What Are You Carrying?

[Xerographica]

Here's something that I've been carrying around in my head for a while...

A. Humans are exceptionally intelligent
B. Humans are exceptionally linvoid (physically capable of simultaneously carrying different things)

Coincidence? Correlation doesn't imply causation? Cancer doesn't cause cell phones? Maybe I've been carrying the wrong thing in my head for a while?

C. It's problematic for any organism to carry the wrong thing
D. It's beneficial for any organism to carry the right thing
E. Carrying the right thing depends on intelligence
F. As carrying increases in complexity, more intelligence is needed to carry the right thing

Neil Degrasse Tyson versus Xero...

Tyson: There's an implicit assumption that you're making inadvertently, possibly, that intelligence is an inevitable consequence of the evolutionary record. And I'm skeptical of that because if that were the case then what we call our intelligence would have happened multiple times in the fossil record and it hasn't.
Xero: If our intelligence is the consequence of our exceptional linvoid... then we definitely would not expect to find our intelligence multiple times in the fossil record.

Now we have uHaul. So carrying is even more complex... therefore we're going to see an even greater increase in intelligence? Well... let's say that Bob does carry the right things in his uHaul because he is more intelligent than most people. As a result of carrying the right things... Bob is going to be able to have more people carry his genetic material? Sure, but able doesn't mean willing.

Right now there are still consequences to carrying the right/wrong things. But in terms of biological consequences... the disparity isn't as large as it used to be.

Here are some carrying clips.

So that's "my" theory of human intelligence. What's your theory? Is it better than "my" theory?

[Dakini]

I don't think you're a good enough philosopher to be coining your own words (by the way, the word for "there should be a word for this, but there isn't" is "lacuna", which is also called a "lexical gap"). Using this as a basis of intelligence is silly. I'm not carrying anything right now.

Also, intelligence has arisen more than once on this planet. Animals like dolphins are rather intelligent, as are other great apes and even octopi are quite smart.

[Aclion]

Usual stuff; Wallet, phone, keys.

[Dumb Ideologies]

Take some perks that can increase your carry capacity or take a companion with you.

[Washington Resistance Army]

Wallet, gun, knife, keys, grenade.

[Wine-loving Chimps]

The weight of the sins I have committed...

*sees topic thread*

Oh, uh.

So what exactly do you mean by "carrying" the "right things"? Thoughts? If it is that, then I'm afraid the simple answer 2 parts. One is that humans are not as intelligent as you'd think. And the second is that what you'd call the "wrong" thing can be the "right thing", or at least the "convenient" thing for others. Put the two together, and you realise that people who benefit from the "wrong" thing will try to convince everyone else of that wrong thing, and seeing as we are typically rather gullible creatures who despite our big brains don't like using them at all times, you can see where this problem would come from.

As for the evolution part... do not that humans are some of the most complex creatures in the history of the world. It took a lot of time for natural selection to build up all the blocks that made humans. And every once in a while mass-extinctions got rid of all that hard work.

As for uHaul... personally I'm stuck with the Royal Mail, so maybe that explains why I'm not understanding what you are talking about.

[Dakini]

As for uHaul... personally I'm stuck with the Royal Mail, so maybe that explains why I'm not understanding what you are talking about.

uHaul is a company that rents moving vans. They're for moving house, not shipping a few items, so they serve a rather different purpose than the Royal Mail.

Not that this really helps any.

[Bogdanov Vishniac]

Intelligence has evolved multiple different times in Earth's history. It's not a singular phenomena - you can get to it by any number of different routes, and the outcome itself can be fundamentally different depending on the selective pressures involved. As Dakini noted, octopuses, elephants, magpies and dolphins all are intelligent by one measure or another - all have wildly varying abilities to carry things. There's no correlation between your made up concept and intelligence. See for example jumping spiders in the genus Portia;

Here's the thumbnail sketch: we have here a spider who eats other spiders, who changes her foraging strategy on the fly, who resorts to trial and error techniques to lure prey into range. She will brave a full frontal assault against prey carrying an egg sac, but sneak up upon an unencumbered target of the same species. Many insects and arachnids are known for fairly complex behaviors (bumblebees are the proletarian's archetype; Sphex wasps are the cool grad-school example), but those behaviors are hardwired and inflexible. Portia here is not so rote: Portia improvises.

But it's not just this flexible behavioral repertoire that's so amazing. It's not the fact that somehow, this dumb little spider with its crude compound optics has visual acuity to rival a cat's (even though a cat's got orders of magnitude more neurons in one retina than our spider has in her whole damn head). It's not even the fact that this little beast can figure out a maze which entails recognizing prey, then figuring out an approach path along which that prey is not visible (i.e., the spider can't just keep her eyes on the ball: she has to develop and remember a search image), then follow her best-laid plans by memory including recognizing when she's made a wrong turn and retracing her steps, all the while out of sight of her target. No, the really amazing thing is how she does all this with a measly 600,000 neurons— how she pulls off cognitive feats that would challenge a mammal with seventy million or more.

She does it like a Turing Machine, one laborious step at a time. She does it like a Sinclair ZX-80: running one part of the system then another, because she doesn't have the circuitry to run both at once. She does it all sequentially, by timesharing.

She'll sit there for two fucking hours, just watching. It takes that long to process the image, you see: whereas a cat or a mouse would assimilate the whole hi-res vista in an instant, Portia's poor underpowered graphics driver can only hold a fraction of the scene at any given time. So she scans, back and forth, back and forth, like some kind of hairy multilimbed Cylon centurion, scanning each little segment of the game board in turn. Then, when she synthesizes the relevant aspects of each (God knows how many variables she's juggling, how many pencil sketches get scribbled onto the scratch pad because the jpeg won't fit), she figures out a plan, and puts it into motion: climbing down the branch, falling out of sight of the target, ignoring other branches that would only seem to provide a more direct route to payoff, homing in on that one critical fork in the road that leads back up to satiation. Portia won't be deterred by the fact that she only has a few percent of a real brain: she emulates the brain she needs, a few percent at a time.

[San Marlindo]

Usual stuff; Wallet, phone, keys.

Yeah, same here: phone...keys...wallet...wallet...

HOLY SHIT WHERE'S MY WALLET

[Xerographica]

I don't think you're a good enough philosopher to be coining your own words (by the way, the word for "there should be a word for this, but there isn't" is "lacuna", which is also called a "lexical gap"). Using this as a basis of intelligence is silly. I'm not carrying anything right now.

You're carrying the word "lacuna" in your head. You're also carrying your own genetic material and the genetic material of numerous different microorganisms.

Also, intelligence has arisen more than once on this planet. Animals like dolphins are rather intelligent, as are other great apes and even octopi are quite smart.

Other animals are smart, but they aren't as smart as us. We are exceptionally smart because _________________ (fill in the blank).

[Khadgar]

Don't post while high kids. You end up with this pseudo-philosophical dren.

[Differing Opinions]

*Stumbles in like Ted Kennedy after a bender*
Hmm, what?
Oh, lets see...Crap, where are my pants?!

[Xerographica]

So what exactly do you mean by "carrying" the "right things"? Thoughts?

You can carry thoughts... and you can also carry food, water and a phone with you when you go for a hike in the desert. The "right things" are the most valuable things. The "wrong things" are the least valuable things. Imagine going on a hike in the desert and carrying bowling balls instead of food, water and a phone. Oops, you carried the wrong things.

Did you watch the clip of the coywolf deciding whether she carried the goose egg or the roadkill? Her intrinsic desire was to choose the most valuable option (MVO).

As for the evolution part... do not that humans are some of the most complex creatures in the history of the world. It took a lot of time for natural selection to build up all the blocks that made humans. And every once in a while mass-extinctions got rid of all that hard work.

Ok, but this doesn't necessarily explain our exceptional intelligence.

[MERIZoC]

No reference to Gallo in the OP, that's progress.

[Xerographica]

Intelligence has evolved multiple different times in Earth's history. It's not a singular phenomena - you can get to it by any number of different routes, and the outcome itself can be fundamentally different depending on the selective pressures involved. As Dakini noted, octopuses, elephants, magpies and dolphins all are intelligent by one measure or another - all have wildly varying abilities to carry things. There's no correlation between your made up concept and intelligence. See for example jumping spiders in the genus Portia;

Every organism has some degree of intelligence. The question is why humans have the greatest degree of intelligence. I think it has to do with the fact that we are the only species that can simultaneously carry different resources. Other animals can carry things... but we are the only animal that can carry many different things at the same time. So deciding what to carry becomes a far more complex problem. And more complex problems require more processing power and memory.

[Valaran]

I think it has to do with the fact that we are the only species that can simultaneously carry different resources. Other animals can carry things... but we are the only animal that can carry many different things at the same time. So deciding what to carry becomes a far more complex problem. And more complex problems require more processing power and memory.

Why does it have to be one reason?

It also has to do with more developed and complex methods of storing and communicating information, and more complex social constructs, allowing them to pool resources and relate experiences. And this is before we get onto the dietary theories, and environmental factors of proto-man.

[Xerographica]

I think it has to do with the fact that we are the only species that can simultaneously carry different resources. Other animals can carry things... but we are the only animal that can carry many different things at the same time. So deciding what to carry becomes a far more complex problem. And more complex problems require more processing power and memory.

Why does it have to be one reason?

It also has to do with more developed and complex methods of storing and communicating information, and more complex social constructs, allowing them to pool resources and relate experiences. And this is before we get onto the dietary theories, and environmental factors of proto-man.

Our exceptional ability to process/store/communicate information has to have a logical explanation. From my perspective, the other explanations are woefully inadequate.

If you saw the video clips then you would know that chimpanzees are linvoid (capable of simultaneously carrying different resources). But they aren't as linvoid as humans are. This disparity in linvoid explains the disparity in our intelligence.

Walking more and more upright provided a distinct advantage because it allowed our ancestors to simultaneously and efficiently carry/transport more and different resources over greater distances. As our ancestors migrated, the groups that had more intelligence carried more valuable things... which provided them with a distinct advantage over groups that had less intelligence and carried less valuable things.

So our ancestors becoming more linvoid resulted in more pressure on the selection/evolution of intelligence.

[Dakini]

Don't post while high kids. You end up with this pseudo-philosophical dren.

Hey man, some of us are quite capable of avoiding pseudo-philosophical dren while high.

[Valaran]

Why does it have to be one reason?

It also has to do with more developed and complex methods of storing and communicating information, and more complex social constructs, allowing them to pool resources and relate experiences. And this is before we get onto the dietary theories, and environmental factors of proto-man.

Our exceptional ability to process/store/communicate information has to have a logical explanation. From my perspective, the other explanations are woefully inadequate.

If you saw the video clips then you would know that chimpanzees are linvoid (capable of simultaneously carrying different resources). But they aren't as linvoid as humans are. This disparity in linvoid explains the disparity in our intelligence.
.

But no necessarily one cause.

I'm not really sure it does. There are other traits we do not share with chimpanzees. There's no reason to assume just one difference is the source of 'human intelligence'.

Walking more and more upright provided a distinct advantage because it allowed our ancestors to simultaneously and efficiently carry/transport more and different resources over greater distances.

It allowed for greater social interaction, different eating habits, different environmental factors, and so on...

As our ancestors migrated, the groups that had more intelligence carried more valuable things

Is that an assumption?

[Risottia]

I don't think you're a good enough philosopher to be coining your own words (by the way, the word for "there should be a word for this, but there isn't" is "lacuna", which is also called a "lexical gap"). Using this as a basis of intelligence is silly. I'm not carrying anything right now.

You're carrying the word "lacuna" in your head. You're also carrying your own genetic material and the genetic material of numerous different microorganisms.

So the whole point of this thread is weaseling around the definition of "carry", innit.

edit: sorry, I messed up the quotes: restoring them.

[Xerographica]

I'm not really sure it does. There are other traits we do not share with chimpanzees. There's no reason to assume just one difference is the source of 'human intelligence'.

Can you make a case for those other traits putting more pressure on the selection/evolution of intelligence? I've made a case for linvoid putting more pressure on the selection/evolution of intelligence. You didn't debunk/destroy my case. You simply said that there are other differences between chimps and humans. Make a case for those other differences... or debunk my case for linvoid.

Here's my case again...

A. More linvoid means a harder problem of deciding what to carry
B. Harder problems require better processing/storage of information
C. More linvoid results in the more selection/evolution of intelligence

[Ifreann]

You're carrying the word "lacuna" in your head. You're also carrying your own genetic material and the genetic material of numerous different microorganisms.

So the whole point of this thread is weaseling around the definition of "carry", innit.

I think the whole point of this thread is to promote Xero's neologism and/or philosophy.

[Xerographica]

You're carrying the word "lacuna" in your head. You're also carrying your own genetic material and the genetic material of numerous different microorganisms.

So the whole point of this thread is weaseling around the definition of "carry", innit.

I think the whole point of this thread is to promote Xero's neologism and/or philosophy.

What does this thread have to do with xeroism, epiphytics or pragmatarianism?

[Ifreann]

I think the whole point of this thread is to promote Xero's neologism and/or philosophy.

What does this thread have to do with xeroism, epiphytics or pragmatarianism?

I have no idea.

[Xerographica]

What does this thread have to do with xeroism, epiphytics or pragmatarianism?

I have no idea.

Really? No idea? Well... they are all ideas that I carry in my head. Do you carry any of these three ideas in your head? Nope. You carry different ideas in your head. I think you're carrying the wrong ideas in your head. You think I'm carrying the wrong ideas in my head. And neither of us wants to carry the wrong ideas.