Saturday, December 14, 2024

Big brains, by Robert the Telepathic Gila Monster

Harry asked me to continue to guest-author his blog. Since my trip with D.L. to Bhutan, Harry has not felt like writing. He says, "Things write themselves." Even though I don't know what he means, I disagree. I feel, for instance, that if I don't post my new theory about why the human brain is so big, it will be lost in the desert void, a not uncommon outcome for this banished reptile.

My theory was sparked by an interesting article in NewScientist magazine (which I read telepathically from Harry's online edition) titled, "Why did humans evolve big brains? A new idea bodes ill for our future" (12/14/24, by Colin Barras), which starts by reviewing the common assumption that human brains are big because they're smart. The assumption becomes questionable as Barras considers various contradicting facts, e.g., the Neanderthal brain was bigger than a modern human's; Einstein's brain was just average size, etc. Then of course there's the fact that even though the human brain averages 1,350 cubic centimeters, while the typical gila monster's cranial cavity averages a mere 65 cm of the good stuff, I'm clearly a smart aleck, in the good sense (if any).

Barras goes through the latest fossil evidence on the fluctuating size of hominid brains through the millennia. It turns out that about 10,000 years ago, just about the time large civilizations were forming, human brain size dipped from 1,500 cm to about 1,350. One theory about the shrinkage is that it occurred not in spite of our getting smarter, but because of it, so that writing, for instance, "allowed people to store some of their accrued knowledge externally instead of committing it to memory, and thus the need for brain cells decreased." Barras conjectures that something similar may happen to humanity because of AI. Worst case scenario (or best, depending how you look at it): Humans evolve into a stationary head with spindly arms and ten fingers to tap a keyboard. This is my bet.

After going through current theories about human brain size, Barras concludes that there is no firm evidence either that bigger size is a survival advantage, or that it denotes more intelligence. He describes one theory speculating that the increase in size was an "accident" caused by the rise of meat eating, which gave humans so much more energy than vegetarianism that the energy "had to go somewhere," and ended up in brain size for want of a better idea for its use.

Perhaps it's because of my perspective from outside your species that I'm considering another possible reason your brains are big. I've noticed that humans, especially as they leave early childhood, are exceptionally convoluted in their relations with each other. An almost totally artificial construct is presented when people communicate. This is the case whether you talk to someone you care about or love, or a total stranger, or someone you dislike. You are able to project your "real feelings," but they have to go through a maze of translation, caused, I think, by the layers of personality glued together in your brains by a cruel evolution, in which never ending life-and-death change has made clear to you again and again that you have the wrong personality and mentality, that you need to turn into someone else, someone maybe who kills animals and eats them, or who ends 300,000 years of inter-tribal hate and war to forget your tribes and gather in cities.

The obsolete brain patterns are not deleted or rewritten after installation of a new mindset, but are "repressed," "sublimated," shoved into your "subconscious," like new computer code replacing old code that gets stored away. Why didn't you just delete your old mentalities? Maybe you didn't have time. Or maybe you're evolving into a species where the repressed mindsets, like the conquered demons obliged to support Buddha, send you their thoughts and perceptions, forming your behavior, indirectly governing you. That would make the governing part of your brain the subconscious, not the conscious, because your conscious mind is not aware of the other mentalities from your previous existences; you have no memory of who you were. It's the subconscious that is aware.

The human brain, then, is big, not because it's smart, but because it's complicated. The question becomes, "Is it good to be complicated?"

Yours ever, Robert the Telepathic Gila Monster
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