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Tripolye OP wrote

I think civilisation may be causing our brains to shrink.

Pre-civilised people had to deal with reality in its complexity. Civilised people deal with categories/concepts instead. Concepts are much simpler than reality.

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Bezotcovschina wrote

Indeed. But, I would like to point out that, when we are talking about something such complex as a homo sapiens brain, bigger not necessary means better. We really can't (and shouldn't) say that 20 000 years ago humans were smarter, because their brains were bigger.

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willow wrote

attributing cognitive ability to brain size leads to some unfortunate conclusions given that, on average, women's brains are smaller than men's brains; if there were a connection, that would mean men were more able to deal with "complexity" than women. as far as i know, there is no actual evidence that this is the case.

i don't know why this article spends so long on the hypothesis that "human brains got smaller because civilisation let stupid people survive". that seems like a pretty fringe idea.

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