Profound articles of interest

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Post by Jeremy » 04 Mar 2012 23:40

An impressive coincidence that you'd post a 3 year old article that supports a strawman argument you made in the earlier debate because you find it profound and interesting, rather than that you thought it was relevant to that previous debate.

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Post by fatbagger » 04 Mar 2012 23:47

AllanHaggett wrote:Dan, Dan Reed? Just curious.
Nope, that would be me.
My opinion on the little spattle, Allan is always right. He's Allen Hagget.(pecking order;) You can be honest without being an ass about it. no offense.
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Post by BainbridgeShred » 05 Mar 2012 08:05

And I've said it enough times, Alan already went through the trouble of posting my evidence hahaha

Jeremy is clearly still upset about looking like an idiot for saying "tools and language magically made our brains grow lulz"
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Post by fatbagger » 05 Mar 2012 16:42

not an article(sue me). But I found it very interesting. [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XI5frPV5 ... plpp_video[/youtube]

The topic in general is fascinating, sustainable ecosystems, evolution, culture and language, terraforming, disease control, ect.(the list doesn't end) All of this is connected to studying mycelium/fungi. One of the most disrespected areas of study is also one of the most important.
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Post by Jeremy » 05 Mar 2012 23:36

Yeah definitely - I really like that talk. Phil Morrison is a fan of it too, I understand. It's been discussed a little here;

http://modified.in/footbag/viewtopic.ph ... 76&start=0

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Post by BainbridgeShred » 06 Mar 2012 08:10

What Europe Needs: Follow the Founding Father's

http://www.project-syndicate.org/commen ... 65/English


I actually don't entirely agree with the guy but it's a profound and interesting reading. So profound.
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Post by Jeremy » 21 Mar 2012 21:38

Dan somehow thinks this topic is embarrassing for me, so I just wanted to go over what's embarrassing.

Dan Feary wrote:It's pretty well accepted today that what allowed humans brains to grow to the size they are today was the scavenging of meat on the African Savannah, specifically cracking the bones of prey animals with crude tools, and sucking the bone marrow out.
Jeremy wrote:Bullshit. Provide some evidence for this claim please.
(Allan Haggett's link posted here)

(I posted and quoted this link)
Flinn, Geary, and Ward 2005 wrote:Many hypotheses have been proposed concerning the selective advantages of cognitive change during human evolutionary history. Most explanations involve ecological problem solving, such as tool use (e.g., Darwin, 1871; Gibson & Ingold, 1993; Washburn, 1959; Wynn, 1988), hunting (e.g., Dart, 1925; Hill, 1982;Washburn & Lancaster, 1968), scavenging (e.g., Blumenschine & Cavallo, 1992), foraging (e.g., Isaac, 1978; Kaplan, Hill, Lancaster, & Hurtado, 2000), extended life history (e.g., van Schaik & Deaner, 2003), food processing (e.g.,Wrangham, Jones, Laden, Pilbeam,&Conklin-Brittain, 1999), and savanna (e.g., Laporte & Zihlman, 1983) or unstable (Potts, 1998; Vrba, 1995) environments. None has achieved complete or general acceptance, even when combined in synthetic models and causally linked to social dynamics.
Jeremy wrote:I also note you still have provided any evidence at all that your bone marrow hypothesis is the most widely accepted explanation for brain growth. Do you actually have any evidence for that, or are you making it up? I note that everybody else can provide evidence for their claims, except you...
Dan Feary wrote:Oh Jeremy, be patient my friend. I told you I would go back and respond to the points you made in your post on the last page, and I will when I have a bit more time
Jeremy wrote:Still no references hey?

When you say;
It's pretty well accepted today that what allowed humans brains to grow to the size they are today was the scavenging of meat on the African Savannah, specifically cracking the bones of prey animals with crude tools, and sucking the bone marrow out.
Then surely it should be easy for you to provide evidence that it is widely accepted, because there should be a wide amount of evidence?

Instead, when I read through my books on anthropology, when I look at wikipedia, when I do google scholar searches, and when I read through the most cited articles on that question, which I've quoted for you, I continually see this;
[No theory] has achieved complete or general acceptance.
Did you make up the claim that your theory is widely accepted, or am I just looking in the wrong places?
Dan Feary wrote:I got the information from my biological anthropology professor from years and years ago, Pete Knutson, Ph.D, Stanford. I took the class in 2009.
Jeremy wrote:So it's an anecdote, and you can't find a published source?

Do you therefore agree or disagree with Flinn, Geary & Ward (2005), and also me, when they say;
[No theory] has achieved complete or general acceptance.
or when I say
Yes there are people who think it was an increase of meat in our diet, but that's not the accepted view at all - the issue is still widely debated.
Or do you stick with your anecdote over the peer reviewed published assessment?
Dan Feary wrote:I have yet to even do a Google search on bone marrow and its effect on evolution.
Jeremy wrote:The debate here is that you claimed your theory was "well accepted," while I claimed that the issue was debated. You responded by continuing to argue that your theory was well accepted, rather than the issue being debated, and there not yet being a definite answer.
Dan Feary wrote:I will cite sources later tonight or tomorrow, so be patient young Jeremy, every point will be referenced.
Jeremy wrote:I'm still waiting for Dan to provide any evidence for your case. Merely asserting things is meaningless. I've managed to provide alternative evidence from an Oxford Evolutionary Anthropology Professor, a University of Missouri Anthropology Professor, and the Associate Professor of Psychology at the University of New Mexico. These aren't just anecdotal claims that evidence exists, this is actual published peer reviewed science by experts in their field, and none of them agree with you! Where is your evidence rebutting those papers? Where is your evidence supporting your own claims?

I will hold the view that you've made this whole thing up, until you can demonstrate otherwise. Your childish jibes certainly support this theory. You took a unit of two of anthropology and you think you know everything. You read some silly article by radical actual post-modernist, and you think it closes the case on vegetarianism. You're wrong, and you need to grow up.
I'll refer you to the article Alan posted at the beginning of this discussion. That article is pretty good proof of the point that I'm making hahahaha.
Note that the article Allan posted, does not claim that bone marrow is the most widely accepted explanation for our brain size at all. In fact the article has very little do to with diet. What it states is that humans have a greater number of genes responsible for sending energy to our brains instead of our muscles. That is to say that if humans and chimps eat the same diets, humans will use more of the energy for brain power, while chimps will use more of the energy for muscle power.

http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/gue ... be-so-big/
New research points to an ancient energy tradeoff that meant more fuel for brains, and less fuel for muscles.
In two recent studies, researchers from Duke University suggest the human brain boost may have been powered by a metabolic shift that meant more fuel for brains, and less fuel for muscles.
In 1995, two researchers in the U.K. published a landmark study arguing that if our overall energy budget didn’t go up, our bodies must have compensated by diverting energy from somewhere else. The theory is called the expensive tissue hypothesis, first proposed by anthropologist Leslie Aiello, then of University College London, and physiologist Peter Wheeler of Liverpool John Moores University in England.
In the years after Aiello and Wheeler published their paper, the expensive tissue hypothesis started to gain support, though scientists had different ideas about which tissues paid the price for bigger brains
In 2003, an anthropologist at Northwestern University named William Leonard published a study arguing that the price we paid for a bigger brain may have been punier muscles.
To build a bigger brain at the expense of muscle, “our muscles could have evolved to be smaller, or more efficient, or the metabolic cost of walking could have decreased, or it could have been some combination of these things,” he said. “The possibilities aren’t mutually exclusive.”
In a study published last October, Fedrigo, Wray, Wall and colleagues tested the tradeoff hypothesis and pinpointed changes in two groups of molecules that may have shuttled more energy to our brains, and less to our muscles.
Compared with chimps, humans make three times more of the glucose transporter found in brains, but only 60% of that found in muscles.
These probably weren’t the only tradeoffs that led to our enlarged brains, the researchers say. In another study published last year, they pinpointed another set of genes that may have funneled more energy to brains, and less to muscles — this time in the form of a metabolite called creatine.
When the researchers measured the expression levels of these genes in tissue samples from humans, chimps and macaques, they found that human brains had twice the levels of SLC6A8 and CKB, two genes that regulate how creatine is used by cells. But in contrast to brains, the levels in human muscles were no different from chimps.

As you can see, the article doesn't provide any support for Dan's claims, and in fact does support an alternative hypothesis - ie. that our diets didn't change, but that instead we reduced muscle size as we increased brain size. Clearly Dan failed to understand what this article says, and despite saying he would provide evidence for his claim, continues to be unable to, obviously because he made it up.

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Post by Jeremy » 21 Mar 2012 21:52

I note too, that increasing meat, or bone marrow in a diet will not cause any change to intelligence. Brains will not grow bigger just because they can, but because there is a selective advantage where animals with smaller brains reproduce less often than animals with bigger brains. Hence changes in diet cannot explain the expansion of brains alone, there must be another factor that can be applied to humans, but not other animals that eat meat or bone marrow - and it has to be one that allows for the fact that pre-humans with the small brains were still capable of survival - so had to either be out competed (given population densities of early humans, unlikely), killed by other humans (indicating social factors drove brain development), or less likely to reproduce (sexual selection). Bone marrow doesn't explain why there was selective pressure towards bigger brains, nor why it happened so rapidly and so recently, nor why other animals with similar diets haven't developed our level of intelligence.

Jared Diamond talks about this in great detail in "The Third Chimpanzee." So does Richard Dawkins in "The Ancestors Tale", Lewis Wolpert in "Six Impossible Things Before Breakfast," and Richard Forety in "Life." Diamond, Dawkins and Wolpert are all evolutionary biologists either at the top of their field, or were before retirement. All of them, again, contradict Dan's claim, which he is still yet to provide evidence for, other than citing the paper Allan posted that clearly doesn't provide any evidence for his claim, but also contradicts it.

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Post by BainbridgeShred » 22 Mar 2012 15:32

Lol the fact that you even have to state
Brains will not grow bigger just because they can, but because there is a selective advantage where animals with smaller brains reproduce less often than animals with bigger brains
Like it's some revelationary concept is pretty funny. Of course their were other selection pressures deciding for a bigger brain, remember when I posted this your benefit?
Lol... C'mon Jeremy... Of course evolutionary pressure had been selecting for bigger brains since the first Australopithecus' began walking around on two feet. Big jumps occurred with Homo habilis (Literally, handy-man) and Homo erectus, who are pretty closely related to Homo sapiens. So, lets compare brain sizes. Actually before we do let me clarify for the nit-picker trinity out there that big brain size does not necessarily = intelligence. Let me also mention that the figures below are averages, and that Archeology is a pretty soft science.

Chimpanzee: 400 cc

Homo habilis: 600 cc

Homo erectus: 1000 cc

Modern Homo sapien: 1300 cc
Now, the time difference between chimp and homo habilis is muuuuuuch greater than that between homo habilis and homo erectus, and yet we see a dramatic jump in brain size between habilis and erectus, and again between erectus and sapien. What gives? I'll also remind you that homo habilis means "handy man" due to the evidence that he was one of the first tool users, and thus probably one of the first hominids to have access to bone marrow and other meat sources. Now, as I've said repeatedly since Jeremy can't seem to appreciate it; there definitely were other feedback's playing into hominids growing brains, but before getting into those, one must account for the fact that a modern humans brain accounts for a much greater share of his or her metabolism than a habilis' brain did, and then one must ask where the nutritional surplus came from to allow for this energy expensive organ. Once that is established you can then get into talking about tools and language and the ways the could've affected brain growth.

You keep repeating yourself as if you were actually responding to my points. Where did the nutritional surplus necessary for such rapid brain growth come from?
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Post by Jeremy » 22 Mar 2012 17:54

What I can't appreciate, is why you keep saying you'll provide evidence that your claims are true, without actually doing so, and instead have relied only on misrepresenting the pop-science article that Allan posted, that doesn't support your claim at all.

If you've got no actual evidence, just say so. Your continued efforts at conflating the issues are clearly an attempt to avoid responding to the fact that you're just talking bullshit without any meaningful knowledge base.

This comes down again to my criticism of your original article, that it's ignorant of the science and so gets things wrong (in fact I just attended a talk by Professor Charles Krebs whose experiments completely demolish the idea that excluding carnivores from the African savannah would lead to any particularly noticeable decline or change in vegetation. In fact there has been a number experiment on this very issue and related issues - such as the Kenyan Longterm Exclusion Experiment (and many of the papers on that reference other exclusion experiments in Africa).

If you don't have a scientific knowledge base, the things you say will probably be wrong, and no amount of pontification and confabulation while change that. You can only demonstrate that you're not making stuff up by providing actual evidence - not showing that some people have come up with theory you've proposed, but that it's "widely accepted."

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Post by BainbridgeShred » 24 Mar 2012 14:06

hahaha Jeremy.

Where did the nutritional surplus necessary for such rapid brain growth come from?
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Post by Jeremy » 25 Mar 2012 01:35

Well according to the article you thought supported your claims, it came from genetic mutations leading to nutrients been used for brain power instead of muscle power. If a human eats a similar diet as a chimpanzee, are they still healthy? If so, why would early humans have needed a different diet?

Again, where is your evidence?

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Post by BainbridgeShred » 26 Mar 2012 08:52

"Healthy" is a relative term that has no place in any evolutionary discussion such as this. What you should be focused on is whether a change in diet from early hominids to later hominids conferred an increased level of fitness (Evolutionary fitness, my friend) to those later hominid groups that allowed them to replace their forebears.

it came from genetic mutations leading to nutrients been used for brain power instead of muscle power
You need to look into the difference between proximate and ultimate hypotheses, my friend. Hint: They are not mutually exclusive and indeed compliment each other! Good luck!
If a human eats a similar diet as a chimpanzee, are they still healthy? If so, why would early humans have needed a different diet?
Again, your use of the word "healthy" is very sophomoric for this discussion. But even still, your conclusion appears to be quite wrong. Could a human survive on the diet of a Chimpanzee? Probably for a certain amount of time, but he certainly would NOT be "healthy" because of it. Chimpanzee's forage for a lot of foods that are completely inedible to us aka bark/resin/leaves. Sure, I suppose a human could live off particular parts of a Chimp's diet (Meat, nuts, fruit) but they would not be as "healthy" as a human eating a more diverse diet.

Even comparing the diet of a Chimpanzee to an Australopithecus is pretty sophomoric. Just because an organism hasn't traditionally eaten a particular type of food source over its evolutionary history does not mean that it isn't able to greatly benefit by eating said new type of food.

Don't worry Jeremy, you'll get there eventually. But for now:

Where did the nutritional surplus necessary for such rapid brain growth come from?
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Post by Jeremy » 26 Mar 2012 14:44

BainbridgeShred wrote: You need to look into the difference between proximate and ultimate hypotheses, my friend. Hint: They are not mutually exclusive and indeed compliment each other! Good luck!
The phrase you're looking for is "proximate and ultimate causes."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proximate_ ... _causation

Clearly both the explanation from Allan's article and your explanation would be proximate causes, while the ultimate cause would be the evolutionary selection pressure. There are obviously a whole range of other possible proximate causes depending on whether some kind of trade off was actually necessary, or if merely the selection pressure was enough.

It seems pointless to respond to you, if you just make stuff up and don't understand what you're talking about. Yet again, I await evidence supporting your claims. If you respond to this post without evidence, that would obviously support my claim, that you're just making this up, and have no clue what you're talking about.

I note there's plenty of information on chimpanzee diets, and that bark and resin account for only a tiny portion of their diets at times when food is scarce. Leaves, of course, are still a major component of human diets too, even those that eat fast food. The majority of chimp diets are fruit, and they compliment it with a small amount of meat (mainly insects). Most importantly, their energy and nutritional requirements are comparable with humans. Obviously there are some differences, but they are within an order of magnitude. You understand that brain growth didn't occur in a single generation, but via genetic mutation and evolution right? The energy of requirements of humans as we evolved must be at their peak now, and lower earlier - unless the hypothesis Allan posted was correct, in which case they may have not changed. There's certainly no reason why they would have been higher when our brains were smaller (but "growing") as opposed to now.

This is an excellent book on the energy and nutrient requirements of primates;

http://www.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=9826&page=47

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Post by BainbridgeShred » 26 Mar 2012 15:19

You keep talking about Chimp diets as if the diet of a Chimpanzee is applicable to the specific conversation we're having. Chimpanzee's and Human's last shared a common ancestor 4-7 million years ago, and it's been demonstrated that an populations ability to adapt to a new food source can occur in MUCH quicker than that (Read: Lactose tolerance in certain humans). But again, you bringing up Chimp diet is an example of observational evidence anyways so who really cares right, Jeremy? I'm guilty of using it too in this argument so don't feel too bad; after all it's only an internet discussion. Getting you riled up comes third on my list of jobs after all, behind school and work. I'll post evidence on my own time when I have said time. Might be next week, might be two months from now. Until then, you continue to avoid answering this question:


Where did the nutritional surplus necessary for such rapid brain growth between homo erectus and homo sapien come from?
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Post by BainbridgeShred » 26 Mar 2012 19:29

Also, proximate and ultimate hypotheses are very much accepted terms, as you'd know if you had ever taken a animal behavior class.
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Post by Jeremy » 26 Mar 2012 21:56

I'm doing honours in biology, I've taken many animal behaviour classes. I've randomly picked up a zoology text book and can find two references in the index to "proximate causation" and two to "ultimate causation" but no references to "proximate hypothesis" or "alternate hypothesis."

The book is "Integrated Principles in Zoology" by Hickman, Roberts, Keen, Eisenhour, Larson, and l'Anson - 15th Edition. As I recall it's the first year zoology text book.

I've quickly grabbed 2 more books; Ecology (sixth edition) by Charles J Krebs, and Biology (8th edition, Australian version) by Campbell, Reece, and Meyers. Both have index references for proximate and ultimate causation, neither have references to primate and ultimate hypothesis.

Yet again I am providing references where you have none. A google search of those terms is also quite revealing, especially comparing google scholar results.

You really have no clue what you're talking about. Looking forward to some actual evidence to show otherwise.

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Post by BainbridgeShred » 27 Mar 2012 08:21

haha little Jeremy, trying to sound smart on semantics as usual. You realize you could say "ultimate hypothesis" or "proximate hypothesis" to any animal biologist and they'd understand immideatly what you meant, that is, if they weren't a nit-picky Australian with a well developed inferiority complex :P
Where did the nutritional surplus necessary for such rapid brain growth between homo erectus and homo sapien come from?
Any answers young Jeremy?
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Post by Jeremy » 27 Mar 2012 13:18

Until haven't provided any evidence that a "nutritional surplus" was necessary. If it was, it could have come from a huge range of places, most likely just eating more of the same diet.

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Post by Asmus » 28 Mar 2012 03:15

Not gonna get into you two lovers argument. But I think this is sort of related and I found it really interesting:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ckGB5lHyzME[/youtube]

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