Fun fact: Neanderthals actually had larger brains than Homo Sapiens! Modern humans are thought to have outcompeted them by working better together in larger groups, but in terms of actual individual intelligence, Neanderthals may have had us beat. Similarly, humans have been undergoing a process of self-domestication over the last couple millenia that have resulted in physiological changes that include a smaller brain size - again, our advantage over our wilder forebearers remains that we're better in larger social groups than they were and are better at shared symbolic reasoning and synchronized activity, not necessarily that our brains are more capable.
reply(No, none of this changes that if you make an LLM larp a caveman it's gonna act stupid, you're right about that.)
I thought we were way past the "bigger brain means more intelligence" stage of neuroscience?
replyBigger brain does not automatically mean more intelligence, but we have reasons to suspect that homo neanderthalensis may have been more intelligent than contemporary homo sapiens other than bigger brains.
replyAll data shows there's a moderate correlation.
replyYou can't draw conclusions on individuals, but at a species level bigger brain, especially compared to body size, strongly correlates with intelligence
replyEven neuronal density is simplistic, and the dimension of size alone doesn't consider that.
replyModern humans were also cavemen.
replyThis is why ancient Chinese scholar mode (also extremely terse) is better.
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