Re: Why didn't at least one dinosaur species become human-level smart?
- From: Traveler <traveler@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sat, 08 Dec 2007 11:01:51 -0600
On Sat, 08 Dec 2007 09:23:16 -0500, Wolf Kirchmeir
<ElLoboViejo@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
The Translucent Amoebae wrote:
On Dec 5, 9:09 am, "zzbun...@xxxxxxxxxxxx" <zzbun...@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
On Dec 2, 11:07 pm, STJensen <RecreationalPo...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
The dinosa...Because Dinosaurs brains were devoted almost entirely to lifting
their legs up.
They couldn't do much else.
Scott
i've often wondered, what was it about dinosaurs that were so
different from modern mammals, such as gazelles or zebras or
wildebeests...???
Behaviorally, they must have been indistinguishable on a savanna...
But the dinosaurs had those teeny tiny brains...
What could zebras do that brontosaurus' couldn't...???
Three points:
a) the large dinosaurs had very, very small brains compared to their
body size;
b) the smaller dinosaurs had somewhat larger brains compared to their
body size;
c) in comparison to dinosaurs, zebras have very large brains.
Large brains take a lot of energy to operate. The human brain
appropriates about 1/3rd of your blood flow (which is why you faint when
that third is much reduced.) Alpha has pointed out, correctly, that
evolution tends to make organs as efficient as possible, but even an
efficient brain is a power hog compared to the muscular-skeletal system.
I think that comparing brain size to body size is a red herring
perpetuated by Darwinists in order to force-fit the data to the
theory. Roboticists have known for quite some time that what is
important in determining the complexity of a robot's brain is not the
size of the robot but the number of sensors and effectors. The
complexity is tied to the number of degrees of freedom (hence the
number of effectors and proprioceptive sensors) of the robots limbs
and not to the size of the robot. For a given level of behavioral
complexity, the sensory-motor requirement remains pretty much constant
regardless of the size of the robot. The same is true for animals.
Dinosaurs had hard scales on their bodies and, as a result, did not
have a huge requirement for tactile sensors. I seriously doubt that
their sensory-motor load was greater than that of a rat or mouse. I
suspect it was less, if only because rats have fur on their bodies and
a hence huge number of tactile sensors.
Consequently, there is no reason to suppose that a dinosaur's brain
needed to be bigger than that of a much smaller mammal just because it
had a bigger body. The energy requirement of a dinosaur's brain was
miniscule compared to that of its body, IMO. This should not be used
as an argument as to why dinosaurs did not evolve to a high level of
intelligence. It's neither the size nor the power consumption. It's
something else altogether. Dinosaurs did not have human-level
intelligence for the same reason that chimps don't have it now.
Animals are genetically programmed to be idiot-savants. It cannot be
otherwise, IMO.
Louis Savain
Why Software Is Bad and What We Can Do to Fix It:
http://www.rebelscience.org/Cosas/Reliability.htm
.
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