Get Smarter - The Atlantic (July/August 2009)
For a period of 2 million years, ending with the last ice age around 10,000 B.C., the Earth experienced a series of convulsive glacial events. This rapid-fire climate change meant that humans couldn’t rely on consistent patterns to know which animals to hunt, which plants to gather, or even which predators might be waiting around the corner.
How did we cope? By getting smarter. The neurophysiologist William Calvin argues persuasively that modern human cognition—including sophisticated language and the capacity to plan ahead—evolved in response to the demands of this long age of turbulence. According to Calvin, the reason we survived is that our brains changed to meet the challenge: we transformed the ability to target a moving animal with a thrown rock into a capability for foresight and long-term planning. In the process, we may have developed syntax and formal structure from our simple language.
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According to these people, the planet is a highly sensitive system, that needs to be controlled centrally by super smart government scientists and monitored 24/7 by their supercomputers. Every cloud, every sunshine, any fractional temperature change, could mean a catastrophe unless we recognize it and "intervene" immediately to restore earth's "balance".
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