MODS…not sure where to place this question…GQ, IMHO, or GD.
Not looking for woo BS, but looking for comments from the SDMB community…
and…
What is the question you want to discuss?
Stranger
What is the question? Why are we intelligent?
There are various hypothesis.
To cope with complex social dynamics. In a social group everyone wants to rise to the top and extract more resources than they contribute, while also preventing others from doing the same. This sets off an intelligence arms race. This is likely the main reason because the other smartest animals like dolphins and elephants are also social animals.
to cope with environmental dangers (our increase in intelligence overlaps a period of climate change)
sexual selection since intelligence is a fitness indicator (it implies lack of parasites, healthy diet, etc)
The OP apparently wants to discuss the thesis of the paper in the second link (also referenced in the first link). Here is its abstract:
Cleverness made our species the most successful primate on Earth, thus claiming that human intelligence is adaptive sounds to be a triviality. Not surprisingly, when establishing long-lasting pair-bonds, humans exhibit mate preferences in favour of clever partners, apparently to increase the chance that their offspring will be as clever as possible. Contrary to this well-established view, here I argue that the adaptive nature of human intelligence has never been proven in a strict evolutionary sense. Furthermore, the exceptional rise of intelligence in our species (and the lack of comparable phenomena in other apes) is best explained within the context of the Hamilton–Zuk Hypothesis. Apparently, humans have been subjected to an exceptionally strong selection pressure exerted by pathogens and parasites, and the human brain is particularly vulnerable to infections, thus cleverness is an ideal character to signal heritable genetic resistance against infections. In this scenario, human preference for intelligent mates is to increase the offspring’s resistance against pathogens. Among other phenomena, this hypothesis can explain why humans enjoy wasting most of their intellectual capabilities for totally useless purposes, why prehistoric humans developed brains that made them potentially far more intelligent than required by their physical environment, and why we experience a continuous increase of human intelligence even in modern societies. Briefly, I argue that (1) human sexual selection favours intelligence as a signal of genetic resistance against pathogens, and (2) that intelligence enabled the rise of our species (in terms of population size and distribution) as an accidental side-effect.
So, the paper argues that humans evolved intelligence not because it was a survival-enhancing trait, but because being free of brain infections is sexy.
That seems pretty silly to me - compared to other animals, human brains use a ridiculous amount of the body’s resources. Keeping a brain around is hugely expensive in evolutionary terms. To be ‘worth it’, the brain had to be good for something besides signaling to potential mates that you were relatively free of disease.
But then, I’m not an evolutionary biologist, so I suppose I could be wrong about this. Maybe an expert will happen by.
The General Questions forum is for…questions.
Since I don’t see a specific one here, and the OP is seeking opinions, let’s move this over to IMHO.
Colibri
General Questions Moderator