All life on earth falls on the r to K evolutionary continuum. r strategists are organisms like snakes that have lots of babies but little parental care. K strategists are organisms like humans, who have few babies, but make up for their low output with high survival rates. As humans evolved from apes, we became more and more K evolving larger brains and less aggressive and promiscuous behavior. Now a controversial researcher named phillipe rushton argued that as humans migrated to colder climates, they became even more K.
Now a nerd is simply a person who is very K. He has a large brain which means he required a lot of parental care because big brains take a long time to develop. His math IQ is higher than his social IQ because high K people are genetically programmed to have few offspring but give lots of parental care, so they don't need a high social IQ required to get many women pregnant, they just need a high technical IQ to provide for the few babies they do father with only one woman. They tend to be obsessive and focused because they evolved to be monogamous with one woman and raise only one family so they can't get distracted.
Now because the process of growing a large brain is so complex, sometimes the timing is wrong, and the brain overgrows in childhood but shrinks in the teen years and you end up with a large head but without the large brain to fill it. This condition is called autism. Because the autistic has a much smaller brain than other big headed nerds, he is not able to make as much money as other big headed nerds, but like many nerds, he is socially stupid, only more so because his brain is smaller so all cognitive capacities are impaired relative to other nerds.
The Neanderthal theory claimed autistics inherrited their K genes from Neanderthals; this is possible but not necessary, because any human group that moved north would evolve a K phenotype.
07 Feb 2012, 2:05 pm
