| > The vast majority of animals can't even recognize themselves in a mirror let alone conceptualize other planets, atomic structures, mechanical processes and forces, mathematics, abstract concepts, create social contracts, etc. This is true, but it takes a great deal of creativity and awareness of a species, to create a “mirror-test” that applies to said species. The naive mirror test is flawed. That’s not say most species will pass; just that it was laughably bad experiments that are being revisited. > It's just....ridiculous to even be having a discussion on this. It's honestly akin to discussing vaccines with a COVID denier. Why is it ridiculous? Nobody is saying humans aren’t smarter. You’re looking at the end results of societies to prove that we’re orders of magnitude smarter; but take away our ability to write and record knowledge for the next generation: What are we left with? How scalable and robust are oral-tradition
cultures? Also note that none of the things you’ve mentioned came naturally to humans: It took many millennia of trial and error to build up and even so it takes the threat of homelessness starvation for the majority to give a shit and learn this stuff. Instead, I’d argue it takes a great deal of self-awareness and humility to tease out what gives us the leg up over other species, even if it makes some uncomfortable. |
Very, considering we started at the exact same point as all of those other "equally" intelligent creatures.
So yes, it's ridiculous.