This opinion is based on reading people’s thoughts on the internet and remembering what I was taught in my own time in school (where they essentially stumbled into teaching that humans were some kind of ‘peak’ of the evolutionary process)

I think people have waaaaayyyy too much faith in human intelligence and it’s leading to the destruction of the world.

1- People keep thinking a scientist or a ‘rich entrepreneur’ is going to come up with some magic bullet to save the world, if we taught more about how other animals have tools, language, larger and older and more complex brain structures than us - People might realize it’s similar to believing that dolphin will arise from the sea with some idea to stop climate change

2- we keep participating in these systems that have been created under the assumption that we are ‘making progress’. I would argue that the minority of human invention represents real progress.

3- It leads to undervaluing the earth and taking it for granted. We worship ourselves as gods (literally). Almost everything you have wasn’t invented by humans. It was the result of billions of years of selective design. Yet we teach as if things we harvest from nature were ‘invented’ by humans. In reality, we often have no way to produce or even of conceive of these things without a natural example.

Thanks for reading

  • Robbeee@lemmy.world
    32·
    1 year ago

    Other animals communicate. Language involves syntax and grammar which only humans are capable of. That also has nothing to do with the fact that intelligence is a human word to describe humanlike capacity.

      • Robbeee@lemmy.world
        1·
        1 year ago

        …although the authors do not claim that humpback whale songs meet the linguistic rigor necessary for a true language.

        Despite the “human-like” use of hierarchical syntax to communicate, Suzuki and his colleagues found that whale songs convey less than one bit of information per second. By comparison, humans speaking English generate 10 bits of information for each word spoken. "Although whale song is nothing like human language, I wouldn’t be surprised if some marine mammals have the ability to communicate in a complex way.

        Did you even read the article you submitted? I get it, you like animals.I like animals, even humans, some of them. But you’re comparing other animals to humans at the things that humans are demonstratively best at. Its like saying that cattle are sometimes faster at running than cheetahs and maybe we’ve been defining “fast” or “run” wrong. If you move the goal post far enough apart and select the outliers you can find examples of anything, but you’ve proved nothing.

        • 🐱TheCat@sh.itjust.worksOP
          12·
          1 year ago

          "Although whale song is nothing like human language, I wouldn’t be surprised if some marine mammals have the ability to communicate in a complex way.

          Are you the same person who claimed they didn’t have syntax at all or someone different? Why claim that when they don’t have syntax, and then move goalposts to bits of information?

          https://www.uw360.asia/the-difference-between-human-and-cetacean-brains/ Are you aware cetaceans have more lobes in their brain than humans ?

          This extra lobe of tissue has something to do with processing emotions, but also something to do with thinking that we humans just don’t have.

          This unique evolution of the cetacean’s entire limbic system, which is a combination of multiple structures in the brain that deal with emotions and the formation of memories, suggests that cetaceans have the ability to process more complex thoughts and emotions than humans. Since the system is so large in cetaceans, and the unique paralimbic lobe merges with the cortex, it is believed that the lobe may create a mixture of both emotional and cognitive thinking.

          Humans are always comparing animals TO OURSELVES and when they fall short we consider ourselves better, but we don’t do the comparison the other way and subtract points from ourselves when we fail against animals.

          I think this is my overall point and why our estimation of ourselves and other life on earth is so flawed.

    • Wooly@lemmy.world
      11·
      1 year ago

      And it’s not like dolphins could learn whale language. Animal communication is very basic compared to ours.

      I think it’s undeniable that we’re the most intelligent and capable species on the planet and not just because of apposable thumbs. Maybe some of the smartest animals are smarter than the dumbest humans, but we have a huge range.

      No other brain works the way ours does, other primates and some dolphins/whales come close with their ingenuity and stuff but obviously millions of years behind us.

      • 🐱TheCat@sh.itjust.worksOP
        01·
        1 year ago

        Yeah this is the attitude I think is harmful. You essentially have no evidence of your claims but you just strongly feel superior to other species.

        ‘Animal communication is very basic compared to ours’ is just a blatantly false statement. We know there are named individuals, dialect, syntaxes in other species. I think some humans are just ignorant of these things, which is the opposite of intelligence

        Also none of you seem to consider the extra communication abilities many animals possess around scent a mark AGAINST humans. We may use the most complex vocal language to compensate for our total lack of smell communication