source of the disparity, but with machine assistance zeroing out that deficit as a control (you don;t need to remember shit when it's all in your email chain)...that explanation has lost some of it's weight. People now point to changes both in our diets over the last 70 years and disparate problems we've increasingly been called upon to solve combined with sexual selection for fitness in this changing environment to account for what may be a developmental difference in brain structure.

Long story short, nothing "blunts" our instincts..or evolution - the parameters simply change.
I am the Infantry. I am my country’s strength in war, her deterrent in peace. I am the heart of the fight… wherever, whenever. I carry America’s faith and honor against her enemies. I am the Queen of Battle. I am what my country expects me to be, the best trained Soldier in the world. In the race for victory, I am swift, determined, and courageous, armed with a fierce will to win. Never will I fail my country’s trust. Always I fight on…through the foe, to the objective, to triumph overall. If necessary, I will fight to my death. By my steadfast courage, I have won more than 200 years of freedom. I yield not to weakness, to hunger, to cowardice, to fatigue, to superior odds, For I am mentally tough, physically strong, and morally straight. I forsake not, my country, my mission, my comrades, my sacred duty. I am relentless. I am always there, now and forever. I AM THE INFANTRY! FOLLOW ME!
Reply
#6
RE: Evolutionary fine tuning ...
If you are an atheist, please do not feed the fundies by trying to incorporate their language. What do you mean by "evolutionary fine tuning?" 

Evolution is efficient in creating diverse life, but using words like "fine tuning" are raw meat for the gullible delusional theists. but it is not perfect in the context of reproduction as a one attempt to success ratio. Most attempts a life fail. Humans especially, we stupidly think 7 billion makes us successful, well yes and no. Yes in that there are 7 billion. But not when it comes to sperm and eggs. Most male sperm die and do nothing, and even with females, most eggs end up in a period and not a baby. 

No offense but this is the same lip twitch I get when theists stupidly think "theory" is a mere guess. I simply see no need to try to compete with theists by using their language. Just call it "Evolution" and leave it at that. It is not our fault some refuse to grow up.

If I am missing something, feel free to correct me, I simply got a lip twitch seeing the term "Evolutionary fine tuning", same lip twitch I got the first time I heard "God particle".
Reply
#7
RE: Evolutionary fine tuning ...
I note the videos weren't linked.
Reply
#8
RE: Evolutionary fine tuning ...
Anyone see that movie Idiocracy? I think we're generally moving in that direction, at least in the States. Intelligence certainly has nothing to do with reproductive success. But once it becomes the dominant trait to simply do nothing but eat, sleep and fuck, that'll be the herald of our extinction. Glad I won't be around to see that.
Religions were invented to impress and dupe illiterate, superstitious stone-age peasants. So in this modern, enlightened age of information, what's your excuse? Or are you saying with all your advantages, you were still tricked as easily as those early humans?

---

There is no better way to convey the least amount of information in the greatest amount of words than to try explaining your religious views.
Reply
#9
RE: Evolutionary fine tuning ...
(July 26, 2017 at 11:50 am)Astonished Wrote: Anyone see that movie Idiocracy? I think we're generally moving in that direction, at least in the States. Intelligence certainly has nothing to do with reproductive success. But once it becomes the dominant trait to simply do nothing but eat, sleep and fuck, that'll be the herald of our extinction. Glad I won't be around to see that.

I am not that fatalistic. Certainly and I agree, getting to the point of reproduction does not require critical thinking, nor does greed for that matter. The good thing is that our species also has the capability of scrutiny and we can use that to keep the gullible on a leash.

Ultimately our species will go extinct no matter what, and long before our sun dies too. If over pollution or a nuclear war were not to wipe us out, you'd still have comets and meteors to deal with, and it wont be a matter of if, but when. 

I do think however, when sane humans care to get involved, you can keep the delusional and gullible on a leash. But it is still up to us to do that.
Reply
#10
RE: Evolutionary fine tuning ...
Astonished Wrote:Anyone see that movie Idiocracy? I think we're generally moving in that direction, at least in the States. Intelligence certainly has nothing to do with reproductive success. But once it becomes the dominant trait to simply do nothing but eat, sleep and fuck, that'll be the herald of our extinction. Glad I won't be around to see that.

Idiocracy does not take into account all the people in 3rd World nations who are not failing to weed out people too stupid to live, or that the more stupid people there are, the more comparative advantage an intelligent person has in surviving to reproduce. You can't have a big family if you knock yourself off (or your parents let you knock yourself off) before you're nine.

Brian37 Wrote:Ultimately our species will go extinct no matter what, and long before our sun dies too. If over pollution or a nuclear war were not to wipe us out, you'd still have comets and meteors to deal with, and it wont be a matter of if, but when. 

In the best case scenario, we leave enough descendants to become something besides strictly human, and they make it into the larger universe before the sun swallows our planet.
I'm not anti-Christian. I'm anti-stupid.
Reply



Possibly Related Threads...
Thread Author Replies Views Last Post
  evolutionary psychology evolcon 163 9842 October 15, 2021 at 5:45 pm
Last Post: Mister Agenda
  Fossil worm shows us our evolutionary beginnings zebo-the-fat 0 354 March 24, 2020 at 3:48 pm
Last Post: zebo-the-fat
  Evolutionary Tree RoadRunner79 165 22753 September 8, 2016 at 11:01 pm
Last Post: RobertE
  Did the King Play Chess On Fine Grained Sand for Plants Too? Rhondazvous 1 672 June 19, 2016 at 10:39 pm
Last Post: Thumpalumpacus
  An Evolutionary Connection Between Plants and Animals? Rhondazvous 2 1012 February 18, 2016 at 9:05 pm
Last Post: ignoramus
  Evolutionary Science Grinds On... Minimalist 19 4960 March 26, 2015 at 6:31 pm
Last Post: Mudhammam
  Evolutionary biology adopting religious traits tantric 55 10249 December 29, 2014 at 7:03 am
Last Post: robvalue
  Nature: Does evolutionary theory need a rethink? Dolorian 10 4032 October 12, 2014 at 10:52 am
Last Post: Chas
  The vanilla bean-evolutionary quandry professor 27 6188 June 9, 2014 at 7:29 am
Last Post: Cyberman
  The evolutionary puzzle of homosexuality downbeatplumb 1 1474 February 18, 2014 at 3:04 pm
Last Post: Jacob(smooth)



Users browsing this thread: 1 Guest(s)