Why didn't we evolve telepathy?

[betazed]

without going into a rigorous definition of telepathy let us just for now work with a workable definition. Any information transfer that happens from thought to thought that does not go the intermediate stage of sound waves or hand signals or pheromones etc.

So you have probably thought -> to some form of energy -> thought with nothing in between.

It is pretty obvious how this could have evolved. All you need is a (weak?) radio transmitter/emitter in your brain. Your thoughts get encoded into em waves and sent over and gets decoded on the other side. Should be pretty simple. Specifically because evolution has already figured out how to both send and receive em waves and decode them.

Also, this form of communication is highly efficient in terms of information carrying capacity and energy. In fact orders of magnitude more efficient than out vocal form of communication. Also it is obvious how this form of communication would provide for a considerable selective advantage. Thinking of this it leads me to premise that not only should it have cropped up earlier it should have convergently cropped up multiple times.

So why didn't it happen? Any thoughts?

 

[Erik Mesoy]

It got bred out during the Middle Ages, and intelligence nearly followed suit.

(Telepaths were burnt. Smart people became celibate.)

You could argue we are evolving it, but it's difficult.

 

[The Last Conformist]

The lack of anything it could be exapted from. Vocal communication hijacks systems that were intended to take in "raw" information from the environment (ears) and ones that acquired the capacity to create and modulate vocal sounds by accident of their construction (lungs, oral and nasal cavities, tongue, etc). There's not much in the way of an advantage to develop radio "hearing", since there's not alot of immediately interesting stuff that emits radio, and I can't think what kind of organ might plausibly be exapted as a radio emitter.

 

[Dr. Yoshi]

It would take up too much energy to use such a part of the brain and would ultimately limit our cognitive abilities.

 

[Akka]

Well, I can see several reasons :

- Simple bad luck.
- It's too complex.
- It's inefficient.
- It's on the way.
- Dolphins and bats did.

 

[The Last Conformist]

It would take up too much energy to use such a thing which would ultimately limit our cognitive abilities.

Hardly. Radiowaves are very low-energy. It should if anything use less energy than vocal speech.

 

[The Last Conformist]

Well, I can see several reasons :

- It's inefficient.

How?

- Dolphins and bats did.

No, they didn't. They use a "sonar" system, utilizing soundwaves.

 

[Akka]

How?

I don't know. I just listed possible reasons. For what we know, telepathy did perhaps evolve in a previous species, and was inefficient and was selected out.

No, they didn't. They use a "sonar" system, utilizing soundwaves.

Well, yes, but that can be considered as a form of telepathy, just like radiowaves.

 

[IglooDame]

Perhaps it is actually a negative survival trait. If I was sending my thoughts telepathically then people would long ago have beat me to a pulp for mentally expressing my opinions of them that would not have been communicated verbally. If I was recieving others' thoughts I would have committed suicide long ago having despaired of the lack of common sense or intelligence among my fellow humans.

 

[Caranamrta]

@Mesoy - you beat me to it. I wanted to post exactly that! Artificial selection against telepathy!

@betazed

There are also very few living beings who can communicate complexly via visible light. Although it seems to be easier to emit visible light than to emit infrared or radio rays (at least more living beings emit visible light than radio wawes), it's still not too frequent. None of the users are higher vertebrates.

Either it isn't so useful or it just didn't happened. There would be many mutations needed in a vertebrate for a telepathic organ to evolve. An emitter, a decoder, the necessary connection with other parts of the brain; the metabolism needed to feed it with energy; it seems that the disadvantages are stronger.

(Off-topic: there is selection against intelligence among blackbirds in Berlin, Germany. Male blackbirds with higher memory can learn the tunes of cellular telephones - but it doesn't attract the female, so clever birds die without offspring.)

 

[Mark1031]

I have to go with ID's view. It would be difficult to evolve mechanisms to target your radio waves to selective individuals while keeping it from others. Everyone knowing your thoughts would not lead to the formation of stable societies and the advantages that derive from that. Also, evolution is not over so we're not optimized. In addition, evolution invariably adapts that which is useful for other purposes. Thus, we are aerobic creatures and take in large amounts of atmospheric oxygen. This is highly advantageous and leads to a tube in which air is continually passing in and out. It is a very small step to add a few flaps of tissue to make noise out of this. Much easier than it is to develop an organ that coherently captures ongoing neuronal activity and transforms it into a radio signal and to simultaniously develop an organ which receives external radio signals and transforms those into the appropriate patterns of neuronal activity.

 

[betazed]

Just wanted to clarify the fact of efficiency.

firstly, in terms of raw energy we use a decent amount when we talk. far more than a low frequency radio wave.

Even if that were not the case Nyquist theorem tells us that since rf waves frequency is so much higher than sound waves it would carry so much more information.

as far as complexity is concerned, I doubt that can be an argument. a radio is hardly a complex intrument. Evolution has managed a more complex instrument than a simple radio. For example, platypus can actually make a 3d map of its surroundings with no more than em waves. encoding signals by fm on a carrier wave is child's play compared to that.

@tlc: you suggestion of a lack of organ from which this can be exapted seems interesting. However, i am not convinced that everything needs to arise out of exaptation. {I can ask how did human vocal communication evolve? What did it exapt from?}

@Caranamrata: I can imagine why commucation with visible light can not evolve. First, it is problematic in that it always requires line of sight. second since we use visible light for vision, the signal-to-noise ratio for the brain would be very high.

As for the many mutations required for telepathy, you must also consider almost the same number of mutations are required for vocal communication. You need an encoder, a decoded, an emiitter a reciver etc. In fact it is more complex since the reciver and emitter uses completely different technology. {The physics of the ear is diffferent than that of the vocal chord}. For telepathy the emitter and the reciver are exactly the same. an antenna with an amplifier circuit.

 

[betazed]

I have to go with ID's view. It would be difficult to evolve mechanisms to target your radio waves to selective individuals while keeping it from others. Everyone knowing your thoughts would not lead to the formation of stable societies and the advantages that derive from that.

Hmm... I thought of that too. But it does not work.

Our vocal communication is also not directed. When we talk althouhg we face someone and direct our sound energy primarily to that person there is a lot of leak. Anybody around can hear us.

Also, we can do that too with radio waves. all we need is a directional antenna.

this is pretty much the same as what tlc said. I think you are underestimating the amount of hardware it takes to decode sound waves. You have to formulate the thought (same as in telepathy). Then convert into a waveform of energy which is pumped into the vocal chords (simpler in telepathy). On the receiving side you need a totally different set of hardware (not required in telepathy).

 

[IglooDame]

(Off-topic: there is selection against intelligence among blackbirds in Berlin, Germany. Male blackbirds with higher memory can learn the tunes of cellular telephones - but it doesn't attract the female, so clever birds die without offspring.)

One could argue that a few females will like the new tunes and that the (collectively presumably smarter) offspring will out-survive those of the dumber/non-tune-liking birds, such that the capability of learning cellular tunes will eventually spread out through the blackbird population. Ironically, it would appear to be the exact opposite in the human population, with respect to commercial jingles.

 

[col]

We dont have the right kind electrical system. Nerves carry messages too slowly to be able to produce oscillators at the required frequencies. If we tried to use very low frequencies, we'd run into wavelength problems with our transmitting and receiving aerials.

 

[MOTH]

I'll go with the "negative surival trait" theory.

Back to the basics, lets assume that 2 traits are necessary - a transmitter and a reciever. Lets also assume that they can evolve separately, or at least be inheirited separately.

Now lets look at what "thoughts" are going to be transmitted? I assume that this is not just conscous thought, but also the primitives, especially pain.

So, if someone is transmitting pain, how will it be interpreted by someone with a reciever?

Will they experience pain by having the same neural structures stimulated? If yes, then that's going to be bad if they are attacked by the person's thought in a fight situtation with a transmitter. I punch you and we both stagger from the pain. This would select against the reciever.

If instead the reciever can filter the pain somehow, then they could instead use this to attack wounded creatures. This would select out the transmitters.

Perhaps a reciever baby couldn't even survive the pain a transmitter mother goes through in labor.

Animals (with people slightly less so) will tend to avoid something that hurts them. I think this would cause any reciever to become anti-social and less likely to reproduce due to the negative feedback loop of pain.

 

[Pirate]

I would think that such a system would have to evolve from our eyes, since our eyes (and primitive eyespots from which they evolved) are the only parts of us that have evolved to detect electromagnetic radiation. Our eyes evolved to be most efficient at picking up the wavelengths that the sun puts out most abundantly. If telepathy were possible it should happen at a visible light wavelength. Why? Consider that telepathy were to happen at a wavelength outside of the visible range. Then eyes that were more sensitive to that range would be less sensitive to visible light, and being telepathic but blind probably afforded less advantage at the early stage than being non-telepathic with good vision. So if telepathy were to happen in the visible light range, then most things on this planet would absorb, reflect, or block it, and the sunlight would overwhelm it.

This is part of a theory. I'll keep thinking about it.

 

[betazed]

We dont have the right kind electrical system. Nerves carry messages too slowly to be able to produce oscillators at the required frequencies. If we tried to use very low frequencies, we'd run into wavelength problems with our transmitting and receiving aerials.

That seems to be the most plausible explation and that's what I initially thought.

Although, I can argue that nerves do not really have to create the signal. They only have to modulate it. Hence they can still be low frequency. The signal can be created by any biological device that can create rf waves at a constant frequency. Is such a device infeasible? What exactly do the platypus use?

 

[betazed]

@MOTH: You do not speak out every thought that you have, do you? So why assume that if you have telepathy you would transmit every emotion and thought.

@Pirate: I would have thought that if telepathy were to happen it will not happen at the visible light range. The signal to noise ratio is overwhelmingly against. Plus it would always require line of sight.

 

[Pirate]

Do platypus actually send out the electric signal like sonar? Or do they merely detect other animals' electric signal? (like sharks do?)