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It's no surprise humans are most impressed by human-ish things, selfish as they are. But I bet a chimpanzee would be highly impressed with you if you could surv

It's no surprise humans are most impressed by human-ish things, selfish as they are. But I bet a chimpanzee would be highly impressed with you if you could survive even a single day in the jungle. > doing something productive with a twig or if you could climb a simple tree > noises that can be reasonably interpreted as some form of simple communication Do you think most animals just... never communicate? Why does it have to be something dumbed down enough that humans can interpret it? I bet a dog would be impressed with you if you could emit a scent that can be reasonably interpreted as some form of simple communication. > The point of that is that humans obviously are exceptionally special Not really. They're squishy and weak and quite fragile. Tardigrades are the only exceptional lifeform in this galactic neighborhood.

PaulHoule 17d ago
A day in the jungle is easy to survive, a year less so. I don’t know a lot about dogs but cats have specialized scent communication mechanisms that are entirely outside the human range. I mean they tend to leave a streak of ‘cat oil’ around their feeding areas when they rub their cheeks on corners. I stick my nose right into the gland and I sense nothing but the soft touch of fur. On the other hand we do share many languages with cats including general mammal body language (“pointing” at things) as well as what we negotiate, like the yowling cats learn to get our attention.
somenameforme 16d ago
These are hardly human-ish things. The reason they're found novel is because their behaviors that demonstrate some basic degree of interaction with the world or each other, outside of pure instinct. And by the standards of most animals, that's impressive. But by the standards of any sort of intelligent being, including humans, these actions are quite absurdly trivial. But for instance if and when we encounter an alien intelligence, it's fairly certain that they will have achieved many of the things that humans have. In fact that will be largely a prerequisite to encountering them. And no a chimp would not be impressed to find tribes of humans living in the forest for millennia, as is already the case. They lack the higher order thinking in order to have such a feeling. If they had it then impression naturally gives way to 'hmmm I wonder if I could do that' and the next thing you know, you'd have chimps on the Moon. Suffice to say, that's not happening now, or ever.

PaulHoule 17d ago

A day in the jungle is easy to survive, a year less so. I don’t know a lot about dogs but cats have specialized scent communication mechanisms that are entirely outside the human range. I mean they tend to leave a streak of ‘cat oil’ around their feeding areas when they rub their cheeks on corners. I stick my nose right into the gland and I sense nothing but the soft touch of fur. On the other hand we do share many languages with cats including general mammal body language (“pointing” at things) as well as what we negotiate, like the yowling cats learn to get our attention.

somenameforme 16d ago

These are hardly human-ish things. The reason they're found novel is because their behaviors that demonstrate some basic degree of interaction with the world or each other, outside of pure instinct. And by the standards of most animals, that's impressive. But by the standards of any sort of intelligent being, including humans, these actions are quite absurdly trivial. But for instance if and when we encounter an alien intelligence, it's fairly certain that they will have achieved many of the things that humans have. In fact that will be largely a prerequisite to encountering them. And no a chimp would not be impressed to find tribes of humans living in the forest for millennia, as is already the case. They lack the higher order thinking in order to have such a feeling. If they had it then impression naturally gives way to 'hmmm I wonder if I could do that' and the next thing you know, you'd have chimps on the Moon. Suffice to say, that's not happening now, or ever.