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Well, I can sing along to probably hundreds of 80s and 90s pop songs. Explain that, science! ;) .. but jokes aside. Science, understandably, seems to have a co

Well, I can sing along to probably hundreds of 80s and 90s pop songs. Explain that, science! ;) .. but jokes aside. Science, understandably, seems to have a component view of humans. We have memory, strength, consumption of calories etc etc. We have all these mechanisms and we can quantify a lot of it. But as far as mental capability goes, to me it seems.. unlimited? Well, we will die one day, the body will stop working, that's a limit. But assuming we are healthy... I mean it just seems to me that we are nowhere near finding out the limits of thought.

bspammer 5y ago
I've always thought it strange how much of a "jump" there seems to be in mental capacity between humans and the next smartest species. It feels like there should have been other species along the evolutionary road with culture, basic agriculture and arithmetic etc. Why did something click and suddenly we're smart enough to build rockets, fly to other planets, split the atom, and reason about the very nature of reality?
- medstrom 5y ago
  Building rockets is not only down to mental capacity, but circumstance. If you consider the humans of the last 200,000 years as another species, would you also deduce a huge "jump" in mental capacity between those and the humans of the last 500? And a tickler for thought: Your Dog is Even Smarter Than You Think https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/zbqLuTgTCu365MNu9/your-dog-is-even-smarter-than-you-think https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/zbqLuTgTCu365MNu9/your-dog-i...
- joeberon 5y ago
  How do we know how much of it is mental capacity? Obviously we wouldn't have been able to do these things without hands for example, and we can't really communicate with animals in a direct sense, so it's not easy to judge their intelligence
  - username90 5y ago
    If animals had a language we would have discovered it a long time ago and we would have learned to communicate with them. The reason we can't communicate with them is because they are dumb. Some of them might have big brains, but all of them lacks the kind of rational reasoning needed to learn and speak any language at even the level of a toddler. I mean, you can teach animals words, but you can't teach them how to structure thoughts to create meaningful longer conversations.
    - SyzygistSix 5y ago
      >If animals had a language we would have discovered it a long time ago and we would have learned to communicate with them. The reason we can't communicate with them is because they are dumb. I love this kind of hubris. People thought that there is no use for the appendix either.
      - kiba 5y ago
        Hubris? It works in the other direction too.
      - heavenlyblue 5y ago
        > People thought that there is no use for the appendix either. Can you please quote sources that prove what you just said?
- barry-cotter 5y ago
  > It feels like there should have been other species along the evolutionary road with culture, basic agriculture and arithmetic etc. There were, other hominids. We exterminated them/added their diversity to our own. Tibetans have adaptations to high altitude that pre-date the emergence of Homo Sapiens because a small part of their ancestry is Denisovan. > Why did something click and suddenly we're smart enough to build rockets, fly to other planets, split the atom, and reason about the very nature of reality? There was no click. There was nothing terribly sudden about it on any human timescale. 200,000 years ago we were anatomically modern. There were almost certainly some individuals then who could be acculturated to now, if transport was possible. It took over 150,000 years to develop settled agriculture. All that time those people were smart enough to reason. What eventually happened was cultural accumulation more than any genetic change. We are the dumbest possible species that is capable of what we do. Otherwise we’d have done it earlier.
  - SyzygistSix 5y ago
    >We are the dumbest possible species that is capable of what we do. Whenever I get annoyed with "how stupid people are", I try to remember this (the irony that I am of average intelligence is not lost on me). It gives our species a lot of slack. If we had to be more intelligent to achieve our current society, it would be more fragile.
- magicalhippo 5y ago
  Haven't thought much about it, but it seems to me that a key component is our ability to communicate. It's also something that we seem to be much better at than other species. It allows discoveries and thoughts to be spread to others. This leads to progress, rather than a reset for each generation. Figuring out how to communicate through writings takes this to yet another level. Not my field though so might be way off.
- tasty_freeze 5y ago
  > build rockets, fly to other planets, split the atom, Those have come in the past 100-ish years despite the species not getting appreciably smarter in that small span of time. That is strong evidence that these leaps are due to process and culture, not just intelligence.
- dehrmann 5y ago
  The argument I've heard is that humans fill the "intelligent" ecological niche. These niches tend to be winner-take-all, so any species that got close to competing (Neanderthals) would slowly die-out. That said, there should be room for an intelligent species in the ocean, too.

bspammer 5y ago

I've always thought it strange how much of a "jump" there seems to be in mental capacity between humans and the next smartest species. It feels like there should have been other species along the evolutionary road with culture, basic agriculture and arithmetic etc. Why did something click and suddenly we're smart enough to build rockets, fly to other planets, split the atom, and reason about the very nature of reality?

medstrom 5y ago
Building rockets is not only down to mental capacity, but circumstance. If you consider the humans of the last 200,000 years as another species, would you also deduce a huge "jump" in mental capacity between those and the humans of the last 500? And a tickler for thought: Your Dog is Even Smarter Than You Think https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/zbqLuTgTCu365MNu9/your-dog-is-even-smarter-than-you-think https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/zbqLuTgTCu365MNu9/your-dog-i...
joeberon 5y ago
How do we know how much of it is mental capacity? Obviously we wouldn't have been able to do these things without hands for example, and we can't really communicate with animals in a direct sense, so it's not easy to judge their intelligence
- username90 5y ago
  If animals had a language we would have discovered it a long time ago and we would have learned to communicate with them. The reason we can't communicate with them is because they are dumb. Some of them might have big brains, but all of them lacks the kind of rational reasoning needed to learn and speak any language at even the level of a toddler. I mean, you can teach animals words, but you can't teach them how to structure thoughts to create meaningful longer conversations.
  - SyzygistSix 5y ago
    >If animals had a language we would have discovered it a long time ago and we would have learned to communicate with them. The reason we can't communicate with them is because they are dumb. I love this kind of hubris. People thought that there is no use for the appendix either.
    - kiba 5y ago
      Hubris? It works in the other direction too.
    - heavenlyblue 5y ago
      > People thought that there is no use for the appendix either. Can you please quote sources that prove what you just said?
barry-cotter 5y ago
> It feels like there should have been other species along the evolutionary road with culture, basic agriculture and arithmetic etc. There were, other hominids. We exterminated them/added their diversity to our own. Tibetans have adaptations to high altitude that pre-date the emergence of Homo Sapiens because a small part of their ancestry is Denisovan. > Why did something click and suddenly we're smart enough to build rockets, fly to other planets, split the atom, and reason about the very nature of reality? There was no click. There was nothing terribly sudden about it on any human timescale. 200,000 years ago we were anatomically modern. There were almost certainly some individuals then who could be acculturated to now, if transport was possible. It took over 150,000 years to develop settled agriculture. All that time those people were smart enough to reason. What eventually happened was cultural accumulation more than any genetic change. We are the dumbest possible species that is capable of what we do. Otherwise we’d have done it earlier.
- SyzygistSix 5y ago
  >We are the dumbest possible species that is capable of what we do. Whenever I get annoyed with "how stupid people are", I try to remember this (the irony that I am of average intelligence is not lost on me). It gives our species a lot of slack. If we had to be more intelligent to achieve our current society, it would be more fragile.
magicalhippo 5y ago
Haven't thought much about it, but it seems to me that a key component is our ability to communicate. It's also something that we seem to be much better at than other species. It allows discoveries and thoughts to be spread to others. This leads to progress, rather than a reset for each generation. Figuring out how to communicate through writings takes this to yet another level. Not my field though so might be way off.
tasty_freeze 5y ago
> build rockets, fly to other planets, split the atom, Those have come in the past 100-ish years despite the species not getting appreciably smarter in that small span of time. That is strong evidence that these leaps are due to process and culture, not just intelligence.
dehrmann 5y ago
The argument I've heard is that humans fill the "intelligent" ecological niche. These niches tend to be winner-take-all, so any species that got close to competing (Neanderthals) would slowly die-out. That said, there should be room for an intelligent species in the ocean, too.