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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: neolib who wrote (246412)	8/17/2005 7:20:06 PM
From: combjelly	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 1583823

"So, I would guess that intelligence is somewhat inevitable in evolution." Consider the cephalopods. Even other mollusk has, at best, a small ganglion. Nothing that can be honestly described as a "brain". Some of the brighter other mollusks are things like sea hares, which are totally hardwired. Given that the other big differences between cephalopods and the other mollusca is their visual system and their sophisticated system of manipulating their environment, i.e. tentacles. Tentacles would require a complex perceptual space, which also generalizes well to a sophisticated visual system. And once that is in place, intelligence would probably be a foregone conclusion.

To: neolib who wrote (246412)	8/18/2005 2:20:58 PM
From: tejek	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 1583823

Jim is right that life in general is hard to produce but sentient life is nearly off the chart. Does that fact have the same effect on scientists as it does me? From an evolutionary standpoint, I find it interesting that one of the most intelligent species, the crow family, is very distantly related to us, having descended from the dino/reptile line which split from the pre-mammals a long time ago. Dolphins are at least mammals, so we probably share a significant portion of brain evolution with them, but birds are another matter. So, I would guess that intelligence is somewhat inevitable in evolution. I do find that intriguing. I guess I need to make a distinction when I am talking aobut intelligent life. Most living creatures exhibit some sort of intelligence but to my knowledge, none share the level of intelligence that humans have. Scientifically, I don't know what is the defining distinction that separates human intelligence from the rest of the animals, but its that quality or distinction that I see as being rare. Having said that, and assuming that the three Homos discussed on this thread all had that quality or distinction, I find it surprising that that many intelligent animals [the 3 Homos] evolved on this planet even if they are similar in physiological structure. ted