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Comment by HPsquared | Hacker News Reader

That's another thing with humans: massive diversity. Some are 10x stronger than others for example, or 10x better memory. There's such a wide variety. I wonder if any other species is as varied. I think this variation, combined with the ability to socially cooperate (language) makes us naturally evolved for the efficient division of labour. A group with diverse abilities has a few superstar specialists in each field who can lift the whole group via cooperation. The ability to cooperate shifts the risk:reward ratio of the species for this kind of risk-taking.

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In most other species the weaker, less able individuals are brutally weeded out by predation or starvation. Humans don't do that anymore so you see a lot wider variation in strength, beauty, ability, etc.

> That's another thing with humans: massive diversity. Some are 10x stronger than others for example, or 10x better memory.

The sentiment variety on HN is, however, not so diverse.

Disagree. We are much less diverse than many other species.

We are a social species so we pay more attention to one another. We are also pattern-seekers. Combine these traits and we have humans seeing magnified differences in other humans.

Recently I was struck by the fact that some people have an internal monologue and others don't, and some people can see vivid images in their mind and some can't see anything at all. These seem like very dramatic differences to me.

I'm skeptical that we are less diverse than other species. In a herd in nature, exposed to the wild, exposed to predators and food scarcity, there is not much room for diversity: you must be able to survive. In human society, on the other hand, we live in an artificial environment insulated from those risks, and where any number of skills are sufficient for survival: you can be funny, musical, logical, artistic, patient and caring, mathematical, strong, good at fighting etc.

Yeah but selective evolution lags behind right now by what, 10,000 years if not more? What I mean our selected traits are stil mostly from hunters/gatherers/early farming era.

Those survival risk were and in some places still are present, stronger would simply have higher survival chances compared to weaker. Those skills you list wouldnt matter that much 4000 years ago in most cases, not on survival level.

Physiologically we seem to be fairly consistent (especially given our relative complexity to a lot of other animals). Mentally? There's an incredible variety of aptitudes both in direction and magnitude. I suspect part of this might just be that we're a relatively 'new' species, and neurologically we've evolved so fast that the results are still a little random.

Regarding relative physiological complexity, I would argue that we are physiologically as complex as any other large, omnivorous mammal. There is nothing special about humans in that regard.

Our randomness might actually be adaptive given the complexity of our societies. There is nothing close among other animals.

Humanity went through a genetic bottleneck about 70K years ago. As a result, there is more genetic diversity in a troop of chimpanzees than in all of the employees of Google.

So it depends how you define "diversity". I can see how from your view (range of life choices) humans today are more diverse than most species. However, if you go back not so long ago, there are species of ants with more worker roles (40+)than your typical midieval village.

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