On Ben Balzer's email:

I read the core point that competing intelligence of a species is a
factor in selection for gain in intelligence.

I must add: I've read that some sociologists claim actual fertility
of our highest mental level functioning citizens is lower than
average.  We note that professional workers tend to have smaller
numbers of children than average.

Dick
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[..]

Was the stress other carnivores?  No.  No other animal was a real
threat to a band of humans (and dogs).  It certainly wasn't a hole in
the ozone layer.

The stress was, quite simply, OTHER HUMANS.

The fact that we are homicidal is the underlying stress that caused
our intelligence to keep on evolving: there is a survival advantage
in being smarter than the next human.  The evolutionary force was not
being better able to survive the environment, it was in being better
able to survive attack from other humans.

[..]


Perhaps competitive is the point, 'homicidal' might be 1 avenue of
competition.  Modern wild carnivore studies show considerable
homicidal behavior: lions kill cheetah cubs, new lion males kill
young cubs of previous pride lions, lions & hyena kill each others'
cubs etc.  Carnivores rarely or never eat cubs they kill: the
behavior is competition, not feeding.  Also new family boss male
gorilla often kill young offspring of replaced males.  All this
perhaps selects for the genetic material of the new males; keeps the
probably genetically transmitted instinct alive in the gene pool.

Napoleon Chagnon's studies among the Yanomamo pretty much fit this
model.  Some modern deconstructionists have discredited Chagnon; I
suspect he's right.  _L_A_Times_ had an article on Chagnon recently.

Dick