Path: utzoo!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!sun-barr!lll-winken!uunet!mcsun!ukc!servax0!csc2!scotp
From: scotp@csc2.essex.ac.uk (Scott P D)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: AI - the real problem
Message-ID: <4850@servax0.essex.ac.uk>
Date: 5 Mar 91 14:53:25 GMT
References: <1473@ucl-cs.uucp> <4083@aipna.ed.ac.uk>
Sender: news@servax0.essex.ac.uk
Reply-To: scotp@essex.ac.uk (Scott P D)
Organization: University of Essex, Colchester, UK
Lines: 28

In article <4083@aipna.ed.ac.uk> cam@aipna.ed.ac.uk (Chris Malcolm) writes:
>Don't forget that the evolution of the human brain size has to run
>parallel with the evolution of the female hips. In other words, our
>brain size is a compromise between the advantages of a big brain, and
>the disadvantages of the brain damage that afflicts at least some due
>the difficulty of getting the big head out. Brains would keep getting
>bigger until the effects of the hip bottleneck nullified the advantage.
>The next increment in cleverness would then be produced by wider or more
>flexible female hips, and the cycle would begin again.  
>
That is until some particularly smart combination of chromosomes stumbles
across the idea that it isn't really necessary to build the complete
brain before birth.  There is no reason why the development of the
neural circuitry should not continue for some time in the neonate.

This is in fact what seems to have happened.  It is one reason why the
average human cannot even crawl when 3 months old yet the average calf
is able to follow the herd after only a few hours.  Clearly this
strategy for producing a larger brain is only possible in a species
that provides a great deal of post natal care.  Possibly there is a
threshold brain size for this to be possible, and it would be this that
determined how large the pelvic opening needed to be.

So I am afraid your vision of eternally widening female hips is not
to be.  Sorry if I have ruined a good fantasy.


Paul Scott, Dept Computer Science, University of Essex, Colchester, UK.