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January 3, 2010 - 4:58pm
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You were not here first. You were never first.
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Neanderthals had larger brains than ours, too. I wonder what ever became of those super geniuses?
Likely wiped out by the same cabal that has it in for microbiologists.
See? Self justification runs rampant. It's a never ending issue.
Yes, your self justification and leaping to conclusions is rampant in your posts. I was
pointing out that cranial capacity is not always proof of a superior intellect.
Why do you buy into the notion of a superior
'race' like an Enquirer lemming? Based on what simplistic reasoning?
Very true, that.
On the other hand, one might argue that the general tone and attitude of this board suggests that, in fact, the universe hates intellegence, too, eh?
I get it! You misspelled intelligence on purpose. Very funny. What I don't get is before Homo erectus how did women get pregnant?
Why is Nature like a lazy janitor? They both abhor a vacuum. I could do this all night.
Boom boom
Well I liked it anyway.
Cheers
Orb
Don't overlook the possibility of it being an alein head. EVERYBODY knows they have those big heads and eyes.
The size of the skull, doesn't necessarily mean that this hominid had a better working brain.
A friend of mine, who are one unusually petite female, comes with one IQ of around 150. If you'd judge her intelligence by the size of her head, you'd be badly mistaken.
What matters is how the brain is wired.
.....and no this is was not intended as one invitation to change the subject into the cables we use to wire our systems with.
Tht is all true, yes wiring. But it is known and it can be shown that we can actively create neurological pathways and destroy them, so it is possible to make our beans work better, or worse.
However, this is just the aspects of us creating 'possibility' so we would not have to look at this article square, or 'head on' with it's revelations or indications.
This is only 10,000 yrs back and in within the scope of Darwinian or otherwise chronology of any evolution we have tried to fit on the world, there is nothing at all to indicate that these folks would be anything but our intellectual superiors, as a worst case scenario.
We create the possibility of the article being wrong so we can worm out of dealing with the implications.
Anything but that.
In the past I came across multiple articles that all indicated that the origins of the American Archeological Society was tied to it's actions in it's early years. Apparently, according to these articles, it's job was to run around and destroy ancient artifacts and tombs wherever and whenever they were discovered in the contiguous 48. To maintain the ignorance, so to speak.
For example, that Stalin killed 20 million Ukrainians. The vast number of Ukrainians who had parents who lived through that will tell you that it is true, yes. But popular literature and popular history tries to tell you otherwise. What I just said makes for a rather unlikely story, yes... but once you get to the depths of it as a whole and complex story with many supportive data points, in history, -it begins to take shape into a solid piece of information.
Dude, there is nothing there to indicate that at all.
As I said, Neanderthal's had bigger skulls and brains than modern man - does your conclusion hold when applied to them?
Would you say they are "anything but our intellectual superiors, as a worst case scenario?"
As Aanta points out...Is a larger modern person likely to be the intellectual superior to smaller people?
A sperm whale has a brain 5 times as large as ours, making him our intellectual superior, as a worst case scenario?
Maybe what they found was the skull of one of your Thetans.
Now you are really showing bias, saying or implying things I have not said or even know nothing about.
My Thetans? WTF?
As for whales and Elephants, for that matter.
A large brain for sensory capacity and motor control, is the deal that seems to be emerging as points of understanding, regarding the whales and elephants.
Now, how does that apply to a hominid that is near identical to us......?
Also, there is no guaranteeing that intelligence manifests itself in the way you think it does, as a matter of fact, it has been shown as of recent that even bugs have the capacity to execute higher levels of learning and reasoning of a type and level you would not expect.
For example whale, dolphin and elephant intelligence may not want or need or have capacity to integrate with us in ways we can understand. this is still a very hot and active topic of research. Nothing is settled there, in that area.
Buddhists who meditate to reach higher levels of understanding do it in isolation as they neither want or need any of what the modern western world produces or works on or by. Meaning.... you've got fuck-all to offer them and when you communicate with them they have to bring them selves down to a purely 3-d singularity and re-install their ego to even begin communicating with you in a way that you can understand.
Perhaps the Elephant, Dolphin and Whale are in the same boat or similar mental states. We don't know.
So, in their case, brain size does not correlate with intelligence and capabilities?
The Sperm whale, ah reminds me of this
Never underestimate the Sperm whale I say
Cheers
Orb
I do not know. I'm open to suggestions that might be plausible, and see where that goes.
As stated though, it might be a different type and kind of intelligence, not necessarily the type that we have and use.
The hubris and ego of man knows no bounds, I'd say. So be on the watch for it clouding one's attempts at logic.
I can honestly say that I never have.
The improbability factor in action! I loved Adams' books. RIP
Don't get me started about cables! It's like a religion to me.
What! What! Wire you talking about that now, it wasn't a current subject, even though it has the potential for creating great resistance.
Repeat after me:
OHM OHM OHM OHM
Just don't get wrapped up in the subject, JJ.
:-)
John Atkinson
Editor, Stereophile
I'll do my best to insulate myself, John, no problems. Don't worry, you won't have to call a copper.
English humour at its best
BBC series was good as well I felt.
Quite funny but if I remember in BBC series the 2 headed electronic model of Zaphod Beeblebrox was worth more than what the actors were being paid.
Ah must dig the books out again.
Cheers
Orb
Um...where to even start? Oh, OK. How does anyone know if it was just a deformed human with some kind of brain or skull disease? And just one skull? Ever? And we have a whole theoretical civilization being spun out?
Second: If they all died out due to inability to adapt and left no traces of anything of value then where would one get the idea they were superior in any way?
And then again, when is it just brain size that equals intelligence? There are a number of large mammals still around who clearly are not all plus-super-geniuses.
Or is this just evidence of The Matrix and we are living in those pods that periodically need to get flushed when get too close to "The Truth." Seriously, this reads like the scientific break throughs of the National Enquirer.
Dude, do you mean to say that macrocephaly is not an ironclad indicator of intellectual superiority?
Somebody's gonna call you a lizard brain for not believing in the superior race that preceded us!
Read the article, Doug. The denial, the desire for denial comes up pretty darned fast as let's face it, the idea of something coming before us and being intellectually superior is not the most tasty thing we could be forced to 'eat'. Selective reasoning based on the emotional basis of intellect really comes to the fore on this one. Whether it is true or not is a unknown, at least for us at this time. But the desire for it to be true that they are the failure and we are the gods and winners (high fives all around!) is pretty darned strong, isn't it?
Taking note of that desire and realizing it is shaping our attempts at logic is ~KEY~ here, to illustrate how emotion is deeply flavoring and skewing attempts at logic at the base crainial thought formation level.
Maybe they found us to be incredibly boring and slow...so then they blew this pop stand (meh!), and moved on to some other more interesting place.
It would seem to me that you are discounting a multiplier in man's intellectual capacity as we learned and built on those who came before us. Not to mention a natural evolution and adaptation. Having recently visited a Walmart, I'm not prepared to completely reject your theory.
Methinks he doth protest a bit too much...
It's not that I find it distasteful, it's just not all that relevant, if at all, other than a "possibly" interesting foot note. Species come and go- more than 90% are already gone. I always thought there were any number of "like minded" threads of hominids that may have come and gone. And there is still nothing from the article that really gives evidence to higher intelligence IMO.
Sure, from a purely zoological standpoint, it might be interesting, and so are a thousand other minute scientific studies. But most, in and of themselves, aren't all that useful. Some accidentally become so, a lot never have or will.
What I sense in your posts is that you WANT some big "other" thing out there to rock your world, and are annoyed that no one here seems to care. You equate skepticism with denial and fear. Not from where I'm sitting anyway! It's more like incredulity bordering on indifference.
I wonder if any phrenology experts were allowed to examine the skull. They could tell us how intelligent the subject was, for sure!
All things being equal, I'd rather be a monsology expert and find myself being asked to poke around in other areas.
I believe it has been suggested that they lacked abilities to adapt to major environmental changes. Sounds credible to me.
No way, their heads were bigger!
They had to be our intellectual superiors!
LOOOL!
RE: Bigger skulls...
Don't it apply in Texas?
Remember, just like us, perhaps those folk only used a minor amount of that brain...after all, we have folk today who believe in a flat earth, the Bilderberg group, Big Foot and the Global Warming cult...Brain cavity size is far from a definitive measure of intellect...
I have often wondered where fish came from in landlocked lakes...Most in North America are under 10,000 years old yet all have fish...
We have many lakes in Northern Ontario that if we find they are big enough and deep enough (but almost fishless or just small minnows), the intrepid fisherman seeds them with lake trout. My uncle did that with a few dozen, and he keeps them a secret. Fast forward 15-20 years, and then he goes out fishing ..and comes back with the most amazing trout.
As for the number of lakes..egad! Just look at a map of Northern Ontario. Literally thousands upon thousands upon thousands of small lakes. Where I'm from, you can't walk more than a 1/2 mile in the woods without tripping over a lake. I'm serious about that.
I eagerly await your hypothesis!
Are our brains wired with solid or liquid core conductors? I really think that is is more of a electrolytic colloidial emulsion. This could be a new breakthrough audio component: Grey Matter cables with Synapse RCA connectors.
My second point is that as a toddler, an individual's head size/brain is as it's largest in relationship to the rest of the body. One could argue that a toddler's intellect is not as superior as (most) adults. Yet, does a toddler have a greater abilty to gain intellect (languages, socialization, reasoning, computation, abstract thinking, etc) during these early years as compared to later years?
Just a few thoughts...
Mike
Ha! There were originally rivers flowing to those lakes, and those rivers have later dried out! Nitwits!
But where did the fish first come from, 9000 years ago as the ice was receding and global warming kicked in...How did the fish get in the lakes...
Well there are two obvious answers...Global Warming, as that seems to have produced about 3ft of snow in DC, or the ever popular 'Bush did it'...
Amazing rivers, what flowing uphill 500ft or so to get out of the valley.
About what I expected.
Maybe you could phone in on the Dittohead Hotline and have Rush 'splain it for us?
Hmmm. Lake fish, eh?
Where did any fish come from, since evolution doesn't exist?
God plants fish, most likely.
_________________
Interstingly, there's a neat place near Las Vegas called Devil's Hole, and it has it's own unique specie of pupfish.
Interesting in several ways:
1) How would a desert sinkhole ever get hold of not only fish, but a unique specie, seen nowhere else? Where did it come from?
2) Why would our Intelligent Designer decide to put a unique kind of fish in a desert sinkhole?
3) If our Intelligent designer did create a unique specie of fish in a unique location - - these fish live NOWHERE else on the planet, wouldn't you quake in fear thinking about how displeased He'd be if you lowered the water table making crops and killed His creation? Are we saying that we have any right or privilege to destroy a specie our Intelligent designer intelligently designed?
If this is the case, how could anyone believing in Intelligent design ever be comfortable with anything that may harm the Intelligent Designers beautiful work?
Companies that pollute? Why would any Intelligen Designer fearing conservative ever say that the economy depends on this sort of harm and give economic concerns precedent? How could an Intelligent Designer fearing conservative not be a naturalist and environmentalist?
I know, you guys say, "Within reason," but, seriously now, how can you decide that your judgement trumps the Intelligent Designer's intelligent design?
5) If the Intelligent Designer intelligently designed nature, why is that not your primary economic concern?
Yep. Along with the water that was under the ice, underground rivers, etc. There is also involuntary migration.
As a result there has been parallel, but separate, evolution of individual populations.
For example, salt water stickleback fish have body armor; the trapped fresh water sticklebacks express a genetic variation of limited bony armor - a recessed genetic variation present but rarely seen in marine sticklebacks.
The population-isolated land-locked sticklebacks carried this rare trait, survived inland, and their population increased.
Perhaps even more interesting is the parallel evolutionary selection of this same trait in numerous in-land lakes.
Cool stuff.
See, for example