Evolution isn’t like that people!
Ok. So, there’s this TED talk about artificial brains.
First off, whenever you hear something is 10 years away, it usually stays 10 years away for a very long time. I’m not saying it can’t be done, because it really should be less than 10 years away, but that’s not what I’m hear to talk about.
Oh no. No. There’s this nugget in there that stopped me cold.
“It’s a new brain,” he explained. “The mammals needed it because they had to cope with parenthood, social interactions complex cognitive functions.
“It was so successful an evolution from mouse to man it expanded about a thousand fold in terms of the numbers of units to produce this almost frightening organ.”
I swear they don’t teach people anything. I am thankful, and spiteful, every day for my general love of reading and thinking. Check this out. Do you really think that something evolves because a species needed it? Really? Stab yourself in the eye. There might be follow up questions, so you might want to take a time out to do research.
Evolution has no goals. Strictly speaking evolution doesn’t exist, just like you can’t say (though many do) that time exists. They’re both logical constructions that we use as intellectual tools. Both are frameworks to hang observations on so we can correlate this shit in a half-orderly manner and look for possible causal relations.
Evolution is easy. You have a number of critters. They breed, and over time have a variety of different traits. If a trait inhibits mating it dies out pretty rapidly, along with any other unique traits those individual may have had. Duh. If a trait increases the chance of mating then it succeeds and is, obviously, passed on. If a great big stress comes along, like a large shift in what makes up the air, then you see a large paring down of the gene pool to just those individuals with traits that allow them to breed in spite of the stressed environment. Obviously the second phase of “success” is that the new generation is able to live long enough to breed.
All those complex behaviors, and ability to think new things, came about because of the increased processing ability, not the other way around.
The second statement seems dubious to me, but I can’t deny it outright since it’s not like I’ve done any research on it. Still, without a lot of mutation, and pressures that make those mutated individuals more likely to breed than others, there’s no reason to assume a trait is continuing to expand. Again, there is no motive force to this stuff, it’s just physical principle.