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This narrative that "there is nothing uniquely human" is just a grift originating with a handful anthropologists, who tried to claw some academic fame, by chall
by xk_id 3y ago
This narrative that "there is nothing uniquely human" is just a grift originating with a handful anthropologists, who tried to claw some academic fame, by challenging the consensus. It is a catchy contrarian take. But it's very obviously naive. Yes, ants can organise their community, apes can break walnuts with a stone, dolphins can communicate their foraging wisdom to offspring, prairie dogs have a rich vocabulary to communicate their experiences. However, no species demonstrates either of these skills as a boundless process. For example, no species has approached levels of abstraction such as: a derivatives financial market; a meta-idea such as "this is a conversation"; the concept of a "concept" itself; or mythology. And while certain animals might be able to demonstrate far more effective problem-solving in their special environment (such as cephalopods), the features that set humans apart are generalisable across environments and explain the evolutionary advantage.
- yieldcrv 3y agoFascinating trigger, thats not what they said Searching for the mental capacity is the weird thing, there’s more pointing to the idea that other species cant be compelled to care. We cant even tell if another human is capable of intelligence if they are handicapped in speech, paralyzed or locked in. Our best brain scans dont correlate with the level of consciousness and intelligence told by people that became unlocked after a brain injury. of course there are going to be limitations in animals without vocal cords and other priorities.
- xk_id 3y agoThe inquiry into human uniqueness is probably just another case of human curiosity, enabled by our (seemingly) boundless capacity for understanding across domains, no? I agree about methodological limitations, but we do have plenty of examples where we measured features of animal cognition – it's just that we didn't find evidence that their abstractions can be boundless.
- yieldcrv 3y agoWhy not balance that with all of the deficiencies of humans? There are a whole host of traits, defects, and unproductive aspects that haven't been weeded out. A small group of self starters have built the entire infrastructure for humans to excel in and only when given the structure to prioritize doing so. Most people are just a monotonous as every other species most of the time.
- xk_id 3y agoI find that angle very sympathetic, but it isn't clear to me at the moment if those people lack potential altogether; or, whether there are cognitive factors (e.g pertaining to education) which suppress that potential. If we could find the neurological basis for that potential, we could determine whether some people just don't engage it, or whether they lack it altogether and are therefore hopeless cattle. That basis might be the large size of the human pre-frontal cortex, which is shared by all healthy humans, so this is why I'm reluctant to dismiss the lack of potential.
- yieldcrv 3y agoto me everything you wrote is the same with at least several other species
- golemotron 3y ago> The inquiry into human uniqueness is probably just another case of human curiosity, enabled by our (seemingly) boundless capacity for understanding across domains, no? I think it is like the Ptolemaic model of the universe. We want to be special. Same as "my home team is the best in the world."
- orbital-decay 3y agoWould you say the same about the early homo sapiens? Practically the same mental capabilities but zero accumulated knowledge baggage you have now. Even the articulated form of the "concept of a concept" you mention is a construct humans came to collectively, let alone "financial markets". The actual mental capability gap between humans and other animals might be shorter than it appears, if you filter out the knowledge obtained over generations (i.e. not possible to obtain individually without some advanced society).
- bee_rider 3y agoThere seems to be something special in the way humans accumulate and refine knowledge over generations that seems to be unique, but this is hard to isolate and test. Maybe it is just that our quantitatively higher intelligence and social nature combines to weirdly to create a qualitative difference.
- orbital-decay 3y agoMore or less modern humans existed for hundreds of thousands of years with very little change. The exponential growth of knowledge in the last several thousand years is just a blip on that timeline, and it mostly became possible due to certain breakthroughs like agriculture. Sure, most animals have significantly less mental capacity than homo sapiens, but I'd argue that the human society is decoupled from the biological capabilities of a single individual to a large degree. It's a separate self-organizing system, and 99% of our perceived intelligence (a made up number) is purely social in nature.
- xk_id 3y agoThe fact that individual specimens of our species are capable of reflecting, in the first place, on "what makes us what we are", is itself an example of the boundless capacity for abstraction. It is itself a meta-idea. Even earlier humans were able to talk, then pause, reflect and suddenly point out: "we are having a conversation right now". Animals (such as prairie dogs) may have linguistic constructs for various colours; but not for the the abstract idea of "colour", let alone for the abstract idea of "perception". But I agree that there is a second component to this, which is the fact that each new generation starts from the latest abstractions arrived at by the former, then carries on. So what is unique about humans is that this process appears to be boundless, both at the individual and collective level.
- konschubert 3y agoThere are probably very significant quantitative differences. But I don't think there is reason to assume that there is a qualitative difference. That being said, a sufficiently big quantitative difference is in practice indistinguishable from a qualitative one.