What Happened to the Hominids Who May Have Been Smarter Than Us? Another Mystery Evolutionists Cannot Answer
Sound of Trumpet
What Happened to the Hominids Who May Have Been Smarter Than Us?
discovermagazine.com ^ | December 28, 2009 | Gary Lynch and Richard
Granger
Posted on 05 January 2010 09:54:26 by Bobalu
Two neuroscientists say that a now-extinct race of humans had big
eyes, child-like faces, and an average intelligence of around 150,
making them geniuses among Homo sapiens.
The history of evolutionary studies has been dogged by the intuitively
attractive, almost irresistible idea that the whole great process
leads to greater complexity, to animals that are more advanced than
their predecessors. The pre-Darwin theories of evolution were built
around this idea; in fact, Darwin’s (and Wallace’s) great and radical
contribution was to throw out the notion of “progress” and replace it
with selection from among a set of random variations. But people do
not easily escape from the idea of progress. We’re drawn to the idea
that we are the end point, the pinnacle not only of the hominids but
of all animal life.
Boskops argue otherwise. They say that humans with big brains, and
perhaps great intelligence, occupied a substantial piece of southern
Africa in the not very distant past, and that they eventually gave way
to smaller-brained, possibly less advanced Homo sapiens—that is,
ourselves.
In the autumn of 1913, two farmers were arguing about hominid skull
fragments they had uncovered while digging a drainage ditch. The
location was Boskop, a small town about 200 miles inland from the east
coast of South Africa.
These Afrikaner farmers, to their lasting credit, had the presence of
mind to notice that there was something distinctly odd about the
bones. They brought the find to Frederick W. FitzSimons, director of
the Port Elizabeth Museum, in a small town at the tip of South Africa.
The scientific community of South Africa was small, and before long
the skull came to the attention of S. H. Haughton, one of the
country’s few formally trained paleontologists. He reported his
findings at a 1915 meeting of the Royal Society of South Africa. “The
cranial capacity must have been very large,” he said, and “calculation
by the method of Broca gives a minimum figure of 1,832 cc [cubic
centimeters].” The Boskop skull, it would seem, housed a brain perhaps
25 percent or more larger than our own.
The idea that giant-brained people were not so long ago walking the
dusty plains of South Africa was sufficiently shocking to draw in the
luminaries back in England. Two of the most prominent anatomists of
the day, both experts in the reconstruction of skulls, weighed in with
opinions generally supportive of Haughton’s conclusions.
The Scottish scientist Robert Broom reported that “we get for the
corrected cranial capacity of the Boskop skull the very remarkable
figure of 1,980 cc.” Remarkable indeed: These measures say that the
distance from Boskop to humans is greater than the distance between
humans and their Homo erectus predecessors.
Might the very large Boskop skull be an aberration? Might it have been
caused by hydrocephalus or some other disease? These questions were
quickly preempted by new discoveries of more of these skulls.
As if the Boskop story were not already strange enough, the
accumulation of additional remains revealed another bizarre feature:
These people had small, childlike faces. Physical anthropologists use
the term pedomorphosis to describe the retention of juvenile features
into adulthood. This phenomenon is sometimes used to explain rapid
evolutionary changes. For example, certain amphibians retain fishlike
gills even when fully mature and past their water-inhabiting period.
Humans are said by some to be pedomorphic compared with other
primates.Our facial structure bears some resemblance to that of an
immature ape. Boskop’s appearance may be described in terms of this
trait. A typical current European adult, for instance, has a face that
takes up roughly one-third of his overall cranium size. Boskop has a
face that takes up only about one-fifth of his cranium size, closer to
the proportions of a child. Examination of individual bones confirmed
that the nose, cheeks, and jaw were all childlike.
The combination of a large cranium and immature face would look
decidedly unusual to modern eyes, but not entirely unfamiliar. Such
faces peer out from the covers of countless science fiction books and
are often attached to “alien abductors” in movies. The naturalist
Loren Eiseley made exactly this point in a lyrical and chilling
passage from his popular book, The Immense Journey, describing a
Boskop fossil:
“There’s just one thing we haven’t quite dared to mention. It’s this,
and you won’t believe it. It’s all happened already. Back there in the
past, ten thousand years ago. The man of the future, with the big
brain, the small teeth. He lived in Africa. His brain was bigger than
your brain. His face was straight and small, almost a child’s face.”
Boskops, then, were much talked and written about, by many of the most
prominent figures in the fields of paleontology and anthropology.
Yet today, although Neanderthals and Homo erectus are widely known,
Boskops are almost entirely forgotten. Some of our ancestors are
clearly inferior to us, with smaller brains and apelike countenances.
They’re easy to make fun of and easy to accept as our precursors. In
contrast, the very fact of an ancient ancestor like Boskop, who
appears un-apelike and in fact in most ways seems to have had
characteristics superior to ours, was destined never to be popular.
+++
The history of evolutionary studies has been dogged by the intuitively
attractive, almost irresistible idea that the whole great process
leads to greater complexity, to animals that are more advanced than
their predecessors. The pre-Darwin theories of evolution were built
around this idea; in fact, Darwin’s (and Wallace’s) great and radical
contribution was to throw out the notion of “progress” and replace it
with selection from among a set of random variations. But people do
not easily escape from the idea of progress. We’re drawn to the idea
that we are the end point, the pinnacle not only of the hominids but
of all animal life.
Boskops argue otherwise. They say that humans with big brains, and
perhaps great intelligence, occupied a substantial piece of southern
Africa in the not very distant past, and that they eventually gave way
to smaller-brained, possibly less advanced Homo sapiens—that is,
ourselves.
We have seen reports of Boskop brain size ranging from 1,650 to 1,900
cc. Let’s assume that an average Boskop brain was around 1,750 cc.
What does this mean in terms of function? How would a person with such
a brain differ from us? Our brains are roughly 25 percent larger than
those of the late Homo erectus. We might say that the functional
difference between us and them is about the same as between ourselves
and Boskops.
Expanding the brain changes its internal proportions in highly
predictable ways. From ape to human, the brain grows about fourfold,
but most of that increase occurs in the cortex, not in more ancient
structures. Moreover, even within the cortex, the areas that grow by
far the most are the association areas, while cortical structures such
as those controlling sensory and motor mechanisms stay unchanged.
Going from human to Boskop, these association zones are even more
disproportionately expanded. Boskop’s brain size is about 30 percent
larger than our own—that is, a 1,750-cc brain to our average of 1,350
cc. And that leads to an increase in the prefrontal cortex of a
staggering 53 percent. If these principled relations among brain parts
hold true, then Boskops would have had not only an impressively large
brain but an inconceivably large prefrontal cortex.
The prefrontal cortex is closely linked to our highest cognitive
functions. It makes sense out of the complex stream of events flowing
into the brain; it places mental contents into appropriate sequences
and hierarchies; and it plays a critical role in planning our future
actions. Put simply, the prefrontal cortex is at the heart of our most
flexible and forward-looking thoughts.
While your own prefrontal area might link a sequence of visual
material to form an episodic memory, the Boskop may have added
additional material from sounds, smells, and so on. Where your memory
of a walk down a Parisian street may include the mental visual image
of the street vendor, the bistro, and the charming little church, the
Boskop may also have had the music coming from the bistro, the
conversations from other strollers, and the peculiar window over the
door of the church. Alas, if only the Boskop had had the chance to
stroll a Parisian boulevard!
Expansion of the association regions is accompanied by corresponding
increases in the thickness of those great bundles of axons, the cable
pathways, linking the front and back of the cortex. These not only
process inputs but, in our larger brains, organize inputs into
episodes. The Boskops may have gone further still. Just as a
quantitative increase from apes to humans may have generated our
qualitatively different language abilities, possibly the jump from
ourselves to Boskops generated new, qualitatively different mental
capacities.
We internally activate many thoughts at once, but we can retrieve only
one at a time. Could the Boskop brain have achieved the ability to
retrieve one memory while effortlessly processing others in the
background, a split-screen effect enabling far more power of
attention?
Each of us balances the world that is actually out there against our
mind’s own internally constructed version of it. Maintaining this
balance is one of life’s daily challenges. We occasionally act on our
imagined view of the world, sometimes thoroughly startling those
around us. (“Why are you yelling at me? I wasn’t angry with you—you
only thought I was.”) Our big brains give us such powers of
extrapolation that we may extrapolate straight out of reality, into
worlds that are possible but that never actually happened. Boskop’s
greater brains and extended internal representations may have made it
easier for them to accurately predict and interpret the world, to
match their internal representations with real external events.
Perhaps, though, it also made the Boskops excessively internal and
self-reflective. With their perhaps astonishing insights, they may
have become a species of dreamers with an internal mental life
literally beyond anything we can imagine.
+++
Even if brain size accounts for just 10 to 20 percent of an IQ test
score, it is possible to conjecture what kind of average scores would
be made by a group of people with 30 percent larger brains. We can
readily calculate that a population with a mean brain size of 1,750 cc
would be expected to have an average IQ of 149.
This is a score that would be labeled at the genius level. And if
there was normal variability among Boskops, as among the rest of us,
then perhaps 15 to 20 percent of them would be expected to score over
180. In a classroom with 35 big-headed, baby-faced Boskop kids, you
would likely encounter five or six with IQ scores at the upper range
of what has ever been recorded in human history. The Boskops coexisted
with our Homo sapiens forebears. Just as we see the ancient Homo
erectus as a savage primitive, Boskop may have viewed us in somewhat
the same way.
They died and we lived, and we can’t answer the question why. Why
didn’t they outthink the smaller-brained hominids like ourselves and
spread across the planet? Perhaps they didn’t want to.
Longer brain pathways lead to larger and deeper memory hierarchies.
These confer a greater ability to examine and discard more blind
alleys, to see more consequences of a plan before enacting it. In
general this enables us to think things through. If Boskops had longer
chains of cortical networks—longer mental assembly lines—they would
have created longer and more complex classification chains. When they
looked down a road as far as they could, before choosing a path, they
would have seen farther than we can: more potential outcomes, more
possible downstream costs and benefits.
As more possible outcomes of a plan become visible, the variance among
judgments between individuals will likely lessen. There are far fewer
correct paths—intelligent paths—than there are paths. It is sometimes
argued that the illusion of free will arises from the fact that we
can’t adequately judge all p ossible moves, with the result that our
choices are based on imperfect, sometimes impoverished, information.
Perhaps the Boskops were trapped by their ability to see clearly where
things would head. Perhaps they were prisoners of those majestic
brains.
There is another, again poignant, possible explanation for the
disappearance of the big-brained people. Maybe all that thoughtfulness
was of no particular survival value in 10,000 B.C. The great genius of
civilization is that it allows individuals to store memory and
operating rules outside of their brains, in the world that surrounds
them. The human brain is a sort of central processing unit operating
on multiple memory disks, some stored in the head, some in the
culture. Lacking the external hard drive of a literate society, the
Boskops were unable to exploit the vast potential locked up in their
expanded cortex. They were born just a few millennia too soon.
In any event, Boskops are gone, and the more we learn about them, the
more we miss them. Their demise is likely to have been gradual. A big
skull was not conducive to easy births, and thus a within-group
pressure toward smaller heads was probably always present, as it still
is in present-day humans, who have an unusually high infant mortality
rate due to big-headed babies. This pressure, together with possible
interbreeding with migrating groups of smaller-brained peoples, may
have led to a gradual decrease in the frequency of the Boskop genes in
the growing population of what is now South Africa.
Then again, as is all too evident, human history has often been a
history of savagery. Genocide and oppression seem primitive, whereas
modern institutions from schools to hospices seem enlightened. Surely,
we like to think, our future portends more of the latter than the
former. If learning and gentility are signs of civilization, perhaps
our almost-big brains are straining against their residual atavism,
struggling to expand. Perhaps the preternaturally civilized Boskops
had no chance against our barbarous ancestors, but could be leaders of
society if they were among us today.
Maybe traces of Boskops, and their unusual nature, linger on in
isolated corners of the world. Physical anthropologists report that
Boskop features still occasionally pop up in living populations of
Bushmen, raising the possibility that the last of the race may have
walked the dusty Transvaal in the not-too-distant past. Some genes
stay around in a population, or mix themselves into surrounding
populations via interbreeding. The genes may remain on the periphery,
neither becoming widely fixed in the population at large nor being
entirely eliminated from the gene pool.
Just about 100 miles from the original Boskop discovery site, further
excavations were once carried out by Frederick FitzSimons. He knew
what he had discovered and was eagerly seeking more of these skulls.
At his new dig site, FitzSimons came across a remarkable piece of
construction. The site had been at one time a communal living center,
perhaps tens of thousands of years ago. There were many collected
rocks, leftover bones, and some casually interred skeletons of normal-
looking humans. But to one side of the site, in a clearing, was a
single, carefully constructed tomb, built for a single occupant—
perhaps the tomb of a leader or of a revered wise man. His remains had
been positioned to face the rising sun. In repose, he appeared
unremarkable in every regard...except for a giant skull.
IAAH
> http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2421200/posts
>
> What Happened to the Hominids Who May Have Been Smarter Than Us?
What happened was
"Boskop Man was not a species, but a variation of
anatomically modern humans; there are well-studied
skulls from Boskop, South Africa, as well as from
Skuhl, Qazeh, Fish Hoek, Border Cave, Brno, Tuinplaas,
and other locations [Schwartz, Jeffrey H.; Tattersall,
Ian; Holloway, Ralph L.; Broadfield, Douglas C.; Yuan,
Michael S. (2003). The Human Fossil Record. ISBN
978-0471678649.], which are near the high end of human
skull sizes.
The original skull was incomplete consisting of frontal
and parietal bones, with a partial occiput, one
temporal and a fragment of mandible. John Hawks notes
that "The skull is a large one, with an estimated
endocranial volume of 1800 ml. But it is hardly
complete, and arguments about its overall size --
exacerbated by its thickness, which confuses estimates
based on regression from external measurements -- have
ranged from 1700 to 2000 ml. It is large, but well
within the range of sizes found in recent males.""
IOW, not what was claimed at all.
By the way, elephant brains are larger than humans.
They are not smarter than us. Trying to force a
correlation between brain size and intelligence is a
stupid thing.
Did you have an actual point to make?
--
"Debating creationists on the topic of evolution is
rather like trying to play chess with a pigeon;
it knocks the pieces over, craps on the board, and
flies back to its flock to claim victory."
- Scott D. Weitzenhoffer
ilbe...@gmail.com
" I believe that one day the Darwinnian myth will be ranked the
greatest deciet in the history of science "--- Prof. Soren Lovtrup,
Embriologist. Darwinism : The Refutation of a Myth. 1987. page 422
IAAH
http://johnhawks.net/weblog/reviews/brain/paleo/return-amazing-boskops-lynch-granger-2009.html
Some real facts about the fictional "Boskops".
It's entirely unsurprising to note that two of the most
credulously un-critical god-botherers posting to a.a
have been so readily taken in by this.
ilbe...@gmail.com
- Scott D. Weitzenhoffer < <<<< . REPLY:
Debating Evolutionists is best done by coming up with simplified poems
as such :
ONCE I WAS A TADPOLE WHEN I DID BEGIN
THEN I WAS A FROG WITH MY TAIL TUCKED IN.
THEN I WAS A MONKEY SWINGIN FROM A TREE
NOW IM A PROFESSOR WITH A P.H.D.
Jimbo
lol What a lame response you've made.
Ken
Where is your "proof"?
Where is your "supporting evidence"?
Where is this "proven historical evidence"?
Where is this "vast evidence of a personal nature"?
Where is this "very compelling evidence"?
Where is this "plenty of historical
evidence"?
We're all waiting, ASSHOLE
IAAH
Were you expecting anything else? I certainly wasn't.
Let's face it, these guys are bringing out
anthropological fantasies that have been discredited
for 50 years or more and they think it's worth something.
Lord Vetinari
news:i397t1$uvb$2...@news.eternal-september.org...
> IlBe...@gmail.com wrote:
>> On Aug 3, 8:57 am, Sound of Trumpet <soundoftrum...@post.com> wrote:
>>> http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2421200/posts
>>>
>>> What Happened to the Hominids Who May Have Been Smarter Than Us?
>>>
>>> discovermagazine.com ^ | December 28, 2009 | Gary Lynch and Richard
>>> Granger
>>>
>>> Posted on 05 January 2010 09:54:26 by Bobalu
> http://johnhawks.net/weblog/reviews/brain/paleo/return-amazing-boskops-lynch-granger-2009.html
>
> Some real facts about the fictional "Boskops".
>
> It's entirely unsurprising to note that two of the most credulously
> un-critical god-botherers posting to a.a have been so readily taken in by
> this.
Thanks for posting the link. I'm sure I would've found it on my own, but
you've saved me from spending the time looking.
It seems obvious, considering the elderliness of the information in
Strumpet's post, that something was left out...but not to our theistic
crackpots. No 150 IQs in their lot.
Lord Vetinari
news:dff8de5f-60cc-4e2e...@a4g2000prm.googlegroups.com...
I'm not waiting, the dingleberries aren't going to even try to come up with
answers. Perhaps something like wisdom on their parts, as they would fail
in that search.
Greg Goss
>In the autumn of 1913, two farmers were arguing about hominid skull
>fragments they had uncovered while digging a drainage ditch. The
>location was Boskop, a small town about 200 miles inland from the east
>coast of South Africa.
>findings at a 1915 meeting of the Royal Society of South Africa. “The
>cranial capacity must have been very large,” he said, and “calculation
>by the method of Broca gives a minimum figure of 1,832 cc [cubic
>centimeters].” The Boskop skull, it would seem, housed a brain perhaps
>25 percent or more larger than our own.
Wikipedia: "and arguments about its overall size -- exacerbated by
its thickness, which confuses estimates based on regression from
external measurements -- have ranged from 1700 to 2000 ml. It is
large, but well within the range of sizes found in recent males."
>As if the Boskop story were not already strange enough, the
>accumulation of additional remains revealed another bizarre feature:
You give us a detailed story about finding the cranial fragments. But
then the face bones handwavingly appear from nowhere. Are these from
the same hominid as the skull bits?
>These people had small, childlike faces. Physical anthropologists use
>the term pedomorphosis to describe the retention of juvenile features
>into adulthood.
Wikipedia: "the features exhibited by the Boskop skull and those
which have been termed 'Boskopoid' are not specific to any 'new'
single, African racial group, and in Africa they may be found in
varying degrees in the Bushmen, Hottentots or Bush-Hotttentot
admixtures."
>Yet today, although Neanderthals and Homo erectus are widely known,
>Boskops are almost entirely forgotten. Some of our ancestors are
>clearly inferior to us, with smaller brains and apelike countenances.
>They’re easy to make fun of and easy to accept as our precursors. In
>contrast, the very fact of an ancient ancestor like Boskop, who
>appears un-apelike and in fact in most ways seems to have had
>characteristics superior to ours, was destined never to be popular.
Neanderthanlers had larger brains than we do. Much of the extra size
was at the back, so we can't know how their thinking compared to our
massive frontal development. But their brains weren't smaller than
ours. Does that break your hypothesis?
--
Tomorrow is today already.
Greg Goss, 1989-01-27
Dakota
> IlBe...@gmail.com wrote:
>> On Aug 3, 8:57 am, Sound of Trumpet <soundoftrum...@post.com> wrote:
>>> http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2421200/posts
>>>
>>> What Happened to the Hominids Who May Have Been Smarter Than Us?
>>>
>
<snip nonsense>
>
> http://johnhawks.net/weblog/reviews/brain/paleo/return-amazing-boskops-lynch-granger-2009.html
>
>
> Some real facts about the fictional "Boskops".
>
No fair! You're using facts! Cheater!
>
> It's entirely unsurprising to note that two of the most credulously
> un-critical god-botherers posting to a.a have been so readily taken in
> by this.
>
The god-botherers may be right about one thing. The Boskops may well
have been vastly more intelligent than they are.
Lord Vetinari
news:H_ednZJrwdK...@giganews.com...
Good one.
Uncle Vic
wrote:
> What Happened to the Hominids Who May Have Been Smarter Than Us?
Maybe they got religion and lost their minds.
--
Uncle Vic
aa Atheist #2011
"There’s no greater argument for the existence of God than the truth of His
existence." --AllSeeing-I 8/1/10
Virgil
<80d4e1bd-4cf3-41e3...@u26g2000yqu.googlegroups.com>,
"IlBe...@gmail.com" <ilbe...@gmail.com> wrote:
> " I believe that one day the Darwinnian myth will be ranked the
> greatest deciet in the history of science "--- Prof. Soren Lovtrup,
> Embriologist. Darwinism : The Refutation of a Myth. 1987. page 422
"There once was a time when all people believed in God and the church
ruled.
This time was called the Dark Ages."
--Richard Lederer
All religions are equally sublime to the ignorant, useful to the
politician, and ridiculous to the philosopher.
-- Lucretius
"We must conduct research and then accept the results.
If they don't stand up to experimentation, Buddha's own words must be
rejected."
Tenzin Gyatso, 14th Dalai Lama, 1988
"An Atheist believes that a hospital should be built instead of a
church.
An Atheist believes that deed must be done instead of a prayer said.
An Atheist strives for involvement in life and not escape into death.
He wants disease conquered, poverty vanished, war eliminated."
Madalyn Murray O'Hair
"Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not
omnipotent.
Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and
willing? Then whence cometh evil?
Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?"
Epicurus
Properly read, the Bible is the most potent force for atheism ever
conceived.
-- Isaac Asimov
³All thinking men are atheists²
-Ernest Hemingway
"It is said that men may not be the dreams of the Gods, but rather that
the Gods are the dreams of men."
- Carl Sagan
"In Christianity neither morality nor religion come into contact with
reality at any point."
- Friedrich Nietzsche
"The first clergyman was the first rascal who met the first fool"
-Voltaire
"Why should I allow that same God to tell me how to raise my kids, who
had to drown His own?"
- Robert G. Ingersoll
Virgil
Devils Advocaat
> http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2421200/posts
>
> What Happened to the Hominids Who May Have Been Smarter Than Us?
>
They were the ones that built the pyramids as launch points for their
starships.
So its obvious what happened to them.
They grew up to be our gods, and then done a runner.
T Guy
. REPLY:
> Debating Evolutionists is best done by coming up with simplified poems
> as such :
>
> ONCE I WAS A TADPOLE WHEN I DID BEGIN
> THEN I WAS A FROG WITH MY TAIL TUCKED IN.
> THEN I WAS A MONKEY SWINGIN FROM A TREE
> NOW IM A PROFESSOR WITH A P.H.D.
Yes, the only chance creationuts have in a debate is to simplify and
distort their opponents's views, then try to remember them by writing
a little jingle. Yes, as you say, that is your 'best' bet.
Quadibloc
post about a "meeting" between Darwin and Stalin, and reply to just
the title.
Just because evolution talks about the "survival of the fittest"
doesn't guarantee that the fittest species _always_ wins.
And if they're hominids who _may_ have been smarter than us, and we
shouldn't have been the sole survivors unless _we_ were the smartest,
well, then, there's no mystery for evolution to solve.
They _may_ have been smarter than us? Then I guess the answer to the
mystery of why they died out was because they weren't, after all.
John Savard
Quadibloc
> They were the ones that built the pyramids as launch points for their
> starships.
Ah, yes, it would have been so nice if the story of Boskop Man had a
happy ending.
Or maybe there's a Boskop City hidden somewhere in the jungles of
Africa even today... which we won't discover until we are advanced
enough to have some people who can run at thousands of miles an hour.
John Savard
Robert Carnegie
appear to be vastly smart.
Come to think, my old computer was bigger than my new one, but not as
good.
Lawrence Watt-Evans
wrote:
>Here I'll copy the bad practice of someone earlier who replied to your
>post about a "meeting" between Darwin and Stalin, and reply to just
>the title.
>
>Just because evolution talks about the "survival of the fittest"
>doesn't guarantee that the fittest species _always_ wins.
"Smarter" and "fittest" aren't even close to being synonyms.
>And if they're hominids who _may_ have been smarter than us, and we
>shouldn't have been the sole survivors unless _we_ were the smartest,
>well, then, there's no mystery for evolution to solve.
>
>They _may_ have been smarter than us? Then I guess the answer to the
>mystery of why they died out was because they weren't, after all.
Why on Earth would anyone assume intelligence is a more important
survival trait than everything else? (I started to say "why do you
assume," then reread the previous paragraph with that complicated
conditional.)
Maybe they _were_ smarter than us -- but tasted really, really good to
your average leopard. Maybe they were smarter, but had very low
fertility -- all the blood was going to the brain. Maybe they were
fertile enough but had a low sex drive. Maybe those big brains meant
big heads and their mothers tended to die in childbirth, resulting in
small families. Maybe they were smarter in most ways, but didn't
cooperate well and got picked off one by one by our ancestors working
in groups.
Lots of possibilities.
--
My webpage is at http://www.watt-evans.com
I'm serializing novels at http://www.ethshar.com/TheFinalCalling01.html
and http://www.watt-evans.com/realmsoflight1.html
Quadibloc
> Lots of possibilities.
Well, I just replied to the *title*. So I thought that he might have
been talking about Neanderthal Man, who is said, by some accounts, to
have had a slightly larger brain capacity than our Cro-Magnon
ancestors. Why did we win, if Neanderthals were smarter in addition to
being stronger?
In that case, "maybe they weren't smarter" makes sense as an answer -
their greater muscle strength may have come with a shorter lifespan.
Since the post was actually about Boskop Man, of course, the answer is
different. Boskop Man may never have existed.
And if we just assume that these super-intelligent cavemen really
_did_ exist as imagined... well, the metabolic cost of their giant
brains could indeed have led to them dying out before they could
parlay that brain size into high technology. So the ravishing of the
global ecosystem had to wait for us.
John Savard
Walter Bushell
<2bda5d22-6a19-4876...@q22g2000yqm.googlegroups.com>,
Quadibloc <jsa...@ecn.ab.ca> wrote:
Or they may have been smarter, but our ancestors outbreed them. Mayhap
they invented Existentialism and decided to commit suicide.
Or perhaps humans had a language coprocessor in the brain that enabled
social transmission.
--
All BP's money, and all the President's men,
Cannot put the Gulf of Mexico together again.
Father Haskell
>
> - Show quoted text -
Yup, IAAH was right about that knocks-the-pieces-over part.
Norm D. Plumber
ObSF: _Neanderthal_ (John Darnton, 1996)
[begin_quote from http://johndarnton.com/Neanderthal.html]
In the high altitudes of the Pamir Mountains-"the roof of the world"-a
guerrilla fighter vanishes, a schoolgirl is murdered, and an eminent
Harvard professor disappears. To a shadowy government agency in
Maryland, these are all signs that something has gone terribly wrong.
Matt Mattison and Susan Arnot, paleontologists who were once lovers
and are now academic rivals, mount an expedition to the remote region.
They have no idea that they are about to encounter a species that has
been extinct-or so it was thought-and that is endowed with a mental
power that makes them all but indomitable. Against their will, the two
are forced to relive a battle of the species that occurred 30,000
years ago and that explains the mysterious ability of the human race
to survive.
[end_quote]
--
Murphy's Law? Never underestimate superstition that works!
Norm D. Plumber
>On Tue, 3 Aug 2010 15:05:33 -0700 (PDT), Quadibloc <jsa...@ecn.ab.ca>
>wrote:
>
>>Here I'll copy the bad practice of someone earlier who replied to your
>>post about a "meeting" between Darwin and Stalin, and reply to just
>>the title.
>>
>>Just because evolution talks about the "survival of the fittest"
>>doesn't guarantee that the fittest species _always_ wins.
>
>"Smarter" and "fittest" aren't even close to being synonyms.
Not to mention "luckiest" or "hardest to find". Sloths survive
despite being slow and probably not extraordinarily smart.
>>And if they're hominids who _may_ have been smarter than us, and we
>>shouldn't have been the sole survivors unless _we_ were the smartest,
>>well, then, there's no mystery for evolution to solve.
>>
>>They _may_ have been smarter than us? Then I guess the answer to the
>>mystery of why they died out was because they weren't, after all.
>
>Why on Earth would anyone assume intelligence is a more important
>survival trait than everything else? (I started to say "why do you
>assume," then reread the previous paragraph with that complicated
>conditional.)
>
>Maybe they _were_ smarter than us -- but tasted really, really good to
>your average leopard. Maybe they were smarter, but had very low
>fertility -- all the blood was going to the brain. Maybe they were
>fertile enough but had a low sex drive. Maybe those big brains meant
>big heads and their mothers tended to die in childbirth, resulting in
>small families. Maybe they were smarter in most ways, but didn't
>cooperate well and got picked off one by one by our ancestors working
>in groups.
>
>Lots of possibilities.
Maybe they were smarter than us and their parents killed them off as a
matter of survival (ObSF: _The_Anvil_Of_The_Heart_ by Bruce T. Holmes,
1985).
Howard Brazee
wrote:
>Why on Earth would anyone assume intelligence is a more important
>survival trait than everything else? (I started to say "why do you
>assume," then reread the previous paragraph with that complicated
>conditional.)
Because we value those characteristics that *we* have. Or maybe
over-value them.
--
"In no part of the constitution is more wisdom to be found,
than in the clause which confides the question of war or peace
to the legislature, and not to the executive department."
- James Madison
Mike Ash
Howard Brazee <how...@brazee.net> wrote:
> On Tue, 03 Aug 2010 19:19:01 -0400, Lawrence Watt-Evans <l...@sff.net>
> wrote:
>
> >Why on Earth would anyone assume intelligence is a more important
> >survival trait than everything else? (I started to say "why do you
> >assume," then reread the previous paragraph with that complicated
> >conditional.)
>
> Because we value those characteristics that *we* have. Or maybe
> over-value them.
I can't help but notice that very few (although certainly non-zero)
people value unusual physical endurance. And the common value placed on
hairlessness is purely aesthetic; few people think that it has survival
value.
--
Mike Ash
Radio Free Earth
Broadcasting from our climate-controlled studios deep inside the Moon
Sea Wasp (Ryk E. Spoor)
> In article <rrki56dsnmqiuf66t...@4ax.com>,
> Howard Brazee <how...@brazee.net> wrote:
>
>> On Tue, 03 Aug 2010 19:19:01 -0400, Lawrence Watt-Evans <l...@sff.net>
>> wrote:
>>
>>> Why on Earth would anyone assume intelligence is a more important
>>> survival trait than everything else? (I started to say "why do you
>>> assume," then reread the previous paragraph with that complicated
>>> conditional.)
>> Because we value those characteristics that *we* have. Or maybe
>> over-value them.
>
> I can't help but notice that very few (although certainly non-zero)
> people value unusual physical endurance.
Porn stars?
ObSF: Corwin of Amber IS "unusual physical endurance"; in the Amber RPG
he's explicitly stated to have that as his top stat and that by a large
margin even compared to his superhuman relatives.
--
Sea Wasp
/^\
;;;
Live Journal: http://seawasp.livejournal.com
Quadibloc
> I can't help but notice that very few (although certainly non-zero)
> people value unusual physical endurance. And the common value placed on
> hairlessness is purely aesthetic; few people think that it has survival
> value.
It could well be that hairlessness helps us keep cool as we're running
to wear down our prey. This is one theory that has had some attention
recently, as an alternative to the Aquatic Ape theory which is still
not generally liked.
In fact, I recently became aware that genetic studies of body lice
have dated human hairlessness to about 600,000 years ago, as this is
appears to be the point at which crab lice diverged from lice found on
gorillas (head lice being similar to those from chimpanzees).
John Savard
Quadibloc
> I can't help but notice that very few (although certainly non-zero)
> people value unusual physical endurance.
Most people are well aware that human beings are far inferior in
physical *strength* to the animals.
The level of physical _endurance_ that animals have isn't something
most people see in practice, so there isn't really much in the way of
general awareness that humans might excel in that area. Perhaps people
who work on farms, or who ride horses, might be aware of this.
On top of that, among humans, women happen to have considerably more
physical endurance than men. Thus, the people who tend to dominate
prestigious discussions are less aware of the potential of human
endurance.
John Savard
Norm D. Plumber
>On Aug 4, 9:52 am, Mike Ash <m...@mikeash.com> wrote:
>
>> I can't help but notice that very few (although certainly non-zero)
>> people value unusual physical endurance. And the common value placed on
>> hairlessness is purely aesthetic; few people think that it has survival
>> value.
>
>It could well be that hairlessness helps us keep cool as we're running
>to wear down our prey.
That's possible. I'm more inclined to think that it is a survival
characteristic because it makes it unnecessary to beat our heads into
tree trunks until we're dead because the damned hair tickles so much
we can't stand it anymore.
Mike Ash
<f3ee44b7-9b88-4aa9...@m1g2000yqo.googlegroups.com>,
Quadibloc <jsa...@ecn.ab.ca> wrote:
> On Aug 4, 9:52 am, Mike Ash <m...@mikeash.com> wrote:
>
> > I can't help but notice that very few (although certainly non-zero)
> > people value unusual physical endurance. And the common value placed on
> > hairlessness is purely aesthetic; few people think that it has survival
> > value.
>
> It could well be that hairlessness helps us keep cool as we're running
> to wear down our prey. This is one theory that has had some attention
> recently, as an alternative to the Aquatic Ape theory which is still
> not generally liked.
I believe this is an important reason. Humans' superior ability to get
rid of waste heat is a big factor behind our unusually good physical
endurance. But my point is simply that most people don't see it as
important except for aesthetic purposes (and we tend to value the
opposite in animals), despite the prior claim that we value that which
makes us different from the animals.
Quadibloc
> But my point is simply that most people don't see it as
> important
I'll have to read the earlier discussion carefully to find out _why_
that was a point.
To me, it's simple and natural for humans to value *human
intelligence* over and above every other distinguishing human
characteristic.
It's our most _obvious_ special characteristic that is advantageous
for survival.
And we also value it as something that influences our ethical
obligations towards other humans as compared to other living things.
John Savard
Reverend Dave
4aaa-8adb-0...@f33g2000yqe.googlegroups.com:
I suspect that Dimwit didn't write this poem or if he did he plagiarized
it from a site with lots and lots of similar christian tripe.
That said, it made me think of a satirical poem that someone posted years
and years ago titled "I In Traded My Brain For A Bible". Ironically it
seems to describe Dimwit's attitude toward free inquiry and attaining
real knowledge to a tee.
I TRADED IN MY BRAIN FOR A BIBLE
An inspirational Christian Hymn
by Eric Perlin
Oh, I traded in my brain for a Bible;
The human brain is tainted with sin;
So I traded in my brain for a Bible
The day that I became born ag'in.
I traded in my brain for a Bible;
The Good Lord took the brain out of my head
And replaced it with His Word: the Holy Bible
So now it is what I will use instead.
I traded in my brain for a Bible;
The human brain is naturally bad;
I thank the Lord that I now have the Bible
In place of the brain that I once had.
I traded in my brain for a Bible;
The Good Lord in His benevolence
Blessed me with His everloving Bible;
A much more useful tool than common sense.
I traded in my brain for a Bible
Which I now keep upon my bedroom shelf
Because I know that nothing but evil
Can come when I think for myself.
I traded in my brain for a Bible;
To do otherwise I'd have to be a fool;
For I realize that logical thinking
Is Satan's most powerful tool.
I traded in my brain for a Bible;
To the Lord I dilligently prayed;
He took my brain and replaced it with a Bible
Which was the greatest deal I ever made.
I traded in my brain for a Bible;
I avoided Hell's eternal flame
When I traded in my brain for a Bible;
I highly recommend you do the same.
--
"There's no messiah in here. There's a mess in here alright, but there's
no messiah"
- Brian's Mom (the window scene) - The Life of Brian
David DeLaney
>To me, it's simple and natural for humans to value *human
>intelligence* over and above every other distinguishing human characteristic.
Well yeah, but ... per I think Emo Phillips? ... look what's TELLING you that!
Dave "aaaaaand this crossposting is going to get severely trimmed, because I'm
_exercising_ my human intelligence here" DeLaney
--
\/David DeLaney posting from d...@vic.com "It's not the pot that grows the flower
It's not the clock that slows the hour The definition's plain for anyone to see
Love is all it takes to make a family" - R&P. VISUALIZE HAPPYNET VRbeable<BLINK>
http://www.vic.com/~dbd/ - net.legends FAQ & Magic / I WUV you in all CAPS! --K.
Howard Brazee
wrote:
>Most people are well aware that human beings are far inferior in
>physical *strength* to the animals.
I'm much stronger than my bird.
>The level of physical _endurance_ that animals have isn't something
>most people see in practice, so there isn't really much in the way of
>general awareness that humans might excel in that area. Perhaps people
>who work on farms, or who ride horses, might be aware of this.
Some animals can out marathon people, some can't.
>On top of that, among humans, women happen to have considerably more
>physical endurance than men. Thus, the people who tend to dominate
>prestigious discussions are less aware of the potential of human
>endurance.
Are you measuring this at marathon level? 24 hour runs? What are
the competitions where women have demonstrated this physical endurance
superiority?
Bill Snyder
<how...@brazee.net> wrote:
>On Wed, 4 Aug 2010 10:20:48 -0700 (PDT), Quadibloc <jsa...@ecn.ab.ca>
>wrote:
>
>>Most people are well aware that human beings are far inferior in
>>physical *strength* to the animals.
>
>I'm much stronger than my bird.
>
>>The level of physical _endurance_ that animals have isn't something
>>most people see in practice, so there isn't really much in the way of
>>general awareness that humans might excel in that area. Perhaps people
>>who work on farms, or who ride horses, might be aware of this.
>
>Some animals can out marathon people, some can't.
>
>>On top of that, among humans, women happen to have considerably more
>>physical endurance than men. Thus, the people who tend to dominate
>>prestigious discussions are less aware of the potential of human
>>endurance.
>
>Are you measuring this at marathon level? 24 hour runs? What are
>the competitions where women have demonstrated this physical endurance
>superiority?
They can all outrun Quaddy.
\
--
Bill Snyder [This space unintentionally left blank]
Quadibloc
> Are you measuring this at marathon level? 24 hour runs? What are
> the competitions where women have demonstrated this physical endurance
> superiority?
I'm not a sports fan. I'm thinking of their demonstrated ability to
get up in the middle of the night to feed a crying baby and cope with
the unending demands of housework.
John Savard
Quadibloc
> They can all outrun Quaddy.
As I am not a rapist, that issue does not arise.
John Savard
Wayne Throop
: Are you measuring this at marathon level? 24 hour runs? What are the
: competitions where women have demonstrated this physical endurance
: superiority?
My memory coughed up a factoid that women gain rough parity with men
somewhere about 50 km or so. I can't remember where that factoid came
from... maybe one of Cooper's aerobics books? An Asimov essay?
Feh, don't remember.
I google very little to justify my memory-factoid. But the
ultramarathon page does list two women world-record holders, and
they are in very, VERY long races.
Wayne Throop thr...@sheol.org http://sheol.org/throopw
Mike Ash
Howard Brazee <how...@brazee.net> wrote:
> On Wed, 4 Aug 2010 10:20:48 -0700 (PDT), Quadibloc <jsa...@ecn.ab.ca>
> wrote:
> >The level of physical _endurance_ that animals have isn't something
> >most people see in practice, so there isn't really much in the way of
> >general awareness that humans might excel in that area. Perhaps people
> >who work on farms, or who ride horses, might be aware of this.
>
> Some animals can out marathon people, some can't.
Most can't, actually. Humans are good endurance runners, especially in
hot weather. For example, the horse is usually seen as a good distance
runner, but over marathon distances and up, a human may do better.
Few animals run long distances in the wild. They commonly walk to travel
long distances, and sprint to evade or catch other animals. They are
generally optimized for sprinting rather than running. Additionally, the
two-legged posture has huge advantages for endurance running.
Howard Brazee
wrote:
>: Are you measuring this at marathon level? 24 hour runs? What are the
>: competitions where women have demonstrated this physical endurance
>: superiority?
>
>My memory coughed up a factoid that women gain rough parity with men
>somewhere about 50 km or so. I can't remember where that factoid came
>from... maybe one of Cooper's aerobics books? An Asimov essay?
>Feh, don't remember.
That fits my memory as well. But I don't know if it is true.
>I google very little to justify my memory-factoid. But the
>ultramarathon page does list two women world-record holders, and
>they are in very, VERY long races.
Two world-record holders indicates that women can be competitive at
that distance. It isn't sufficient to indicate that they have an
advantage there though.
Howard Brazee
wrote:
>> Are you measuring this at marathon level? 24 hour runs? What are
>> the competitions where women have demonstrated this physical endurance
>> superiority?
>
>I'm not a sports fan. I'm thinking of their demonstrated ability to
>get up in the middle of the night to feed a crying baby and cope with
>the unending demands of housework.
I suspect that is more mental endurance than physical.
Sea Wasp (Ryk E. Spoor)
> On Wed, 4 Aug 2010 20:34:14 -0700 (PDT), Quadibloc <jsa...@ecn.ab.ca>
> wrote:
>
>>> Are you measuring this at marathon level? 24 hour runs? What are
>>> the competitions where women have demonstrated this physical endurance
>>> superiority?
>> I'm not a sports fan. I'm thinking of their demonstrated ability to
>> get up in the middle of the night to feed a crying baby and cope with
>> the unending demands of housework.
>
> I suspect that is more mental endurance than physical.
>
Speaking as a parent, it is BOTH. I have four kids, and I've watched my
wife endure through all of them. I personally could not match her.
James A. Donald
wrote:
> Just because evolution talks about the "survival of the fittest"
> doesn't guarantee that the fittest species _always_ wins.
>
> shouldn't have been the sole survivors unless _we_ were the smartest,
> well, then, there's no mystery for evolution to solve.
It is probable that our ancestors were better at ganging up in larger
groups to rape and massacre than they were, that being one of the
major forms competition at the level of races.
Humans show many of the characteristics of domestication. We
domesticated ourselves. One of the characteristics of domestication
is smaller brains, perhaps the better to credulously believe leaders.
We select ourselves, and our domesticated animals, both for
intelligence and domesticity - but there is a conflict between
intelligence and domesticity. One wants good soldiers who are smart
and take direction while readily displaying their own initiative - but
these are conflicting requirements. Hard to get both, one is apt to
be sacrificed for the other.
In other words, the orcs ate the elves.
Howard Brazee
<sea...@sgeinc.invalid.com> wrote:
>>> I'm not a sports fan. I'm thinking of their demonstrated ability to
>>> get up in the middle of the night to feed a crying baby and cope with
>>> the unending demands of housework.
>>
>> I suspect that is more mental endurance than physical.
>>
>
> Speaking as a parent, it is BOTH. I have four kids, and I've watched my
>wife endure through all of them. I personally could not match her.
It could be, but most fathers without wives learn to do what is
necessary.
Sea Wasp (Ryk E. Spoor)
> On Thu, 05 Aug 2010 10:50:34 -0400, "Sea Wasp (Ryk E. Spoor)"
> <sea...@sgeinc.invalid.com> wrote:
>
>>>> I'm not a sports fan. I'm thinking of their demonstrated ability to
>>>> get up in the middle of the night to feed a crying baby and cope with
>>>> the unending demands of housework.
>>> I suspect that is more mental endurance than physical.
>>>
>> Speaking as a parent, it is BOTH. I have four kids, and I've watched my
>> wife endure through all of them. I personally could not match her.
>
> It could be, but most fathers without wives learn to do what is
> necessary.
>
When I envision how I'd deal with things without her, I realize I would
do that by not doing some of the things she considers necessary, or by
figuring out ways to do it that she wouldn't find satisfactory but would
be good enough.
I'm not sure that would be the universal reaction, but I am quite
certain she expends vastly more effort than I'd be capable of.
Quadibloc
<seaw...@sgeinc.invalid.com> wrote:
> When I envision how I'd deal with things without her, I realize I would
> do that by not doing some of the things she considers necessary, or by
> figuring out ways to do it that she wouldn't find satisfactory but would
> be good enough.
>
> I'm not sure that would be the universal reaction, but I am quite
> certain she expends vastly more effort than I'd be capable of.
ObSF: I believe there's a passage in Ursula K. LeGuin's "The
Dispossessed" which refers to the fact that while men have an
advantage in strength, women have a compensating advantage in
dexterity.
Then, there's an old Peggy Lee song, here covered in similar style by
two other women, one of whom is famous as a singer:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5QSDa1v3Eg4
John Savard
Quadibloc
Somehow, I think that long before George Gilder, there have been men
who defended arranged marriages using the argument that if women were
to be free to choose their own husbands, the result would be an
encouragement to unbridled greed, as men would struggle more intensely
to impress women and give them prettier baubles - and therefore it was
much better for women to marry the suitable husband their parents
chose.
So, all I do is admit that perhaps much of those arguments did make
sense - but I refuse to deal with the situation by taking women's
freedom away.
John Savard
Quadibloc
http://blog.nathanmallory.com/?p=244
which may be of some interest.
John Savard
Quadibloc
In addition to Naked Nomads and Sexual Suicide by George Gilder, where
he argued for the repeal of women's liberation, which I reject...
an argument in favor of women's rights (the right not to be the target
of infanticide, for example) makes much the same point, in
Bare Branches: Security Implications of Asia's Surplus Male Population
by Valerie M. Hudson and Andrea M. den Boer
(MIT Press).
John Savard
Howard Brazee
wrote:
>ObSF: I believe there's a passage in Ursula K. LeGuin's "The
>Dispossessed" which refers to the fact that while men have an
>advantage in strength, women have a compensating advantage in
>dexterity.
What kinds of dexterous skills are we talking about here? Those
that benefit by smaller hands (my hands are small)?
Are women statistically better at arts and crafts?
Quadibloc
> On Thu, 5 Aug 2010 19:24:04 -0700 (PDT), Quadibloc <jsav...@ecn.ab.ca>
> wrote:
>
> >ObSF: I believe there's a passage in Ursula K. LeGuin's "The
> >Dispossessed" which refers to the fact that while men have an
> >advantage in strength, women have a compensating advantage in
> >dexterity.
>
> What kinds of dexterous skills are we talking about here? Those
> that benefit by smaller hands (my hands are small)?
>
> Are women statistically better at arts and crafts?
Oh, dear. I meant endurance. I don't recall any reference to dexterity
in that book: the quote I'm thinking of but can't completely remember
was about endurance.
Even if it is true that women are chiefly the ones hired for Asian
factory work, this may be more because their lack of tesosterone makes
it easier to get them to put up with repetitive tasks for low pay than
any extra deftness and delicacy in their fingers - which they may also
have.
John Savard
Quadibloc
> Well yeah, but ... per I think Emo Phillips? ... look what's TELLING you that!
My intelligence serves my purposes; unlike my genetic code, it doesn't
really have an opportunity to serve its own. Even if some of the memes
it has been led to accept can serve their own interests.
John Savard
Howard Brazee
wrote:
>> >ObSF: I believe there's a passage in Ursula K. LeGuin's "The
>> >Dispossessed" which refers to the fact that while men have an
>> >advantage in strength, women have a compensating advantage in
>> >dexterity.
>>
>> What kinds of dexterous skills are we talking about here? Those
>> that benefit by smaller hands (my hands are small)?
>>
>> Are women statistically better at arts and crafts?
>
>Oh, dear. I meant endurance. I don't recall any reference to dexterity
>in that book: the quote I'm thinking of but can't completely remember
>was about endurance.
I had questioned the endurance claim earlier. While it makes sense
to me that women might more than competitive in super-marathons, I
don't believe we have actually seen it in real life.
Maybe someday.
Robert Carnegie
> I had questioned the endurance claim earlier. While it makes sense
> to me that women might more than competitive in super-marathons, I
> don't believe we have actually seen it in real life.
>
> Maybe someday.
Another objection: women have stuff to do.
William December Starr
"IlBe...@gmail.com" <ilbe...@gmail.com> said:
> Debating Evolutionists is best done by coming up with simplified
> poems as such :
>
> ONCE I WAS A TADPOLE WHEN I DID BEGIN
> THEN I WAS A FROG WITH MY TAIL TUCKED IN.
> THEN I WAS A MONKEY SWINGIN FROM A TREE
> NOW IM A PROFESSOR WITH A P.H.D.
Yes it is. It makes it clear _very_ quickly that there's no reason
for anyone to waste time listening to you.
-- wds (and PS: welcome to the killfile, loserboy)
Virgil
<80e6dc7a-1ef6-455e...@l20g2000yqm.googlegroups.com>,
"IlBe...@gmail.com" <ilbe...@gmail.com> said:
> Debating Evolutionists is best done by coming up with simplified
> poems as such :
>
> ONCE I WAS A TADPOLE WHEN I DID BEGIN
> THEN I WAS A FROG WITH MY TAIL TUCKED IN.
> THEN I WAS A MONKEY SWINGIN FROM A TREE
> NOW IM A PROFESSOR WITH A P.H.D.
Except that Creationists never get past the tadpole stage.
Mad Hamish
<sea...@sgeinc.invalid.com> wrote:
>Mike Ash wrote:
>> In article <rrki56dsnmqiuf66t...@4ax.com>,
>> Howard Brazee <how...@brazee.net> wrote:
>>
>>> On Tue, 03 Aug 2010 19:19:01 -0400, Lawrence Watt-Evans <l...@sff.net>
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>>> Why on Earth would anyone assume intelligence is a more important
>>>> survival trait than everything else? (I started to say "why do you
>>>> assume," then reread the previous paragraph with that complicated
>>>> conditional.)
>>> Because we value those characteristics that *we* have. Or maybe
>>> over-value them.
>>
>> I can't help but notice that very few (although certainly non-zero)
>> people value unusual physical endurance.
>
> Porn stars?
>
> ObSF: Corwin of Amber IS "unusual physical endurance"; in the Amber RPG
>he's explicitly stated to have that as his top stat and that by a large
>margin even compared to his superhuman relatives.
And endurance is the most important of all the stats
Sea Wasp (Ryk E. Spoor)
Oh, undoubtedly.
Now, on to the Psyche auction. Remember, Psyche is the most important
of all the stats.
--
Sea Wasp
/^\
;;;
Website: http://www.grandcentralarena.com Blog:
http://seawasp.livejournal.com
David DeLaney
Heh.
(The joke here is that, as you go through the character creation example in
the RPG book, the GM tells the players who are all making their characters
at once (in an 'auction'-style manner) that the first stat they're bidding on
is the most important of all the stats. And once they're done with that, and
have their ranks sorted out for it, and go on to the next stat, he again
tells them that THIS stat is the most important of all the stats. By the third
stat they've pretty much caught on. There's some justification - each stat does
things that the other ones simply can't counter, so if you've got top rank in
a particular stat, no other player can match you in a challenge that uses
_that stat_...)
Dave
--
\/David DeLaney posting from d...@vic.com "It's not the pot that grows the flower
It's not the clock that slows the hour The definition's plain for anyone to see
Love is all it takes to make a family" - R&P. VISUALIZE HAPPYNET VRbeable<BLINK>
http://www.vic.com/~dbd/ - net.legends FAQ & Magic / I WUV you in all CAPS! --K.