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Not buying it. Humans are barely intelligent enough to be at any level of development. We don't have great apes beat by as much as people think. It's conceiv

Not buying it. Humans are barely intelligent enough to be at any level of development. We don't have great apes beat by as much as people think. It's conceivable to me that we are the absolute minimum level of intellect to be a species that can develop tools allowing us to escape our ancestral environment.

lukeschlather 3y ago
It's important to note first of all that we haven't meaningfully escaped Earth's gravity well. Our models seem to make it possible, I'm sure it can be done, I'm sure we can even get to other stars without changing our understanding of physics. At the same time the notion of "absolute minimum level of intellect" is somewhat poorly defined. It's somewhat hard to imagine, but there could be a set of physics theories that don't include relativity or gravity or any of our familiar concepts, but still enable interstellar travel. Maybe another civilization skipped our fragmentary and incorrect understanding and hit directly on a unified field theory. Or maybe we both have fragmentary and incorrect understandings, both are essentially wrong in every way, and yet they are close enough for practical purposes. Is the civilization which developed the more practical model of physics "smarter" or just lucky? Does "smarter" mean that you develop a model of physics which is closer to ground truth, or one that enables you to build better spacecraft, or one that enables you to build better computers?
mcv 3y ago
I don't understand this sort of comment. We obviously have the other great apes beat by an enormous amount. Our impact on our own environment is so big that we can cause planet-scale mass extinctions, either intentionally or unintentionally. We have left the surface of our planet, walked on the moon (well, some of us have), we have detailed theories explaining all sorts of phenomena about the world we live in, we have advanced tools for the weirdest things. Meanwhile we're impressed when an ape uses a tool in a clever way. We obviously don't know enough to travel in person to distant stars, and we don't even know whether or not that might one day be possible, but we can consider the possibility, which is something other great apes can't.
- boringuser2 3y ago
  That isn't because we are substantially smarter than apes, it's because only marginal gains had large results. If anything, it's a reaffirmation of the original point.

lukeschlather 3y ago

It's important to note first of all that we haven't meaningfully escaped Earth's gravity well. Our models seem to make it possible, I'm sure it can be done, I'm sure we can even get to other stars without changing our understanding of physics. At the same time the notion of "absolute minimum level of intellect" is somewhat poorly defined. It's somewhat hard to imagine, but there could be a set of physics theories that don't include relativity or gravity or any of our familiar concepts, but still enable interstellar travel. Maybe another civilization skipped our fragmentary and incorrect understanding and hit directly on a unified field theory. Or maybe we both have fragmentary and incorrect understandings, both are essentially wrong in every way, and yet they are close enough for practical purposes. Is the civilization which developed the more practical model of physics "smarter" or just lucky? Does "smarter" mean that you develop a model of physics which is closer to ground truth, or one that enables you to build better spacecraft, or one that enables you to build better computers?

mcv 3y ago

I don't understand this sort of comment. We obviously have the other great apes beat by an enormous amount. Our impact on our own environment is so big that we can cause planet-scale mass extinctions, either intentionally or unintentionally. We have left the surface of our planet, walked on the moon (well, some of us have), we have detailed theories explaining all sorts of phenomena about the world we live in, we have advanced tools for the weirdest things. Meanwhile we're impressed when an ape uses a tool in a clever way. We obviously don't know enough to travel in person to distant stars, and we don't even know whether or not that might one day be possible, but we can consider the possibility, which is something other great apes can't.

boringuser2 3y ago
That isn't because we are substantially smarter than apes, it's because only marginal gains had large results. If anything, it's a reaffirmation of the original point.