How come we are so smart?

[Muse]

Maybe we just make gibberish sounds back and forth like all other mammals.

I recall a statement in a Henry Miller book in which he mused that what passes for conversation today will at some future time be perceived as the harsh and raucous sounds of an idiot... i.e. gibberish. The inference is that people will someday be much more intelligent than we.

I get the whole evolution thing...still doesn't make sense since we've only been here a short time.

What doesn't make sense?

 

[Muse]

For one thing, if there were 2 smart species or even 20 at any point in our history, only 1 would survive. We are very territorial, belligerent, greedy..etc and let's face it, our ancestors were just plain nuts. They would have killed off anything remotely displaying intelligence long ago.
Look at Big Foot, we don't even know if they exist yet there are many that try to hunt them down to this day. If found they wouldn't survive long without govt intervention and zoo's or reservations for them. We are the most dangerous species to ever walk the earth.

We can thank our natural war like behaviors to drive our need for better technology which requires smarter brains. Octopuses are also pretty darn smart but there is nothing in their environment that requires a necessity to push for more brain power.

Historians believe there may have been as many as 5 species of humans living alongside at one point but apparently our genes, being a mix of the bunch it appears, won out. If anything else was ever intelligent to much degree, they got murdered out as well. If not they probably would us. "There can be only one!!"

This is probably pretty much the truth of it. At one time Neanderthals and Homo Sapiens were both in existence. The fossil record does not indicate/prove that we killed off the Neanderthals, their disappearance could have had other reasons, but coexistence of intelligent species on earth is hard to imagine. It had to be this way.

Will we be our own destruction? It's not at all clear that we have what it takes to survive on earth at this point. We've been screwing things up pretty badly in recent times. How long have humans been here? 40,000 years? Will we be here after another 40,000? I used to assume so, but now I'm not so sure.

Octopuses are also pretty darn smart but there is nothing in their environment that requires a necessity to push for more brain power.

FYI: I personally have killed hundreds of octopuses. They were a pushover.

 

[Muse]

Dolphins are pretty smart. They work together to get food. They have plenty of time for leisurely activities. They beat the shit out of sharks if the sharks are bothering them. They have sex for pleasure.

And they don't spend 10 hours a day, 6 days a week working in a cubicle, getting paid for 40 hours of work because they're salaried employees; and being stressed out at work all the time, then have to fight through rush hour traffic to get to their little apartment they share with a roommate they don't get along with.

I'd say that makes dolphins a little smarter than some humans.

That's a good one, doctor! So, you've just made the case that there's another intelligent species on planet earth besides homo sapiens. The reason one hasn't killed off the other is attributable to the fact that their domains don't really intersect. They are no threat to us.

yet we catch them in nets and eat them..well atleast the japanese. How smart can that be?

The Japanese should be thrashed for that.

 

[John Connor]

 

[Muse]

I'm a hypocrite though. I have a car, a phone and I'm typing this on a PC with all its plastic, oil derived parts. I could eschew the trappings of modern society, or just embrace that day down the road when I get to give it all up.

I lived without a car (or a TV) for over 20 years... walking, bicycle to get places, take the occasional subway or bus ride. I finally got a car (was given one by an uncle), and inherited my dad's car when he died. I don't drive it much, about 1500 miles/year. It has 28,000 miles on it, a 1997. I feel that it's decadent to drive when I can use a bicycle or (my favorite), roller skates. I take the very occasional trip by airliner -- family gatherings. I'm thinking about doing some intercontinental traveling. I know that will burn fossil fuels, don't know how bad I should feel about that, but I'd like to "see the world," as the saying goes. I'm pretty worldly for a guy who has set foot on only one continent. Still, I'd like to know what difference it makes to actually set foot on them.

 

[sdifox]

This is probably pretty much the truth of it. At one time Neanderthals and Homo Sapiens were both in existence. The fossil record does not indicate/prove that we killed off the Neanderthals, their disappearance could have had other reasons, but coexistence of intelligent species on earth is hard to imagine. It had to be this way.

Will we be our own destruction? It's not at all clear that we have what it takes to survive on earth at this point. We've been screwing things up pretty badly in recent times. How long have humans been here? 40,000 years? Will we be here after another 40,000? I used to assume so, but now I'm not so sure.FYI: I personally have killed hundreds of octopuses. They were a pushover.

whut? How did you get to kill hundreds of octopuses?

 

[z1ggy]

Mayne should not included in the "we" of humanity.

 

[Maximilian]

Why is every other animal not smart? Pretty sure we haven't been on earth as long as some other animals. Why?

Maybe something to do with this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brain-to-body_mass_ratio

Probably the complexity of the brain as well, our ancestors with mutations that led to slightly more complex brains survived better and that trend just continued.

 

[edro]

Brain density and language.
No other animals even come close.

 

[Smoblikat]

I get the whole evolution thing...still doesn't make sense since we've only been here a short time.

Its like this:
An I7 4930K is going to be much faster than a Pentium 4 w/HT, even though the P4 was there long before the I7 was a twinkle in intels silicon.

 

[IronWing]

whut? How did you get to kill hundreds of octopuses?

It's a Japanese expression equivalent to "killing kittens".

 

[John Connor]

But why? Inquiring minds want to know.

Brain density and language.
No other animals even come close.

 

[sdifox]

It's a Japanese expression equivalent to "killing kittens".

ah.

 

[TheSlamma]

You don't see dolphins screwing each other over just to get a percent.

They don't crap in their own beds and wage war over invisible deities.

Who are the smart ones again?

 

[IronWing]

You don't see dolphins screwing each other over just to get a percent.

They don't crap in their own beds and wage war over invisible deities.

Who are the smart ones again?

I think that they do.

 

[John Connor]

Just to be sure, we are talking about the football team? :twisted:

 

[moonbogg]

Evolution has a direction it always ends up going. It flows toward its goal like water running down a hill. There is only one way it can go.

 

[Ruptga]

Evolution has a direction it always ends up going. It flows toward its goal like water running down a hill. There is only one way it can go.

Lolno

 

[bradly1101]

Yes, this reads like it was lifted verbatim from the book I just finished within the last 12 hours, The Sixth Extinction by Elizabeth Kolbert.

Kolbert's take (and the book is in essence a collection of ideas learned from of dozens and dozens of experts in fields related to the book's subject matter), is that man's ability to think was a result of some chance genetic mutation. It's not clear that the Neanderthals were not intelligent, but the record does not support the notion that they were as brainy as we. They were around for over 100,000 years and their tools evidently did not evolve, according to the archeological evidence.

Kolbert is a huge influence on me. I believe The Sixth Extinction is THE work of non-fiction for our times (but I didn't try to lift anything verbatim). It inspired me to use less of everything I can. I need to make my 'footprint' as small as possible because so much gets stepped on.

I love her somewhat lighthearted prediction of who will inherit the earth next.

 

[bradly1101]

I feel that it's decadent to drive when I can use a bicycle or (my favorite), roller skates.

If everyone pulled back just a bit, it would make a huge difference.

 

[bradly1101]

^^

It's a bit of a stretch to say that they "figured out" how to coexist. Completely natural forces result in extinctions all the time, and sometimes they also cause the death of almost everything on the planet while simultaneously triggering a 300 million year ice age.

Sorry I missed your post and I agree, that's what a lot of The Sixth Extinction was about.

I'm not trying to handwave our problems away, we have some big ones, but what harmony exists in nature does so because of luck and evolutionary processes, not because the natural way of things is inherently better.

Obviously by wide agreement one is 'better' than the other, so what I believe doesn't really matter. It's just that to me one of them is not sustainable. I fear that humans won't change until something really, really bad happens if even then.

 

[bradly1101]

Ugh.

"bradly", learn some actual science and biology and stop parroting "what's in your heart!" and how Fern Gully made you feel.
Your posts are such painfully naive drivel and oversimplified, childlike frustration.

Attacking and creating disharmony is not unlike what we've sown around the world - not just environmentally. Way to be human! I know it feels smart.

 

[SlitheryDee]

Attacking and creating disharmony is not unlike what we've sown around the world - not just environmentally. Way to be human! I know it feels smart.

I think more people would get on board if you gave them the argument from a self-interest perspective. Notions of nature being "good" or "harmonious" don't really make sense to me. All I see in nature is a horror show of animated biological matter that is constantly being chewed up and spit out in different shapes over the eons. The only allegiance I feel to anything in it is to the human race. Fortunately that is enough to make me want to preserve the rest of it. If we upset whatever balances there are that exist, new ones will form around whatever disturbances we cause. Nature itself is probably beyond our ability to completely destroy before we first destroy ourselves. In light of that, the only real morality that I see in it is with respect to our own well-being. Nature will probably go on, but whatever new state it settles in after we're done with it may not be that habitable for us. There's something everyone can be concerned about even if they couldn't care less how many cute animals they've never heard of go extinct in a rainforest they'll never see. Then it's not tree hugging anymore, but cold, calculated self-interest. Self interest works when all the moral and emotional appeals in the world won't.

 

[Hayabusa Rider]

Dolphins are pretty smart. They work together to get food. They have plenty of time for leisurely activities. They beat the shit out of sharks if the sharks are bothering them. They have sex for pleasure.

And they don't spend 10 hours a day, 6 days a week working in a cubicle, getting paid for 40 hours of work because they're salaried employees; and being stressed out at work all the time, then have to fight through rush hour traffic to get to their little apartment they share with a roommate they don't get along with.

I'd say that makes dolphins a little smarter than some humans.

We're idiots.

The problem is one of chauvinism. We look at intelligence by the metric of our own species which would be tool use and technology. By our own standards we are by definition intelligent, but I agree with you. Dolphins are intelligent enough to have complex social interactions and communications and we kill ourselves with idiotic systems which value our killing ourselves with stress and war. An extraterrestrial species might not be one of Sagan's comprehendible and benign creatures, but view us as an ecological pathology. In that case they might decide to eradicate the disease. Dolphins would get a pass.

 

[Muse]

whut? How did you get to kill hundreds of octopuses?

When I lived on Maui from 1970 to 1973 I was befriended by a local, a ~57 year old Japanese guy who was a father figure for the local young guys. He had made his living for decades skin diving the north coast, centered in Paia. He taught me how to dive "tako" as they are called there (Hawaiian for octopus).
Eventually I learned how to spot them even in 20 feet of water from the surface when the water was reasonably clean, and I made a living doing that for a year or two. I sold them to the local small markets in Paia for $1/pound. I wasn't into eating them, I ate fish I speared, also some lobsters and the occasional crab.