5 ms·

It can help to view more specific attributes of intelligence to make comparisons. An easy one, when comparing carnivores/omnivores: how many species can they hu

It can help to view more specific attributes of intelligence to make comparisons. An easy one, when comparing carnivores/omnivores: how many species can they hunt? Many predators specialize, eating only a single other species. Giant Pacific octopuses have a wide diet. Humans are at the top, though. By a longshot. How about math? There are other species that understand addition and subtraction, I think, but none that can do multiplication or division.

imoverclocked 5y ago
True, there are many metrics for intelligence. Humans also couldn’t do multiplication or division until we collectively had free time and a need to figure it out. Multiplication and division is not innate to our species, it’s something we learned and then wrote down. Our species also knows how to make glass and refined metals and styrofoam and various concrete/mortar/brick formations. I doubt that anyone is an expert in all of the above and that most people in the developed world can only hope to obtain these things by going out and purchasing it from a store. Furthermore, putting a bunch of intelligent but completely uneducated humans on an island is unlikely to result in a colony that understands multiplication and division in the next 100 or maybe even 1000 years. Once humans are put into that setting (zero education), we are no longer comfortably at the top of the food-chain.
- bmitc 5y ago
  These are all excellent points that I think people forget about and assume that humans have attained some sort of innate intelligence due to our societies and technologies. The ability to store information is a big technological leap. Even then, it's taken us as a species 5,000 years to get here once we had writing.
- otabdeveloper4 5y ago
  Multiplication and division predate writing by many centuries. Also, humans were comfortably at the top for the food chain even before we needed arithmetic or writing. (Arguably, we started to need arithmetic and writing because we ate all the animals.)
  - Maursault 5y ago
    > Also, humans were comfortably at the top for the food chain even before we needed arithmetic or writing. Definitely, except for lions, tigers, leopards, jaguars, cougars, anacondas, pythons, sharks, crocodiles, alligators, bears, wolves, hyenas, coyotes, boars and ants, all of which have hunted humans and have maneaters among their ranks. Humans were never apex predators... there was always something else that ate them, and though it is less often nowadays, it still happens. Whatever virtue humans have as a species, it has nothing to do with being able to kill everything. I would call that an indulgence, not a virtue. Today, being able to kill something contributes nothing to survival. Compare effective hunting skills to skills that generate significant income. Money has far more to contribute to survival and procreation than having lethal hunting skills, an entirely worthless skill to have in nearly all modern societies. There are so few societies left where hunting is necessary, and we're talking about a few thousands or tens of thousands of people at most among 7B.
    - otabdeveloper4 5y ago
      I'm specifically replying to this: > Once humans are put into that setting (zero education), we are no longer comfortably at the top of the food-chain. Which isn't true. Humans used to hunt mammoths way back when we had zero education. (Some even claim that we hunted them to extinction.) It doesn't get really get more 'top of the food chain' than that.
      - Maursault 5y ago
        > It doesn't get really get more 'top of the food chain' than that. Sure it does. Aside from giant birds, crocodiles, and leopards, early humans likely had to contend with bears, sabertooth cats, snakes, hyenas, Komodo dragons, and even other hominins. As prey, the past was not a pleasant place for humans and our ancestors, because they were prey, not apex predators. You know, apex means nothing eats it. Just last year an alligator ate a man in Louisiana and they will again. That sort of disqualifies our species as "apex." The alligator is an apex predator because nothing predates them. Making sense yet?
    - 5y ago
Maursault 5y ago
[flagged]
- vimacs2 5y ago
  Terrible take entirely divorced from reality and filled with hubris. Just because you are not personally witness to it doesn't somehow divorce you from the animals that sustain your life either directly or indirectly. Like it or not, you are a predator. Also, for many people especially in the southern hemisphere, hunting is still a necessary part of life so not everything is about your narrow clearly American conception of purely recreational hunting. You can make valid arguments for veganism or vegetarianism from an ethics standpoint but claiming meat is categorically "terribly healthy" is nonsense. Veganism is not even nutritionally complete without supplements and there hasn't been a discovered hominid species as of yet that have not been omnivores.
  - Maursault 5y ago

imoverclocked 5y ago

True, there are many metrics for intelligence. Humans also couldn’t do multiplication or division until we collectively had free time and a need to figure it out. Multiplication and division is not innate to our species, it’s something we learned and then wrote down. Our species also knows how to make glass and refined metals and styrofoam and various concrete/mortar/brick formations. I doubt that anyone is an expert in all of the above and that most people in the developed world can only hope to obtain these things by going out and purchasing it from a store. Furthermore, putting a bunch of intelligent but completely uneducated humans on an island is unlikely to result in a colony that understands multiplication and division in the next 100 or maybe even 1000 years. Once humans are put into that setting (zero education), we are no longer comfortably at the top of the food-chain.

bmitc 5y ago
These are all excellent points that I think people forget about and assume that humans have attained some sort of innate intelligence due to our societies and technologies. The ability to store information is a big technological leap. Even then, it's taken us as a species 5,000 years to get here once we had writing.
otabdeveloper4 5y ago
Multiplication and division predate writing by many centuries. Also, humans were comfortably at the top for the food chain even before we needed arithmetic or writing. (Arguably, we started to need arithmetic and writing because we ate all the animals.)
- Maursault 5y ago
  > Also, humans were comfortably at the top for the food chain even before we needed arithmetic or writing. Definitely, except for lions, tigers, leopards, jaguars, cougars, anacondas, pythons, sharks, crocodiles, alligators, bears, wolves, hyenas, coyotes, boars and ants, all of which have hunted humans and have maneaters among their ranks. Humans were never apex predators... there was always something else that ate them, and though it is less often nowadays, it still happens. Whatever virtue humans have as a species, it has nothing to do with being able to kill everything. I would call that an indulgence, not a virtue. Today, being able to kill something contributes nothing to survival. Compare effective hunting skills to skills that generate significant income. Money has far more to contribute to survival and procreation than having lethal hunting skills, an entirely worthless skill to have in nearly all modern societies. There are so few societies left where hunting is necessary, and we're talking about a few thousands or tens of thousands of people at most among 7B.
  - otabdeveloper4 5y ago
    I'm specifically replying to this: > Once humans are put into that setting (zero education), we are no longer comfortably at the top of the food-chain. Which isn't true. Humans used to hunt mammoths way back when we had zero education. (Some even claim that we hunted them to extinction.) It doesn't get really get more 'top of the food chain' than that.
    - Maursault 5y ago
      > It doesn't get really get more 'top of the food chain' than that. Sure it does. Aside from giant birds, crocodiles, and leopards, early humans likely had to contend with bears, sabertooth cats, snakes, hyenas, Komodo dragons, and even other hominins. As prey, the past was not a pleasant place for humans and our ancestors, because they were prey, not apex predators. You know, apex means nothing eats it. Just last year an alligator ate a man in Louisiana and they will again. That sort of disqualifies our species as "apex." The alligator is an apex predator because nothing predates them. Making sense yet?
  - 5y ago

Maursault 5y ago

[flagged]

vimacs2 5y ago
Terrible take entirely divorced from reality and filled with hubris. Just because you are not personally witness to it doesn't somehow divorce you from the animals that sustain your life either directly or indirectly. Like it or not, you are a predator. Also, for many people especially in the southern hemisphere, hunting is still a necessary part of life so not everything is about your narrow clearly American conception of purely recreational hunting. You can make valid arguments for veganism or vegetarianism from an ethics standpoint but claiming meat is categorically "terribly healthy" is nonsense. Veganism is not even nutritionally complete without supplements and there hasn't been a discovered hominid species as of yet that have not been omnivores.
- Maursault 5y ago