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Pastimes : Human Brain, The -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: diegosan who wrote (871)

11/23/2016 2:02:18 PM

From: koan

Read Replies (1) | Respond to of 935

Greetings, what I am trying to explain is that idea is wrong. The human species evolved over millions of years to adapt to whatever environment they were in. Our brain was formed adapting for survival as a nomadic animal.

But now, we have adapted to a new sedentary life style and created new technologies that the brain is not hard wired to address.But can address, through long and arduous education and practice with abstract concepts. Our evolutionary brain, did not engage in a lot of abstract thinking. It did not need to for survival. That is a modern use of the brain.

And we know, that the brain can be taught to deal with it. It is NOT a matter of being smarter or dumber, it is a matter of using the brain differently than its normal function. Which can be done.

For example, it is impossible to explain to an uneducated person like one would find in the jungles of New Guinea, relativity, quantum physics, existentialism, or Zen, without many years of education. I would guess around 20 years. Those are all abstract concepts and our brain is not hardwired for abstract concepts of that nature. The brain is hardwired for pattern recognition, but finds it difficult to learn probability. The brain is hardwired to learn to speak, but finds it difficult to learn reading writing and arithmetic.

I believe that the brain's extraordinary capabilities for abstract thinking was an accident. Homo erectus only had a brain two thirds our size and was successful for a couple of million years. But our brain is capable of contemplating the universe and infinity, but it has to be developed to do that.

And that is the thesis of all my posts here, the brain has to be developed for maximum intellectual capacity, just as an Olympian has to develop their body for maximum physical capacity.

Cheers

<<

A long time ago I read Jared Diamond's "Guns, Germ & Steel".
He had studied primitive peoples in New Guinea. He was impressed with their intelligence and capability. He noted that modern man, living in modern cultures was getting dumber.
The brain does process modern culture and all of its wonders. However, if it is not honed by evolution, meaning success and failure, there is no mechanism for enhancement. Numbers and time will cause corruption to prevail, eventually.