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From: Eliezer S. Yudkowsky <sentience@pobox.com>
>The evolution of human intelligence had nothing to do with tool use,
>IMHO. Human intelligence was the result of social competition for mates.
I don't think so, all animals have social competition for mates, but only humans
evolved intelligence. I think it's because we have two free limbs and
so have the most important tool of all, the hand, without it intelligence wouldn't
be as important as it is; a much more intelligent deer wouldn't have a much greater
survival rate. The fossil record gives some support for my claim, 3 million years ago
Lucy was fully bipedal and had a hand with a opposable thumb, but her brain wasn't
much bigger than that in a modern chimpanzee.
Bipedalism is important because a hand that's good at locomotion is not
good at manipulating objects, but why did we become bipedal? Evolution
has no foresight so a desire of a big brain can't be the reason humans
walked upright, there are lots of theories but nobody knows for sure.
John K Clark jonkc@att.net
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