[Waves]

Originally Posted by tedkennedy

then how can you explain the fact that there is an adaptive stasis between the time the atlatl was invented and the time the bow was invented? for a hundred thousand years very few new inventions came into the fossil record. a common misconception about human history is that it is a steady slope upwards. but infact it is a series of explosive "adaptive revolutions" followed by a stasis. this is a fact proved by the archaological record.

I agree with this aspect of the theory, that we advance in what looks a series of explose revolutions followed by a stasis. the only aspect i disagree with is that this advancement is a result of a threat to us. i ascribe the advancement in part to threats, but also a huge part of it is simple human innovation.

im trying to make the point that collectively the intelligence of a human being is limited by how much extra-genetic information he has available to him. if you live in the animal world, non-kin conflicts of interests severely limit the exchange of extra-genetic information and this is the sole reason why animals are not as smart as humans are, in some cases they actually have larger brains than us and some birds have vastly better vocal chords. why dont they act like humans then? the only reason they dont speak is because exchanging information would be dangerous for them.

i will try to use an example that is outside of the realm of biology. think about "the system" and "criminals". if there wasnt some way to stop criminals from exploiting the system, how could you ever have an orderly society? nature is dominated by "criminals". animals have not developted to the point of humans simply because they do not have a way to threaten "criminals" from exploiting the system. thus they treat all non-kin as potential threat and thus they do not speak to each other.

the reason that humans have all of a sudden progressed so far in the blink of the eye on the timeframe of history is that every time we stumble upon a new weapon that supresses conflicts of interest with increasing efficiency we increase the pool of individuals whom can work together. also, once you have a human village you can have people whom specialize in certain trades and then share their services with other people. the better you are at supressing non-kin conflicts of interest the more people you have working together, the more ideas you are pooling, the more inventions and ideas you are trading.

when i say non-kin, progressively the definition of kin evolves with every new weapon. origanolly kin would be considered your actual blood relatives. but with the evolution of weapons you have the evolution of villages, so now your kin is your village. then with nation-states you have an entire nation of "kin". i dont know if that clarifies anything.

bdat.

yeah man, the more i understand what your saying the more i agree with it. there were just some aspects that jumped out at me personally, and i dont claim to know much about biology. it really is interesting, thanks for taking the time to explain.