The cooperation hypothesis is somewhat falsified by the fact that tigers (solitary hunters) have significantly larger encephalization than lions (group hunters).
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original question was, "why are humans smart?" humans have one of the highest encephalization quotients, so clearly it has something to do with being smart.
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Yes I was supporting the argument that at first glance, cooperation doesn’t seem like a universal driver of brain/intelligence growth
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another interesting thing is -- great apes are probably the most intelligent clade among mammals overall. Yet orangutans (mostly solitary) are almost as intelligent as chimps (with some reports of orangs surpassing chimps on some specific tasks).
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I guess sociality can be a catalyst in propitious circumstances and a crutch in others.
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Yeah that’s where John Hawks landed in his write-up of the paper on association of encephalization w/ self-control/dietary breadth - that in humans cultural learning/cooperation would have escalated diverse foraging, specialized toolmakinghttp://johnhawks.net/weblog/reviews/brain/maclean-brain-size-self-control-2014.html …
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