Annoying Questions I'd Like Answered...

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Sat Aug 25, 2012 3:10 pm

Why did homo erectus remain unchanged for so long compared to the neanderthals and modern humans?

I can't imagine that proto-humans were so adapted to their current environment that there wasn't enough of a selection pressure.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Sat Aug 25, 2012 3:36 pm

Lago PARANOIA wrote:Why did homo erectus remain unchanged for so long compared to the neanderthals and modern humans?

I can't imagine that proto-humans were so adapted to their current environment that there wasn't enough of a selection pressure.

While evolution can proceed quite rapidly in the face of events that isolate small bottlenecks of the population (a deadly plague wipes out every member without resistance and 100% of the next generation are the children of the resistant strain, moving to an island creates a small and incestuous lineage, etc.), for most species most of the time that does not happen. In most cases the species has access to enough possible mates that genetic diversity is quietly accumulated, recessive traits make very little difference to overall fertility, and only novel mutations of profound unfitness are removed by Darwin's hammer.

This is the preferred state for species - where they have a reasonably successful strategy for survival and a deep enough gene pool to accept novel mutations and moderate shocks without changing the species as a whole that much. It's only when the shocks are very large or the gene pool is very shallow that the changes to the population are big in short periods of time. One fast or slow man does not change the average population speed much, it is only when all the fast or slow people get killed off at once that you see a population shift.

Now Homo Sapiens went through a huge genetic bottleneck. We all have the same mother just two hundred thousand years ago. There was a lot of population change around that time. But since then? It honestly hasn't been much. Humans are still all very close in genetic composition. There is more genetic difference between two kittens from the same litter than there is between two humans with different skin tones.

-Username17

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Sat Aug 25, 2012 3:48 pm

Sho' nuff.

So how come the robutus and africanus hominids died out so soon? Did their middle-sized cousin out-compete them or did something happen to cause them to die off?

erik · Post by **erik** » Sat Aug 25, 2012 4:29 pm

'So soon'? By what metric?

The margin of error on their dating is over 500,000 years. Giving a possible span of about a million years.

Neither of them were around when homo sapiens joined the playing field however. So while they almost certainly were out-competed by something or evolved, it wasn't us that directly replaced them.

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Sat Aug 25, 2012 4:49 pm

Any insight on how they met their ends?

erik · Post by **erik** » Sat Aug 25, 2012 5:25 pm

Well, it was an incredibly long time ago and we barely know anything about them by extrapolating from a few bone fragments from single individuals far apart in space and time.

I get interested in this from time to time, reading up on various ancestors to homo sapiens since I had a notion that a character in a series of stories I want to write would be an immortal ancestor of homo sapiens, probably a homo heidelbergensis.

Anywho, speculation would be pretty silly on something specific so long ago, but I have seen some theories that may be applicable.

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Sat Aug 25, 2012 9:40 pm

So. How much of (specifically but not only) human cognition is a byproduct of game theory and how much are just evolutionary quirks?

More to the point, if a human being was able to contact a non-terrestrial sapient put through the 'prokaryote to current form' evolutionary wringer and compare the behaviors and emotions and intelligence foibles, about what's the minimum level of similarity that we can expect?

For example, apophenia seems almost guaranteed and will ensure a base level of similarity. What else?

Korgan0 · Post by **Korgan0** » Sat Aug 25, 2012 10:59 pm

Well, for one thing, I don't know if there'd necessarily be continuity of experience over the lifetime of a given organism, which is certainly something weird.

IF we're going to answer the question in the positive rather than the negative, I think we need an actual definition of sapience that doesn't beg the question. If we're using "resembles human cognitive structures" as our definition of sapient, then we're obviously begging the question, but I honestly can't think of another definition that would work if we're trying to find out what kind of irreducible things are necessary for consciousness, as consciousness itself is irreducibly something that evolved alongside humanity.

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Sun Aug 26, 2012 12:24 am

I'm willing to accept a definition of sapience that is 'can express, construct, and interpret original thoughts to others using nothing but symbols'. Yes, I am aware that this means that dolphins and most apes are sapient under this definition. I don't care.

Korgan0 · Post by **Korgan0** » Sun Aug 26, 2012 1:02 am

I have to say, this question is a lot less interesting coming from what is presumably a Madonna and Child than it is coming from Bowser.

In all seriousness, then, if I understand your position, a lot of programs would count as sapient- just off the top of my head, a program designed to, say, take in a wide range of statistical data and synthesize some kind of output according to a pre-determined program would be doing precisely what you just expressed. If, for instance, it looked at the share prices, IPO level, number of employees and whatever of companies and then, according to a pre-constructed algorithm, spat out some kind of expected investment return, then it would be doing exactly what you just described. It would be expressing and constructing original thoughts (you will get a 7% return on investing in Rio Tinto over five years) from inputted data. Interpreting thoughts would be tricky, but if you programmed it to take into account other forecasts of investment return, then it would, as far as I can tell, fulfill that requirement as well.

And yet, it seems entirely implausible to say that this kind of program is conscious.

I guess my point here, insofar as I have one, is that there seems to be nothing special, for lack of a better word, about human consciousness. Just because it happens to be the way through which we experience the world does not mean it is anything other than an evolutionary accident, and it would be an entirely unjustified jump to assume that any extraterrestrial organism would have anything similiar to human consciousness, unless this kind of consciousness provides such a tremendous advantage that convergent evolution would result in a universe full of human-esque minds.

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Sun Aug 26, 2012 3:08 am

Will you speak to... Admiral Kizaru, then?

But anyway, that's why I mentioned evolution rather than intentional design. This just might be a lack of imagination, but, it seems a lot more likely that a cognitive process designed via trial and error of semi-random mutations would ironically have a lot more convergence across worlds than one designed from scratch.

Whipstitch · Post by **Whipstitch** » Sun Aug 26, 2012 3:18 am

No, I'm from the midwest and I fear change.

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Sun Aug 26, 2012 8:26 am

Lago PARANOIA wrote:I'm willing to accept a definition of sapience that is 'can express, construct, and interpret original thoughts to others using nothing but symbols'. Yes, I am aware that this means that dolphins and most apes are sapient under this definition. I don't care.

Depending on how you define symbols (whether example objects count), corvids could count as well. I'm ok with this.

Chamomile · Post by **Chamomile** » Sun Aug 26, 2012 8:38 am

Related question: If we were to create a replica of Earth as of, say, 50 million years ago, then waited 50 million years, what are the odds the resulting planet would bear any strong similarity to modern Earth?

Korgan0 · Post by **Korgan0** » Sun Aug 26, 2012 11:52 am

Firstly, I guess we should start off by assuming no causal determinism as that would be super boring.

I honestly can't speak to human evolution or epidemiological history because I know literally nothing about those things, but, as I understand it, the human race was reduced to about 5k individuals a few hundred thousand years ago, and modern humanity is descended from that genetic bottleneck. I don't know how modern humanity would differ if that epidemic hadn't occurred, but it's worth considering.

As for the geopolitical stuff, the history of medieval Europe would probably have been very different if rulers had had different numbers of babies of differing genders- if Charlemagne had only had one child or if the Capets had more male children, for instance, we would be looking at a very different Europe.

On the other hand, population distrubution would probably look pretty similar, up to a point- Mesopotamia became the site of the first cities because of the geological environment, not because of random chance, or so I think.

Koumei · Post by **Koumei** » Mon Aug 27, 2012 3:51 am

I think this one might have been answered here before, but if so I forgot, like most things. Why is the greedy-capitalist-racist-oppress-the-poor-and-shoot-people aspect of the Right so hand-in-handcock-in-hand with the oppress-women-and-gay-people Religious?

You very rarely get one that isn't basically both of them, even if they only declare themselves to be one of the two. Why is this? You'd think that there'd be enough non-hypocritical religious people who take the "render unto Caeser etc." and "Jesus was all about charity" and "killing people isn't actually good even after they've been born" and run with it by being what more-or-less constitutes the modern Left wing, and a Right wing that says "Fuck religion, we're not funneling our money into that, my success didn't come from God, and there's money to be made from stem cell research."

sabs · Post by **sabs** » Mon Aug 27, 2012 3:55 am

It has to do with campaign contributions. In AMerica, what gets you elected is money. (And not having a scandal you can't spin). MOney comes from donors. After 30+ years of this, you end up with the polarization we have now. And we do have rich people who are left wing. But you have to remember, 45% of Americans think that God created the universe. It's not a right wing left wing thing. There's a fuck load of religious people on both sides of the aisle.

Koumei · Post by **Koumei** » Mon Aug 27, 2012 4:52 am

I'm not just talking about America though. In Australia, you have the Religious-and-Right-Wing party vs. the More-Religious-and-More-Right-Wing party (meanwhile if you oppose religion or are Left Wing, you direct your votes to either the Sex Party, or the Greens (even if you give zero fucks about the environment, but you're in a country that burns down every year and has been getting worse Summers, worse Winters, floods-in-the-middle-of-droughts and such, so you do care)).

It also seems to be that way across Europe.

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Mon Aug 27, 2012 5:27 am

The reasoning I got when I asked my catholic conservative and dirt fucking poor parents is that they feel like government programs that give to the poor is an unnecessary mandate, as opposed to giving because god tells you to. The fact that giving because an invisible sky fairy tells you to, and paying taxes that contribute to formalized giving because the government tells you to are basically the same thing was apparently lost on them, because "GUBMENT BAD" or something... I still favour the idea of a government that makes sure everyone has the basic food/water/house/clothes necessities taken care of then tells people if they want more than rice and chicken, a two bedroom apartment, and three shirts/pairs of pants to go make their own money...

Whipstitch · Post by **Whipstitch** » Mon Aug 27, 2012 5:42 am

sabs wrote:There's a fuck load of religious people on both sides of the aisle.

On the bright side, it does make it amusing when some young burgeoning Libertarian fails to notice that and foolishly expects the Dems to be generally more tolerant of them than the Republicans.

RobbyPants · Post by **RobbyPants** » Mon Aug 27, 2012 11:53 am

Koumei wrote:I think this one might have been answered here before, but if so I forgot, like most things. Why is the greedy-capitalist-racist-oppress-the-poor-and-shoot-people aspect of the Right so hand-in-handcock-in-hand with the oppress-women-and-gay-people Religious?

You very rarely get one that isn't basically both of them, even if they only declare themselves to be one of the two. Why is this? You'd think that there'd be enough non-hypocritical religious people who take the "render unto Caeser etc." and "Jesus was all about charity" and "killing people isn't actually good even after they've been born" and run with it by being what more-or-less constitutes the modern Left wing, and a Right wing that says "Fuck religion, we're not funneling our money into that, my success didn't come from God, and there's money to be made from stem cell research."

I think it's more complicated than that, for a lot of reasons. Just a few:

There are left-leaning Christians out there. Even in America, over 50% of the Democratic party is Christian. My wife is both Christian and a self-described socialist.
I'm sure there are plenty of right-leaning people who assume their success came from them, but then publicly pay lip-service by saying it came from God.
At least in America, the ties between the religious right and the Republican party are fairly recent. From my understanding, back in the 40s to 60s (?) or so, the Bible-belt leaned strongly Democratic, for labor reasons, IIRC.
Cognitive Dissonance.

I'm sure there are lots of other reasons, but the big thing is, not everything neatly falls into two buckets labeled "right" and "left", or "Christian" and "not Christian".

Kaelik · Post by **Kaelik** » Mon Aug 27, 2012 1:56 pm

The reason is because of political parties.

It's simple. If you hate poor people, you vote for the candidate that hates poor people. The candidate that hates poor people also hates gay people and atheists. Since you can't possibly admit to yourself that you are compromising by voting for only the issue that is most important to you, you retroactively agree with everything your candidate thinks about every other issue.

Meanwhile, your candidate is retroactively agreeing with everyone he has ever voted for, talked to at party meetings, voted for him.

Eventually you solidify (under the American voting system) into two parties that both disagree on all the things.

And no person can say "I believe gay people are nice people, and I just vote for candidates that attempt to make constitutional amendments preventing them from marriage because I like their economic policies." for very long.

erik · Post by **erik** » Mon Aug 27, 2012 3:10 pm

Kaelik wrote:And no person can say "I believe gay people are nice people, and I just vote for candidates that attempt to make constitutional amendments preventing them from marriage because I like their economic policies." for very long.

Nah, I'm pretty sure many Republicans are repressed homosexuals who feel voting Republican is the only way they can safely fuck other gay people.

Koumei · Post by **Koumei** » Tue Aug 28, 2012 5:58 am

erik wrote: Nah, I'm pretty sure many Republicans are repressed homosexuals who feel voting Republican is the only way they can safely fuck other gay people.

Or cure them of the gay.

Fuchs · Post by **Fuchs** » Tue Aug 28, 2012 6:14 am

Makes me so damn happy to live in a country where we get to vote on specific laws and are not stuck electing a few politicians every 4 years.