Hello dear friends,
Many thanks to the Admins of this great site and all of the kind people who have contributed help.
My problem concerns how to reduce a conceptual problem in evolutionary biology or perhaps, cognitive psychology, to a mathematical expression.
Imagine the following situation: A young human mother tens of thousands of years ago is digging in a field for tubers, accompanied by her young infant. She hears a distant rustle in the grass and sees a lioness creeping slowly toward her. Let's call this situation, an 'interaction.' It is an interaction between the individual human and its environment, in this case, a life and death matter. As such, it is relevant to natural selection. The human mother must act. Her first thought is fear for her own life and that of her infant. She has a certain amount of brain power, or intelligence or cognitive capacity ('c'). In general, it is the cognitive capacity of her species, but of course there is variation among the individuals comprising her species. Let us set aside this variation for the moment. Think of cognitive capacity as computing power, such as the megahertz of a computer CPU. Meanwhile, all of the above information the mother has to process in order to act within the time she has is 'i.' The time within which she must act is 't.'
So we have three variables:
c = the cognitive capacity of the mother
i = the information that the mother must process
t = the time within which the mother must process that information
It seems clear that there is an inverse relationship between c and i. So I keep feeling this relationship must be similar to the gravity equation I learned ages ago, or F - Gm1m2/r^2. But I sense this is the wrong approach. I can't figure out how to place t. What I'm struggling with is how to express the relationship among these three variables mathematically.
I hope some kind person can help!
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Note: This isn't relevant to my question but I define 'intelligence' in the present context as the sum total (enhanced by the synergy) of instinct, neural processing power, the extent and accuracy of the cognitive model the individual has acquired over the course of its life (its knowledge), and heuristic knowledge (gut feeling arising from experience).
Sorry for any spelling errors.
Many thanks to the Admins of this great site and all of the kind people who have contributed help.
My problem concerns how to reduce a conceptual problem in evolutionary biology or perhaps, cognitive psychology, to a mathematical expression.
Imagine the following situation: A young human mother tens of thousands of years ago is digging in a field for tubers, accompanied by her young infant. She hears a distant rustle in the grass and sees a lioness creeping slowly toward her. Let's call this situation, an 'interaction.' It is an interaction between the individual human and its environment, in this case, a life and death matter. As such, it is relevant to natural selection. The human mother must act. Her first thought is fear for her own life and that of her infant. She has a certain amount of brain power, or intelligence or cognitive capacity ('c'). In general, it is the cognitive capacity of her species, but of course there is variation among the individuals comprising her species. Let us set aside this variation for the moment. Think of cognitive capacity as computing power, such as the megahertz of a computer CPU. Meanwhile, all of the above information the mother has to process in order to act within the time she has is 'i.' The time within which she must act is 't.'
So we have three variables:
c = the cognitive capacity of the mother
i = the information that the mother must process
t = the time within which the mother must process that information
It seems clear that there is an inverse relationship between c and i. So I keep feeling this relationship must be similar to the gravity equation I learned ages ago, or F - Gm1m2/r^2. But I sense this is the wrong approach. I can't figure out how to place t. What I'm struggling with is how to express the relationship among these three variables mathematically.
I hope some kind person can help!
------------------------------------------------
Note: This isn't relevant to my question but I define 'intelligence' in the present context as the sum total (enhanced by the synergy) of instinct, neural processing power, the extent and accuracy of the cognitive model the individual has acquired over the course of its life (its knowledge), and heuristic knowledge (gut feeling arising from experience).
Sorry for any spelling errors.