How We Got Smart

 An account of evolution from a (feedback) systems viewpoint.

Species as systems.  It is a given that adaptable species are the most successful and that sometimes more the adaptable species exhibit greater intelligence.  To adapt requires more than instinct.  It requires a problem-solving capacity to comprehend survival options and make survival decisions.  So, if an adaptable species is stressed, it must solve survival problems.  Many, if not most species can do have and done this.  Availability of food sources is significant. In many species, we see local adaptability to local conditions.  This means non-cognitive solutions are found. Perhaps adaptability involves a modified method of hunting  or food gathering. Or it could involve a reactive change to climate or a need for protection. The tripod of survival: food, protection, and reproduction, are the progenitors of adaptation.  Pleasure, convenience, and comfort are not.

View any species as a system.  It has states, such as what it does to encourage its continuation, but it also has system parameters (including memes and genes), which together with experience help to regulate how it reacts to current and especially novel situations.  For example, suppose the leading prey, say the wildebeest, of the lion were suddenly endowed with a far greater sense of hearing.  Could the lion respond with an alternation of hunting techniques or change to another prey?  Possibly. Suppose, and suggested by climate change, its principle prey availability, the seal, was lost to the polar bear.  Could it find a food substitute?  Possibly not. For the latter, the systemic parameters are under true survival stress. 

We say only stresses cause or result in systemic changes, sometimes toward extinction.  The process may require many if not thousands of generations, and importantly with many failed starts.  For example, it is more than likely the apes came from the trees to the plains many times before it succeeded.

Now the How.  However, to get smart requires more than an adaptation to one stress or two.  Now comes the point! It requires a time series of stresses of increasing severity, each step leading to slightly more complex or difficult adaptations.  This implies a highly unlikely sequence of events tuned exactly to the given species for its evolution.   Thus, increasingly difficult problems must be solved, and therefore an increasingly diverse cognitive demand is required.  However, in a world of increasing stresses, other species will be unable to adapt and may be extinguished.  This cascades. The extinguishing of species, or food sources, requires even further adaptation.  The net result can be an intelligent species, like us.  It also accounts for omnivorous and successful species willing to take nourishment in many forms. Bears and honey badgers furnish two examples. 

To the converse, no stresses required no cognitive or other adaptive demand, imply no improvement or generally change.  The oceans, which seem to have been invariant (mostly) over millions of years furnish a single environment, with many species unchanging over millions and millions of years.  

If all this is true, then for the dominant smart species, like us, what is in our future?

It could be we are as smart as we’re going to get.  Why?  It is unlikely that man will get smarter under the current “easy” conditions.  There is no need, no demand.  We are now living with a brain adapted to solve circumstantial problems of long ago.  Indeed, we are currently exploring the capacity and full measure of our problem-solving skills as developed thousands of years ago.  It seems capable of solving all problems.  

Selective breeding might seem to be the only way to improve our state, though this probably only increases the density of smart people. On the other hand, if it can be demonstrated we are getting smarter (need to closely define what this means), there could be another, alternative, evolutionary process at work.  Yet, the question remains. Why would we be getting smarter? In fact, with all our tools now automatic, it seems we could be getting dumber.  Or could be we are losing our ability toward adaptability? 

What happens if there are no stresses on a species?  Still genetic changes occur.  Yet, these changes are not necessarily successful if not needed or not beneficial.  Thus they fail.  This is to say, changes can take place but not work in any manner.  Over time fewer genetic-trial changes will happen. This seems to be the case with our oceans:  too little changes, stresses, requiring adaptation.  Hence, in the oceans species unchanged for millions of years are abundant.

Note.  The above discussion is what is called plausibility science.  That is, science mixed with facts and conjectures to arrive at a reasonable conclusion.