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"Man has always assumed that he is more intelligent than dolphins because he has achieved so much--the wheel, New York, wars and so on -- while all the dolphins

"Man has always assumed that he is more intelligent than dolphins because he has achieved so much--the wheel, New York, wars and so on -- while all the dolphins had ever done was muck about in the water having a good time. But, conversely, the dolphins had always believed that they were far more intelligent than man -- for precisely the same reasons." Douglas Adams, So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish.

RcouF1uZ4gsC 6y ago
This is an issue that gets repeated through history over and over again. The group that develops tech, ends up totally screwing over the group that doesn't. So while, before the encounter the group that did not develop the tech, may have a better quality of life, once they encounter each other, the group without the tech gets screwed over. For example, dolphins and orcas have been screwed over by humans whether getting captured and sent to live in tanks, or entangled in fishing nets, or having their food sources over fished. It happens in the human realm too. A big example is the the Spanish Conquistadors and the Native Americans. Prior to them meeting, the Native Americans probably had a better quality of life than the Spaniards. But after the meeting, they got totally screwed over.
- tuatoru 6y ago
  > A big example is the the Spanish Conquistadors and the Native Americans. Prior to them meeting, the Native Americans probably had a better quality of life than the Spaniards. But after the meeting, they got totally screwed over. That had nothing to do with technology levels. The native Americans were wiped out by novel diseases. The conquistadors were helped greatly by the based-on-fact rumours of people dying a while after coming into contact with them. Factionalism and partisanship, various groups thinking they could use the chaos to grab power, made things worse too.
  - RcouF1uZ4gsC 6y ago
    Even Columbus screwed over the Indians on the islands, even before disease had a chance to wreak havoc. Just the fact that they sailed in ships, wore armor, and had steel swords and rudimentary firearms gave a huge advantage to the Spanish.
    - lxmorj 6y ago
      It’s an interesting alternative history idea though - what if the disease pressure was flipped but the technology was left as is?
      - RcouF1uZ4gsC 6y ago
        You had something like this during the European partitioning of Africa into colonial Empires. Africa was known as the “white man’s graveyard” due to various tropical diseases. In the end, for the most part, technology won, and Europe carved up Africa into various colonial Empires.
        iguy 6y ago
        But it did take 400 years more technology than what Cortez had. The Zulu army was not a walk-over in the mid-19th C, although 50 years later (with gatling guns) it would have been.
    - upinsmoke1980 6y ago
      Europeans hardly acted like saints, but it's still true that orders of magnitude more natives - perhaps as many as 90% - were killed by disease than by direct action of the colonists. I highly recommend the book 1491 by Charles Mann which talks about this (and much else). He explains how scientific estimates of the pre-Colombian population of the Americas keep getting revised upwards as we discover more evidence of just how many natives were wiped out by disease. It took Europeans hundreds of years to explore the entire continent; by the time they arrived in, say, the American West, the land was largely empty and the Indian population was very low. Only more recently have we started to figure out that European diseases spread through the continent much faster than European settlers did. It's likely that some of these "sparsely populated" areas were in fact much more populated in 1492, but the population collapsed through disease many generations before Europeans came into contact. I don't think we can fault Europeans too severely for this; the germ theory of disease wasn't understood until the late 19th century, and Europeans suffered greatly from epidemics too (when Colombus sailed the ocean blue in 1492 it was only about 150 years after the Black Death had killed a third of the population of the Europe.) But it's a fascinating book, and it's mysterious and sad to think that so many complex societies were devastated and erased while leaving so little trace of their existence.
  - globular-toast 6y ago
    Loads of them were intentionally killed by the Europeans.
    - sandworm101 6y ago
      Far far more were killed by other native groups, groups either hired or who saw the coming of europeans as an opportunity to topple the dominant group.
      - globular-toast 6y ago
        Divide and conquer. It's a classic technique.
        sandworm101 6y ago
        Or liberate and enlist. Some of these tribes were what we would today call 'oppressed peoples'.
- ironmagma 6y ago
  > The group that develops tech, ends up totally screwing over the group that doesn't. That's how natural selection created us. If we have a biological or technical advantage, we use it to a large extent, enough to put our species (or group) at a strategic advantage, which allows us to grow faster. If we didn't use it, we wouldn't advance as much. That's hardly a problem, it's just life.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - bromuro 6y ago
    Natural selection would make people help each others, not killing each others.
- me_me_me 6y ago
  > For example, dolphins and orcas have been screwed over by humans whether getting captured and sent to live in tanks, or entangled in fishing nets, or having their food sources over fished. Don't google Japanese dolphin slaughter if you are squeamish.
sandworm101 6y ago
Later citation. Iirc that line is originally from the radio drama. The books came later.

RcouF1uZ4gsC 6y ago

This is an issue that gets repeated through history over and over again. The group that develops tech, ends up totally screwing over the group that doesn't. So while, before the encounter the group that did not develop the tech, may have a better quality of life, once they encounter each other, the group without the tech gets screwed over. For example, dolphins and orcas have been screwed over by humans whether getting captured and sent to live in tanks, or entangled in fishing nets, or having their food sources over fished. It happens in the human realm too. A big example is the the Spanish Conquistadors and the Native Americans. Prior to them meeting, the Native Americans probably had a better quality of life than the Spaniards. But after the meeting, they got totally screwed over.

tuatoru 6y ago
> A big example is the the Spanish Conquistadors and the Native Americans. Prior to them meeting, the Native Americans probably had a better quality of life than the Spaniards. But after the meeting, they got totally screwed over. That had nothing to do with technology levels. The native Americans were wiped out by novel diseases. The conquistadors were helped greatly by the based-on-fact rumours of people dying a while after coming into contact with them. Factionalism and partisanship, various groups thinking they could use the chaos to grab power, made things worse too.
- RcouF1uZ4gsC 6y ago
  Even Columbus screwed over the Indians on the islands, even before disease had a chance to wreak havoc. Just the fact that they sailed in ships, wore armor, and had steel swords and rudimentary firearms gave a huge advantage to the Spanish.
  - lxmorj 6y ago
    It’s an interesting alternative history idea though - what if the disease pressure was flipped but the technology was left as is?
    - RcouF1uZ4gsC 6y ago
      You had something like this during the European partitioning of Africa into colonial Empires. Africa was known as the “white man’s graveyard” due to various tropical diseases. In the end, for the most part, technology won, and Europe carved up Africa into various colonial Empires.
      - iguy 6y ago
        But it did take 400 years more technology than what Cortez had. The Zulu army was not a walk-over in the mid-19th C, although 50 years later (with gatling guns) it would have been.
  - upinsmoke1980 6y ago
    Europeans hardly acted like saints, but it's still true that orders of magnitude more natives - perhaps as many as 90% - were killed by disease than by direct action of the colonists. I highly recommend the book 1491 by Charles Mann which talks about this (and much else). He explains how scientific estimates of the pre-Colombian population of the Americas keep getting revised upwards as we discover more evidence of just how many natives were wiped out by disease. It took Europeans hundreds of years to explore the entire continent; by the time they arrived in, say, the American West, the land was largely empty and the Indian population was very low. Only more recently have we started to figure out that European diseases spread through the continent much faster than European settlers did. It's likely that some of these "sparsely populated" areas were in fact much more populated in 1492, but the population collapsed through disease many generations before Europeans came into contact. I don't think we can fault Europeans too severely for this; the germ theory of disease wasn't understood until the late 19th century, and Europeans suffered greatly from epidemics too (when Colombus sailed the ocean blue in 1492 it was only about 150 years after the Black Death had killed a third of the population of the Europe.) But it's a fascinating book, and it's mysterious and sad to think that so many complex societies were devastated and erased while leaving so little trace of their existence.
- globular-toast 6y ago
  Loads of them were intentionally killed by the Europeans.
  - sandworm101 6y ago
    Far far more were killed by other native groups, groups either hired or who saw the coming of europeans as an opportunity to topple the dominant group.
    - globular-toast 6y ago
      Divide and conquer. It's a classic technique.
      - sandworm101 6y ago
        Or liberate and enlist. Some of these tribes were what we would today call 'oppressed peoples'.
ironmagma 6y ago
> The group that develops tech, ends up totally screwing over the group that doesn't. That's how natural selection created us. If we have a biological or technical advantage, we use it to a large extent, enough to put our species (or group) at a strategic advantage, which allows us to grow faster. If we didn't use it, we wouldn't advance as much. That's hardly a problem, it's just life.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- bromuro 6y ago
  Natural selection would make people help each others, not killing each others.
me_me_me 6y ago
> For example, dolphins and orcas have been screwed over by humans whether getting captured and sent to live in tanks, or entangled in fishing nets, or having their food sources over fished. Don't google Japanese dolphin slaughter if you are squeamish.

sandworm101 6y ago

Later citation. Iirc that line is originally from the radio drama. The books came later.