Re: Why didn't at least one dinosaur species become human-level smart?
- From: Traveler <traveler@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Mon, 10 Dec 2007 16:42:31 -0600
On Sat, 8 Dec 2007 09:50:07 -0800 (PST), STJensen
<RecreationalPoker@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Traveler <trave...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
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.
And yet one animal did gain human-level intelligence. Humans. Unless
you're a religious nut that thinks there's a supernatural being at
play in the universe. Saying (and hoping) you're not one of those,
why did us humans become as smart as we are and dinosaurs, who ruled
this planet for hundreds of millions of years before our time, didn't?
Why I think we became as intelligent as we are is because that was our
competitive edge. For an animal our size, we didn't have speed,
strength, claws, armor, flight, or anything else special except for
our brains. We out-thought our opponents. My question is how did we
end up picking this competitive advantage as our niche and why didn't
at least one dinosaur species do likewise? It wasn't because it
wasn't the best. Clearly intelligence is the best advantage. If we
existed in the dinosaur age, we would rule it as we rule this one.
Now once our species picked this competitive path, the smartest humans
succeeded, reproduced, and passed along their genes thus ramping up
our intelligence scores over time. Neanderthal man being one of the
human sub-species that lost out in that mental arms race. Even within
our own human sub-species, the smartest had a reproductive edge over
those dumber so the mental arms race was at play with us as well.
But I think all that would have happened with a dinosaur sub-species
as well if one of them had picked intelligence as their competitive
edge. But why didn't one of them do so? As fossil evidence shows,
dinosaur diversity was very large. The largest creatures on land,
sea, or air to have ever existed did so in the reign of the
dinosaurs. But not all were massive size either. They ran the
gambit. So why didn't one ... just one dinosaur sub-species pick
intelligence as their competitive edge?
Scott
I'll respond to your post later when I get some free time. In the
meantime, since you guys are now discussing neanderthals, here's a
link having to do with neanderthals/homo-erectus interbreeding. There
is disagreement among the experts.
http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2007/12/10/2114205.htm?topic=latest
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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