Why do we like starchy foods?

[shkrobius]

When being asked what separates humans from other primates, people are quick to say it is their brain. In fact, the differences can be superficial and even unimportant. Using a palm calculator, I can calculate everything a supercomputer can calculate; it would take longer time. However, an ape does not seem to be able to compose a sonnet given all

Comments

[gineer]

У меня тут недавно тоже появилась идея из этого цикла "что же именно произошло в плане интеллекта между обезьяной и человеком

[shkrobius]

Birds are very visual, too.The only two mildly exceptional properties of primate vision is trichromatism and large binocular field, but either of these two features are uncommon only in mammals.

You tacitly assume that the main difference is intellect and that it is intellect that makes you human. Both of these statements are debatable.

As for the food, I am not saying that the brain developed because of AMY1 promoter mutation. I am saying that without this mutation it would be a very limited diet and perhaps no agriculture. This is an adaptation to navigate one's way across potentially edible starchy foods.

[gineer]

Birds:
a) already overspecialized and prosperous as they are and have no capacity for evolution in that way
b) they have no audible signaling and socialization.

And about vision I mean development of visual cortex which can recognize complex objects and "keep in mind" there properties and mutual configuration even without future visual stimulation -- basic level of imagination so to say.
And when you add to this syntactical linearity of audible signaling\speaking it will look as proto version of human mind.
With which evolution can work further

No, I stated intelligence so important because I'm interested in researching and (re)creating of intelligence.
All other differences will be discovered by the way of grows of genome databases anyway.

[shkrobius]

>> no audible signaling and socialization

[gineer]

\\>> no audible signaling and socialization

[shkrobius]

Not being able to ask the right question is no one's fault. You are not surprised I suppose that no one during Newton's time was able to ask the right question about, say, glucose metabolism. People could've been banging their heads trying to explain diabetes, but they did not have basic notions even to approach the problem from the right side. It is the same thing here. If you want to ever know the answer, it makes more sense to focus on experiments that disprove phlogiston theory instead of fantasizing about the causes of diabetes. Simple and basic things come first. There was no lack of doctors spinning all kinds of theories of the disease, and some of these theories were very clever; still it was all waste of time

[gineer]

\\Not being able to ask the right question is no one's fault

[gineer]

\\Not being able to ask the right question is no one's fault.

""Проблема творчества/эволюции принципиально не решаема в рамках существующей научной парадигмы, ограничивающейся описанием лишь пространственных структур объектов. Введение представления о темпоральной сложности позволяет нам формулировать появление принципиально новых (ранее не существовавших) структур/вещей как редукцию темпоральной сложности в пространственную.""

http://ailev.livejournal.com/1014511.html?thread=10301167#t10301167

All discussion there is quite interesting too.

[e2pii1]

> Birds:
> a) already overspecialized and prosperous as they are and have no capacity for evolution in that way
> b) they have no audible signaling and socialization.

c) Also flying birds cannot have big brains - they need to decrease their body weight

[gineer]

Its too ease to argue that size is not important
and hard to oppose such opinion.

[e2pii1]

Human brains increased in size/weight significantly during evolution from the common ansector with chimpanzee.

[gineer]

Yeah... but why it matters?

[e2pii1]

Ни у кого пока не получился человеческого уровня ум без увеличения веса мозга

[gineer]

This is non-answer.
The question was "why?"