Tag Archives: Humanity

In Douglas Adams’ book (volume one in the trilogy of four) we learn, among other things: Towels are particularly useful for interstellar travelers on a shoestring. It’s not clear whether humans conduct experiments on mice or vice versa. The answer to Life, Universe, and Everything is “forty-two” as Deep Thought found after an extended period (seven and a half million years) of number crunching. But what is the question? To find out, an even more powerful computer was built: The Earth....

The Economist reports about research by Steven Piantadosi and Celeste Kidd from the University of Rochester who tried to explain why humans tend to be intelligent. Their answer: Because human babies are extraordinarily helpless when compared with other animals. … human infants take a year to learn even to walk, and need constant supervision for many years afterwards [indeed]. That helplessness is thought to be one consequence of intelligence—or, at least, of brain size. In order to keep...