Big brain evolution: changes in sapiens skull shape;addendum (Evolution)

by David Turell , Thursday, February 22, 2018, 15:16 (2464 days ago) @ Balance_Maintained

Tony: So...able to make a very important decision, one that might get them killed, but not for anything "important" like whether to drink, smoke, or decide which idiot is going to send them off to die for whatever strikes his fancy. I'm going to have to give that two big thumbs down. Either people are mature, and thus able to be treated as adults, or they are not.

If we are not mature, medically, until 25, then every life altering decision prior to that should be invalid, because the person is not mentally capable of making it. Children should remain children until 25, living off their parents with no legal rights or responsibilities. 1/3rd of the human lifespan as a slave? I think I'll pass on that and acknowledge the following:

Mature is subjective. What are the objective qualifiers for maturity, as DHW asked? What qualifies those particular qualifiers as valid benchmarks? What objective benchmark are these fMRI readings being set against? Another subjective opinion of maturity? Emotional control? I know people of every generation that fail at that.

You are making everything black or white re' maturity. In general I agree with your point of view, but neuroscience tells us brain development takes up to age 25 to be initially complete. The current issue of Nature has several articles on the problem of defining adolescence and specifically the issue of risk taking. Take a look at one of the available articles or all of them:

http://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-02170-3?WT.ec_id=NATURE-20180223&spMailin...