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Originally Posted by shakran
There is a difference between missing your point, and rejecting it as arrogantly asinine.
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Arrogant, how? Because I believe mankind's intelligence is unequivocally superior to that of all animals on this planet? And that the matter should be beyond dispute?
Quote:
Originally Posted by shakran
...I'm not saying that animals are smarter than humans. I am, however, saying (and you have proven my point with all of your examples) that when you create a test, knowing that you will have to take the test, the tendency is to create the test such that you will score highly on it.
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Why talk about creating and taking rigged tests? (Who would create and administer such a test anyway? Only mankind could.) Mankind does not need to take any tests – rigged or not – to prove his intelligence is superior to that of all the animals on this world, no more than a man needs to arm wrestle a toddler to prove his strength is superior. Our superior intelligence is
self evident.
Quote:
Originally Posted by shakran
But I am saying that it is convenient that the factors making us more intelligent than the other animals happens to be the only factors that are applied in the intelligence tests that we invented.
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Well, duh! If we were to include and consider other factors, we wouldn't be testing for "intelligence", now would we? We'd be testing for something else (albeit perhaps something related).
Quote:
Originally Posted by shakran
We are quite intelligent in our environment, but tend to be dumber than the other animals when we go to theirs. This is why tigers and sharks and crocodiles are dangerous - they're much smarter about stalking and killing us than we are about avoiding them.
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Quite intelligent, only in our environment? Tell me,
what environment on this planet have we not already moved in to and subjugated, due to our superior intelligence?
We're not in any way less intelligent than tigers, sharks and crocodiles, we're just not as naturally adapted to, and equipped for hunting in, their environment as they are. Nevertheless, it doesn't take long for humans to move in to a predatory animal's environment, and to completely take over. And then, even an animal that is physically better for hunting than a man is, becomes the
prey of men because of mankind's superior intelligence.
Quote:
Originally Posted by shakran
While I, again, do not dispute our superior intelligence to the rest of the animals, this bias has led us to underestimate the abilities of other animals. We are firmly convinced that we are the only species with language (We aren't) or that if other species have language, it's not complex (it is).
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Ah. Is this how you think I'm being arrogantly asinine?
I never said that animals don't have language, or that if animals do have language, it isn't in any way complex. I have said (or at least, implied) that mankind's language is far more complex than any animal's.
Quote:
Originally Posted by shakran
As to your "we build shit and therefore we're smart" measure of intelligence, that doesn't even conform with the already human-specific measure of intelligence used by the scientific community, which is generally defined as "the ability to reason, plan, solve problems, think abstractly, comprehend complex ideas, learn quickly, and learn from experience."
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Again, it is the complexity, and the enormity (in scale as well as in power and ability), of what we build, that is a measure of our superior intelligence.
That is indeed a measure of our ability to reason, plan, solve problems, think abstractly, comprehend complex ideas, learn quickly, and learn from experience.