Ricardo Cruz

Oh, I missed that. That was hilarious actually. I guess I read your comment too rapidly. (Who do I want to fool, my IQ just hasn't kept up. )

Just to clarify something. I wrote a lot on evolution, so someone that doesn't read me closely may interpret me as being in favor of such explanations. No. Evolution tends to happen in "islands" of people first, not in such broad, worldwide terms (and only then those characterists get spread through inter-breeding). It seems pretty clear IQ rising is caused by prosperity. Dispite our complains about modern nutrition, about pesticides, and etc, the fact is that we eat more and better than any other human generation before us. It's not surprising therefor our body develops higher heights, better skin, bigger brains, longer longevity, etc than the generations before us. I personally think food explains most of this phenomena actually, but I don't know much about it. I wouldn't be surprised that the information we are bombarded with may also help in our reasoning growth. People like to complaint about stuff like advertisements, but it's possible even such things make us smarter. It develops our sense of skepticism, our analytical capabilities, etc. Even false advertisement -- like in my days, Sega showing images taken from the Master System (Genesis for Americans) for their portable Game Gear commercials -- as a kid, that gets you thinking into motivations, etc. If a child gets disappointed by a toy she bought because of an ad, maybe that helps in her intellectual growth too. And I think even passive sources like TV shows are probably sources of cerebral stimulation too, besides what people like to say. I think schooling is overrated, and we spent far too much time of our lives in those labor camps, but obviously those help too.

I side with J-William, and I would point out that chimps are involved in relatively constant group warfare, as well as hierarchal struggles within the group, yet we don't see their IQ rising. By the way, it is pretty well agreed that we developed such massive brains as a result of mate selection. Such like the peacock has developed such large and beautiful tails, we developed our love for poetry, philosophy, analogies, etc in order to impress females. A good popular book on that is the Red Queen. Of course, that won't help us much in predicting the future of our species -- it's very much possible that some other form of selection is operative now. [/font] But evolutionary explanations are pretty complicated to conjecture. Let me point one something biologists stress constantly: saying that (for example) bigger brains are beneficial isn't enough to explain why we evolved them (or in predicting the future of ours and other species). Why? First, there are the associated costs: in the case of brains, they require a lot of fuel (ie. food), they also require that either females develop a bigger pelvis (and compromise running), or that infants take longer post-natal development time, which requires more attention and energy from the parents, etc. Even if bigger brains were a net bargain when considered in isolation, you've to look at what they call the "economy of the body". If energy gets consumed by the brain, it cannot be consumed to make you bigger muscles, to decrease your sleeping time, to increase your stamina, etc. Some creationists say that because we can select in laboratory for some feature, say, mice with less tooth decay (ie. stronger teeth), and in a matter of generations, we can greatly reduce tooth decay incidence in mice, then that disproves evolution. Obviously, they say, if tooth decay is a bad thing, why hasn't nature selected for stronger teeth already. Well, the thing is that to get calcium for the teeth, mice will have to increase their food intake, which risks their survival, etc. Furthermore, instead of using that extra calcium for the teeth, why don't they use it to make some bones stronger? Or transform it for other usage?

BTW, here is an awesome online resource for students (from pre-school to college): http://www.khanacademy.org/ The author quited his job, as a hedge fund analyst, to come up with all those videos. (Sounds familar?) Bill Gates talks about it somewhere -- I think in the event from which the photo was taken in that article (it's on youtube -- will find a link if you want). Strangely, the videos (you only hear his voice and him working on the problem) work pretty well. There are some interactive problems in the website too.