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Why We Dominate the Earth

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Re: Why We Dominate the Earth

#41

Post by herodotus »

scoot wrote: post #32

Unrelated to the article, but the headline raised the question in my mind - is intelligent life an inevitability, and is that a good or bad thing? If the human race had not, would another species eventually rise to a similar position? And would it have caused the same destruction? On the flip side, what purpose would natural life serve if there was no species sufficiently cognizant to recognize it?

Nice point. And it could be a clue to Fermi's paradox. Perhaps the universe is teeming with life, but intelligent life is perhaps inevitably doomed to over consumption and extinction in a (astronomically speaking) very short time. Therefore, we have not heard from there short lived aliens.

Re: Why We Dominate the Earth

#42

Post by mLuby »

scoot wrote: post #32

Unrelated to the article, but the headline raised the question in my mind - is intelligent life an inevitability, and is that a good or bad thing? If the human race had not, would another species eventually rise to a similar position? And would it have caused the same destruction? On the flip side, what purpose would natural life serve if there was no species sufficiently cognizant to recognize it?

Intelligence? 100%. Sociability? 100%‡. What I think you're asking about is tool use.

Given roughly infinite time, is there a reason to think that the combo of social + tool users would not win over, say social + raw strength? Imagine perhaps that lions gain the ability to sweat and so can expand their range dramatically. Would the next tool users never achieve dominance over them/be relegated to a small habitat?

I find it hard to imagine tool users not winning long-term, but it's possible that intelligent non-tool users never let them amass the necessary population/skills/tools. Maybe something like the xenomorphs?

‡The only case I could think of is where some organism absorbs prey to continually gain power. But at a certain point it's either unable to grow its geographic reach or it's basically a collection of physically separate social sub-creatures.

Re: Why We Dominate the Earth

#44

Post by planteen »

jpadkins wrote: post #22

I've wondered if mathematics is a 'shared fiction'. Obviously money and laws are shared fictions, but I wondered if other species can't grasp math concepts (beyond counting) because there is a fictional or conceptual element that their brains can't process.

Animals can do more than just count. Some birds understand ordering/ranking as well as the concepts of addition and subtraction.

https://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/23/science/pigeons-can-learn...

https://www.sciencenewsforstudents.org/article/animals-can-d...

Re: Why We Dominate the Earth

#46

Post by chillingeffect »

jpadkins wrote: post #22

I've wondered if mathematics is a 'shared fiction'. Obviously money and laws are shared fictions, but I wondered if other species can't grasp math concepts (beyond counting) because there is a fictional or conceptual element that their brains can't process.

the math part of it, e.g. geometry isn't fiction, but some of the context around math, how we use it, which assumptions are acceptable is. For example, we overapply linearity and periodicit and overlook tooling cost.

Re: Why We Dominate the Earth

#47

Post by LoSboccacc »

spurgu wrote: post #37
LoSboccacc wrote: post #29

I think this is all nice and well and but we raised to the top of the food chain because we had pointier sticks, abstract thinking came later. Much later. > About 70,000 or so years ago [...] the cognitive revolution https://www2.palomar.edu/anthro/homo/homo_4.htm > about 2.5 million years ago [...] Oldowan tools

Give a bunch of chimpanzees an unlimited supply of chainsaws and fuel, I doubt that'll take them to the top of the food chain.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vssqb-0i2-A mhm

Re: Why We Dominate the Earth

#48

Post by [deleted] »

lordnacho wrote: post #2

> Surprisingly, it’s not our shared language or even our ability to dominate other species that defines us but rather, our shared fictions. I read his book where he talks about this. It makes some sense: you can operate at varied scales if you have shared fictions. When you meet a complete stranger, you're both members of the human race, sharing a desire for a better future. Meet a fellow countryman, and there are so…

[deleted]

Re: Why We Dominate the Earth

#49

Post by bpizzi »

krapp wrote: post #12
bpizzi wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or maybe the starting point is that sapiens' DNA really is shaped for ruling. That sapiens mostly preferred 'Abrahamic religion' to others is then a consequence to this starting point.

>That sapiens mostly preferred 'Abrahamic religion' to others is then a consequence to this starting point. Sapiens didn't mostly prefer Abrahamic religion. Judaism didn't proselytize as far as I'm aware, and Christianity and Islam converted many cultures and people by force (although not exclusively.) And you're not considering the widespread preference for Buddhist and animist religions, which over time likely equa…

> And you're not considering the widespread preference for Buddhist and animist religion [...]

Actually I'm not considering anything, I was just pointing that the theory in the parent's book could be reversed.

Re: Why We Dominate the Earth

#50

Post by RegBarclay »

flippyhead wrote: post #39
learc83 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation that explored a similar concept. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darmok

I love this episode but was surprised that wikipedia said this: > It is often cited as one of the best episodes of the both The Next Generation series and the entire family of the several Star Trek television series.

Agreed. I would grant that Darmok is in the top 5 TNG episodes, but I haven't seen that kind of praise for Darmok across the entire series.
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