I've almost completely rethought my views on animal cognition after trying to observe our cat as a fundamentally rational agent
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mammals at least. Invertebrata are mostly hardwired even if they can learn (C. elegans can, with 302 neurons!), dunno about other vertebrata
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I'm being correctly told that existence of crows and octopuses complicates things a lot
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theory: rational problem solving is comparatively *easy* compared to most of what our brain does and can be done with a much smaller brain
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countertheory: rational problem solving is one aspect of cognition that is emphasized in species or individuals when there's pressure for it
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yes, exactly. it's only something that is optimized for when it's necessary. *when optimized for*, it does not require much computation mass
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further hypothesis: imagine a human-like intelligence specifically designed to not have infrastructure for maintaining/using a body
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e.g. EVE Online pod pilot, etc. someone who can think and communicate, but does not need to use arms.
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i would hypothesize that you could make such a brain 10x smaller without making that person less intelligent.
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yes - although the documented case that comes to mind works in a different direction rifters.com/crawl/?p=6116