I've actually heard it posited that, below a certain age (said age was not defined, but was understood to be below the age of anyone in the conversation (As I was distinctly the youngest person there, it may have been meant to mean older than me, but younger than everyone else..)) intelligence is not a pro-survival trait.
This was in the context of a friend's child evidently having found a thermite recipe on the web, and deciding to give it a try. All of us said things like "Well, I didn't have net access as a kid, or, yeah, I could see my insane child-self doing that."
All of which is to say that I think you might be under-selling "growing up barely takes brains."
well, yeah, that's the point. If the kid had been dumb as a post he would probably have never felt the need to make it. Failing that, he either wouldn't have made it correctly, or would have been unable to ignite it.
But no, this kid knew how to manage all of that (and to hide it from his parents), and enough to set it off on a boulder. However, he didn't anticipate that the boulder would stay hot after the thermite is done. He was crawling onto the boulder to investigate when his parents found him and the smoking hole in the boulder...
Thus, IQ is arguably counter survival, and thus you can strengthen "growing up barely takes brains." to "Managing to grow up might be a weak indicator of lack of brains."
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Now, remember that about half the population is dumber than that.
I often wonder how our species has managed to make it this far...
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Figuring out currency conversions, now, *that* takes brains. ;-)
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This was in the context of a friend's child evidently having found a thermite recipe on the web, and deciding to give it a try. All of us said things like "Well, I didn't have net access as a kid, or, yeah, I could see my insane child-self doing that."
All of which is to say that I think you might be under-selling "growing up barely takes brains."
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And who didn't try to make thermite after that McGuyver episode? I mean, really.
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But no, this kid knew how to manage all of that (and to hide it from his parents), and enough to set it off on a boulder. However, he didn't anticipate that the boulder would stay hot after the thermite is done. He was crawling onto the boulder to investigate when his parents found him and the smoking hole in the boulder...
Thus, IQ is arguably counter survival, and thus you can strengthen "growing up barely takes brains." to "Managing to grow up might be a weak indicator of lack of brains."
Sorry for any confusion.