Evolution of the human brain: when bigger is better

[ai_vin]

Interesting.

But most of your issues with the Highbrow brain weren't that it's heavy. Your issues were based on it being large - that the distances between some neurons were too great.

[extherian]

Even this issue can be managed. It depends on what the neurons in the peripheral region were doing. They might be useful if they could work on a task that doesn't directly involve intimate communication with the rest of the brain, like idea incubation.

My point about the extra cortical layers being used for autosentience ties in with this. The brain being excessively large isn't necessarily a problem in itself, but it would be interesting to think critically about how it's structured and what the different areas are used for. Our own brains have many specialised areas, and a Highbrow brain would have even more, specialised in aspects of thought that might otherwise be difficult for bionts to adequately grasp.

Another idea I had for a proper Highbrow subclade would be a 'Lumbrow'. Highbrows who migrated to the Red Star 'M'pire could easily get around the challenges of a big brain by adopting the Lum mod, allowing their nervous system to operate at the speed of light. This totally bypasses the latency challenges we discussed and allows for even greater mental flexibility, perhaps even full Transapience.

[Avalancheon]

In the last few years, there have been major steps in understanding how our species gained such remarkable mental powers.

One such work was The Human Advantage: How Our Brains Became Remarkable. The Bayesian Investor did a brief review of this book, if anyone is interested.