Brain complexity: fine-tuned for selective hearing (Introduction)

by David Turell , Thursday, December 21, 2017, 00:18 (2317 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: The answer is in the other thread. The highly complex pre-frontal cortex from 300,000 years ago was waiting to be used and when needed to happen, complexify more, and actually shrink a bit in mass.

dhw: Again, why “waiting to be used”? Do you think early sapiens sat there like a dummy for 290,000 years? The already highly complex brain had reached its optimum size 300,000 years ago, and so from then on it had to complexify even more in order to implement new concepts. 10,000 years ago there was an explosion of new concepts, and so it is not unreasonable to assume that the brain would have undergone even more complexification than before, and did it so efficiently that it shrank a little. None of this means that your God preprogrammed every future function 3.8 billion years ago, expanded/complexified the brain in advance, and then left it hanging around waiting to be used. We know from modern science that the brain responds to new concepts. It does not change before the concepts require change.

You keep ignorilng the requirements of a survival mode of living. Haven't you ever camped out for a week of so? No phone. No books. Just nature: shelter, movement, finding food, fire, and a small socila group. Literally does not require the brain we have now in an civilized city. How many concepts did humans have 10,000 years ago? A miniscule amount compared to now. Luckily God provided us with one big enough to encompass it all. Where were all the stone age concepts to force a 200 cc final enlargement? Non-existent.