Brain Expansion (Evolution)

by David Turell , Monday, April 27, 2020, 20:11 (1453 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: tell me about your experiences in conceptualizing a new productive product, and how difficult is any of it?

dhw: I am not a designer. […]

DAVID: Thank you for this honest answer. You've now admitted you are not a designer, and so are theorizing about it. I've answered your question over and over with you never noting any recognition of my points. In my view, you have design and production all confusedly backward.

dhw: What is backward? I have agreed with you that design is the hard part! That is the hard thinking that changes modern brains. But I have also pointed out that production and design are interwoven because the process of material production may well lead to changes in abstract design (the brain then provides new information during its function of implementation).

Once again you have shifted to trial and error. If one can visualize the spear design with wooden shaft and stone tip, that includes the materials to be used. In spear building the only secondary decision, since stone napping was known for the point, is how attach the point to the wooden shaft. Simple production follows.

dhw: But firstly, our discussion is not about the difference between design and production. My point is that it is the "hard thinking" that causes the smaller brain to expand as it seeks to make the original concept into something real.

You've denied this before, when I've previously analyzed your thoughts this way. I believe it is your sole invention to explain brain enlargement.

dhw: And secondly, how does your experience of design even begin to support your claim that the ancient brain changed BEFORE it even knew there was a hard part to tackle?

You know. I believe God did it. As a natural theory, I view it as contrived wishful thinking.

DAVID: My view is God created each expansion of thought-capable frontal and prefrontal neuron-rich brain, until it reached a critical mass and could reach new levels of conceptualizing, which is required for new design levels.

dhw: So what is your point about our brain sitting around for thousands of years before the leap forward? All expansions coincided with new levels of conceptualizing. What do you mean by a “critical mass”?

I'm using a term from nuclear bomb theory or social political theory. Build a big enough complex brain and it then can conceive of what it couldn't think of before

dhw: And you’ve forgotten again that you are a dualist. It’s supposed to be the soul that does the conceptualizing, and the brain informs and implements.

Useless space-filling criticism. You know what I mean.

DAVID: It is obvious our advanced brain is totally different from the early ones, like Lucy's and following.

dhw: Not “totally”. You’ve just told us on the other thread: ”God speciates either by modification of the previous, as in hominin brain growth, or […]”.

The modification can make it as a final product, totally different.

dhw: So your God apparently gave us a bigger brain than we needed. What does that prove? Hard use has not shrunk the brain! If it did, we’d have no brain left by now! As you keep agreeing and then forgetting, hard use results in complexification, which is so efficient that it has made certain parts of the brain redundant.

You've simply answered yourself. I don't forget the points of argument.

dhw: Can you find any support for your theory of a divine 3.8 billion-year-old programme of brain expansions culminating in one that was 150 cc bigger than necessary and therefore shrank, and that responded to new demands whereas earlier brains expanded before the new demands even existed?

Remember, I believe God did it, but your question leaves the natural level of debate where I am disputing your natural wishful claim that hard thinking expands brains. You will not ever find any support for it, certainly not from me.