Nonsense.
Neurology has proven numerous times that it’s not about the size of the toolbox but the diversity of tools within. The articles starts with cats can’t talk. Human can talk because we have a unique brain component dedicated to auditory speech parsing. Cats do, however, appear to listen to the other aspects of human communication almost, sometimes much more, precisely than many humans.
The reason size does not matter is that 20% of brain volume accounts for 80% of brain mass in the cerebellum. That isn’t the academic or creative part of the brain. Instead it processes things like motor function, sensory processing (not vision), and more.
The second most intelligent class of animals are corvids and their brains are super tiny. If you want to be smarter then increase your processing diversity, not capacity.
>If you want to be smarter then increase your processing diversity, not capacity.
And efficiency. Some of this is achieved by having dedicated and optimal circuits for a particular type of signal processing.
The original GPU vs CPU.
Well, start destroying that existing substrate and it certainly has effects. Maybe in the near future (as there is work here already), we will find a way to supplement an existing human brain with new neurons in a targeted way for functional improvements.
> The second most intelligent class of animals are corvids ...
Not the psittacines? Admittedly, I've heard less about tool use by parrots than by corvids. And "more verbal" is not the same as "more intelligent".
right, people claiming that measuring brain weight has something to do with some dubious intelligence metric is phrenology
IIR, being obsessed with brain size & weight overlaps with phrenology, but is a distinct (and generally simpler) set of beliefs.
But both have very long and dubious reputations. And the article's failure to mention or disclaim either is (IMO) a rather serious fault.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phrenology
He doesn't literally mean physically larger brains, he means brains with more connections.