Is adversity necessary to develop intelligence?

[pgrmdave]

Was adversity necessary to force us to utilize our intelligence? If we were able to gather the basics in life - food, water, shelter - would we have developed to use our intelligence? Other animals may be as intelligent as early humans, but are able to supply themselves with everything they need, so they don't develop their intelligence furthur. Also, were our hands necessary for the utilization of our intelligence? Without them we couldn't have built tools.

[TINNY]

Was adversity necessary to force us to utilize our intelligence?

what do you mean by adversity?

If we were able to gather the basics in life - food, water, shelter - would we have developed to use our intelligence?

how about lust. that drives a lot of creativity.

Other animals may be as intelligent as early humans, but are able to supply themselves with everything they need, so they don't develop their intelligence furthur.

huh? they have everything they need? and we don't? i bet you have food, water and shelter. still you utilize intelligence, depending on what you mean by it.

Also, were our hands necessary for the utilization of our intelligence? Without them we couldn't have built tools.

yeah, and eyes, and mouth, and skin, and legs... how about our neurons?

you mean, our body is a tool to implement our intelligence?

 

basically, intelligence is an inherent part of our mind. we don't have a switch to turn 'intelligence' off or on.

[Tim_Lou]

"Was adversity necessary to force us to utilize our intelligence?"

well, i personally dont think so.

the motivation behind scientific developments are to seek a better life, it does not have to be adversity.

[Tormod]

what do you mean by adversity?

Adversity means, basically, hardship or bad luck.

 

basically, intelligence is an inherent part of our mind. we don't have a switch to turn 'intelligence' off or on.

Very important point, it has an impact on ar AI discussion as well.

[Aquagem]

Was adversity necessary to force us to utilize our intelligence?

Some rambling thoughts -- interesting question!

 

The question seems backward. We have intelligence now, and have used it mainly to find more efficient ways of hating and killing each other (i.e., it causes a lot of adversity). I'd suggest asking, "Did adversity cause us to evolve into a more intelligent creature?" and then answer with a fairly assertive, "Yes". The essence of the evolutionary process is the overproduction of variable offspring, which are then culled out by interactions with an inherently dangerous environment. There is, of course, no guarantee that facing the rigors of the environment on Earth will result in intelligence becoming a primary or commonly-appearing adaptation, but it appears to have been developed before (e.g., the large brain case of velociraptors, birds, some cephalopods (octopi are very intelligent), and most mammals, ). The animals that have developed intelligence as a primary survival strategy tend to be specialized in their habits, and, I think I've read, appear well along, timewise, in the evolutionary lines of the animals from which they have descended.

 

If we were able to gather the basics in life - food, water, shelter - would we have developed to use our intelligence? Other animals may be as intelligent as early humans, but are able to supply themselves with everything they need, so they don't develop their intelligence furthur. Also, were our hands necessary for the utilization of our intelligence? Without them we couldn't have built tools.

If we lived in a permissive environment, i.e., where the basics of survival and reproduction were readily available and competition for resources was low, all else being equal, we would have probably evolved in some different directions, e.g., to slow down reproduction, rather than developing intelligence. Our own nervous system consumes about a quarter of all our nutritive intake, a high cost to pay to read the funnies and watch football. A similar case has been made for certain birds, like a cormorant species in the Galapagos, where fish are so abundant they have lost the ability to fly, but not their pre-existing ability to swim. It's too expensive to maintain flight when it isn't necessary.

 

Many lines of argument have presumed that humans came out of an arboreal environment due to Cenozoic climate changes, and were forced to compete with animals that were millions of years ahead of them in adapting to veldt life in Africa as the jungles shrank and grasses took over. In that situation, we would have been at a huge disadvantage -- slow runners, stubby teeth, inedible forage (grasses) -- but outfitted with tools like the primate hand, which had a good head start on a lot of the runners and browsers of the plains in terms of hand-eye coordination (think, stick, spear, fire). The likelihood of developing that facility (already useless as a method of propulsion) could have made crucial difference in the evolutionary direction we have taken, and fostered the link between hand and brain, mediated by sight and a burgeoning intelligence. It's interesting to see our development of bipedalism being pushed back with seemingly each new discovery, indicating that we have been on this road a lot longer than we used to recognize. I have long thought that we probably started following the dogs around to clean up what they left behind, learned their style, and eventually came to use them to fill in for what we lacked.

 

To me, the fascinating part of our intense development of intelligence is that it must have been rather a grinding affair to begin with to have carried us so far, so fast. We weren't built to play the piano, but we do such a splendid job of -- turning a survival necessity into play. I don't think that would ever have happened spontaneously without EXTREME adversity and tyrannical forces of selection.

 

One more factor, though, in the development of intelligence that is less discussed, is the possible influence of cultural evolution in producing phenotypic effects. I used to say, "Men lost hair because women thought it was icky", to introduce the possibility that our own choices, in this case, sexual selection, could have become major players in our future evolution, quite apart from the rigors of the environment. Intelligence could have been among the beneficiaries of this sort of development ("I love you, George, because you know calculus!")

[Tim_Lou]

In times of WWI and the Great Depression, scientific advancement and discovery has cretainly slowed down. (adversity)

 

And during the 1920s, because society is in such prosperous state, dicoveries such as henry ford's assembly line and model-T, electricity on everyone household, planes that fly over Atlantic ocean.....

 

Anyway, your right, adversity is necessary, since people have to fear adversity in order to advance.

 

I would say evolution comes after adversity. it is the idea of punctuated equilibrium in theory of evolution.... "species remained unchanged for long periods, during which time there was comparative genetic stability. then there were short period during which new species were rapdily formed. such short periods were followed once again by long periods of relative equilbirium."

(came from my book)

so, this short period of time is adversity.

[Tea Towel]

I believe the original idea for adversity developing intelligence stems from the fact that some leading evolutionists believe that the first signof real human intelligence was shown by humands having the imagination to store water in egg shells under the desert. This prevented them dying of first. We as a race had a primitive stone axe for 10000 years before then but did not progress beyond that until we were forced to by climate change at the end of the ice age.

[TINNY]

adversity is unnecessary. All you have to do is utilize your free-will. I agree with Tim_Lou that fear of adversity is a source of motivation. but it is unnecesarry. In an ideal world, a full utilization of free-will will solve all problems. No need for external circumstances such as adversities to force our behaviors.

[TeleMad]

I believe the original idea for adversity developing intelligence stems from the fact that some leading evolutionists believe that the first signof real human intelligence was shown by humands having the imagination to store water in egg shells under the desert. This prevented them dying of first. We as a race had a primitive stone axe for 10000 years before then but did not progress beyond that until we were forced to by climate change at the end of the ice age.

 

I saw a show on the National Geographic Channel just a couple nights ago that gave other reasons human brain size might have increased.

 

One was the ability to throw stones accurately as a weapon or in defense. It takes a great deal of coordination to do that - no other animal that I know of can do it (the closest I can think of are chimps, which can sling their feces...but that's not the same thing).

 

Then there was our use of fire. First we had to learn to conquer our natural fear of it (most every animal runs from fire), then had to learn how to control it, then we had to learn how to create it, and at some point along the way we also needed to know how to use, probably as defense first then as a means of cooking our food.

[Apes Anonymous]

As the old saying goes: "Necessity is the mother of invention". Very true! Without adversity (new problems to solve) there would be no need for a species to enter their intelligence into the evolutionary process, since a fundamental rule in nature seems to be the economy of means to accomplish survival. If nowadays it seems that we're using our intelligence extravagantly, that is maybe because our understanding of survival has changed, and maybe piano playing has become one of the forms of survival in our new environment.

[Biochemist]

adversity is unnecessary. All you have to do is utilize your free-will.... In an ideal world, a full utilization of free-will will solve all problems....

There are a significant number of folks on this site who believe the universe is deterministic. In a deterministic model, free will is either an illusion (if you are an atheist) of a result of supernatural influence (if you are a theist).

 

Intelligence could show up deterministically. Free will is a special case.

Without adversity (new problems to solve) there would be no need for a species to enter their intelligence into the evolutionary process

I may have misunderstood this, but this seems a little backwards. Species do not choose to use their intelligence, they are forced to use it.

 

And I thinik it is a bit of a stretch to suggest that piano playing is a competitive value. Creativity (unlike intelligence) also is unaccounted for in a deterministic model, just like free will.

[Apes Anonymous]

I may have misunderstood this, but this seems a little backwards. Species do not choose to use their intelligence, they are forced to use it.

You're right, but I didn't necessarily mean they choose to. :)

 

And I thinik it is a bit of a stretch to suggest that piano playing is a competitive value.

Obviously you're not familiar with the groupie phenomenon! :)

 

Creativity (unlike intelligence) also is unaccounted for in a deterministic model, just like free will.

I must admit I don't make any distinction between creativity and intelligence, to me it's the same thing. Please elaborate your thought.

[Biochemist]

Obviously you're not familiar with the groupie phenomenon! :)

Ooh. Good point. Hadn't thought about that.

I must admit I don't make any distinction between creativity and intelligence, to me it's the same thing. Please elaborate your thought.

Creativity (by definition) is development of new thought/design/art/other de novo. In a deterministic universe, this is impossible by definition, because there are no uncaused effects. Hence, creativity is a illusion becasue it is just the resultant of other deterministic events. Intelligence, in contrast, could be selected for and could fairly be viewed as a resultant of earlier determinism. Clearly it could be arguesd as a survival benefit.

 

Ergo, atheistic determinists must regard free will as an illusion. Theists exempt free will (and creativity, altruism, love, etc) from the deterministic framework and suggest those elements were supplied by the creator.

[Apes Anonymous]

Creativity (by definition) is development of new thought/design/art/other de novo. In a deterministic universe, this is impossible by definition, because there are no uncaused effects. Hence, creativity is a illusion becasue it is just the resultant of other deterministic events.

 

According to your definition, someone who's never heard of the wheel and reinvents it is not creative. Do you really have to come up with something never before imagined in order to be creative?

[Biochemist]

According to your definition, someone who's never heard of the wheel and reinvents it is not creative. Do you really have to come up with something never before imagined in order to be creative?

Well, probably not, since there would be no such thing as imagination either. The notion of determinism is that all states of nature are the resultant of previous states. A set of billiard balls on a table could arrive at a new configuration that has never pre-existed, but the configuration was still established by cause-and-effect of previous collisions. In this model, intelligence is the result of deterministic events, evolution is a result of deterministic events, the solar system is the result of a deterministic events (et cetera), all reflecting the cause of all determinism, the big bang.

 

This is a little at odds with the prevailing notion that quantum motion actually is random, but I suspect that the pure determinists would postulate that even quantum movement is predetermined.

 

Within this framework, free will and creativity are not possible, unless authored by a creator outside of the deterministic framework.

[Christopher]

The Evolution of intelligence appears to be coupled with primitive need to assess the environment into a simple binary feedback of things that we want and things that we do not want

This field of opposites produces a circular flow of information that our cognitive functions form around .

The second aspect of higher evolution is to see beauty order and connectives.

[Biochemist]

The second aspect of higher evolution is to see beauty order and connectives.

Sorry, Christopher, but I don't know what you mean. Could you elaborate?