What are the primary drivers that caused selection pressure for intelligence in humans?

post by Towards_Keeperhood (Simon Skade) · 2024-11-07T09:40:20.275Z · LW · GW · No comments

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I just read the wikipedia article on the evolution of human intelligence, and TBH I wasn't super impressed with the quality of the considerations there.

I currently have 3 main (categories of) hypotheses for what caused selection pressure for intelligence in humans. (But please post an answer if you have other hypotheses that seem plausible!):

("H" for "hypothesis")

• H1: social dynamics
  • H1a: The Marchiavellian Intelligence hypothesis (which i think might be the same as the ecological dominance-social competition (EDSC)): Selection pressure for being better at modelling other human minds and predicting them to be better at outwitting others^[1].
  • H1b: Pressure for being better able to communicate with conspecifics. (?)
  • H1c: Other social dynamics like smarter people being more charming. (?)
• H2: ability to deploy more advanced (cooperative) hunting strategies
  • Note: I don't mean group selection but that being better at cooperative hunting might translate into higher status which translates into higher genetic fitness.
• H3: tool use, e.g. being more skilled at wielding a spear for defeating animals (or winning fights with other humans)

My prior intuitive guess would be that H1 seems quite a decent chunk more likely than H2 or H3. However, there's a possibly very big piece of evidence for H3: Humans are both the smartest land animals and have the best interface for using tools, and that would seem like a suspicious coincidence.

Any pieces of evidence or considerations are welcome, even if you don't have something close to a full answer!

(A main motivation for why I ask this is evaluating whether orcas might be smarter than humans [LW · GW]. (Where it seems to me like orcas have selection pressure for H1 and H2 but not H3.) So if you have more relevant considerations for that, e.g. why being selected on tool use in particular might cause human brains to generalize for being good at abstract problem solving, those would also be very appreciated!)

1. ^{^}

   The outwitting (e.g. cheating by having sex with someone of higher status while getting away with your spouse raising the child) could happen sub-consciously and would not necessarily need to be reflectively endorsed as what the person thinks are their values/desires.

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