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this is a difficult article to get through. > Aside from a disproportionately large brain, we're fairly ordinary mammals. we're rather inadequate mammals. it

this is a difficult article to get through. > Aside from a disproportionately large brain, we're fairly ordinary mammals. we're rather inadequate mammals. it is our brain in conjunction with our propensity for violence and ability to use tools that separates us, not necessarily in a good way, from other mammals. > However we should also consider ourselves to be a member of a very different group - those species, scattered throughout the universe, which ponder the existence of life beyond their own planet. this is wholly narcissistic. we have no evidence that other animals don't have philosophy. > Given the vast scale of the universe, this group is likely to be even more numerous and diverse than our own animal kingdom. no evidence for that either. > Which begs the question: how should we expect to stack up against these other intelligent species? that's not what "begs the question" means. so an article going off about interpreting data and logical conclusions is a little hard to give credence to when the opening paragraph is basically sentence after sentence of non-evidentiary or incorrect statements.

simonh 6y ago
> our propensity for violence I think you’re underestimating how brutally violent many animals can be, even herbivores. Just look at what the males of many species will do in competition over females. Yes our organisational skills and automation take it to another level, but the propensity to brutalise and kill is everywhere in the natural world.
- nikofeyn 6y ago
  i am not underestimating it all. just because other animals are violent doesn't matter or contradict what i said. additionally, a lot of what we see in the animal world in terms of violence is fighting for food and survival. yes, nature has a lot of violence, but is often reasonable violence. other cases of it not being reasonable pale to that seen in humans, where humans showcase violence against non-competitive species and against other humans. there is lot of evidence that homo sapiens' early dominance over other hominids was due in no small part to violence.

simonh 6y ago

> our propensity for violence I think you’re underestimating how brutally violent many animals can be, even herbivores. Just look at what the males of many species will do in competition over females. Yes our organisational skills and automation take it to another level, but the propensity to brutalise and kill is everywhere in the natural world.

nikofeyn 6y ago
i am not underestimating it all. just because other animals are violent doesn't matter or contradict what i said. additionally, a lot of what we see in the animal world in terms of violence is fighting for food and survival. yes, nature has a lot of violence, but is often reasonable violence. other cases of it not being reasonable pale to that seen in humans, where humans showcase violence against non-competitive species and against other humans. there is lot of evidence that homo sapiens' early dominance over other hominids was due in no small part to violence.