this post was submitted on 28 Jul 2023

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Unpopular Opinion

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People should be taught in school that humans are not that smart, and that there are many comparable species in intelligence. (sh.itjust.works)

submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/unpopularopinion

61 comments fedilink hide all child comments

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

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Its just so reductive and I couldn't disagree more. We learn how to use our tools by emulating nature.

Example: Humans and dolphins use sonar, but dolphins use it better (we are learning from their example): https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/05/180531102742.htm

If your idea is true, humans would immediately be 'smarter' at using sonar than dolphins the second we gained the ability to do it.

But shocker, the animal that's been using it for millions of years has learned better ways to do it. And we get better by copying them. And without them, we (and our ability to use sonar) would be lessened forever.

Most animals are content with the natural order

WTF haha, there's no way for anyone to know that.

This strikes me as an example of as in/ought fallacy in that you assuming because most animals living on the planet in a sustainable manner are doing so because they want to, and not for any of a million other reasons up to and including that the species who don't live sustainably simply go fucking extinct.

[–] Wooly 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

Obviously not immediately, I never said that. If we had the ability to use sonar for the same amount of time, we'd be better at it and we soon will be better at it in less time than evolution allowed because our creativity and intelligence lets us advance faster than evolution.

Does the fact we learned how to use sonar without the natural evolved ability prove that we're smarter?

Maybe content was the wrong word, animals just don't care about advancing technology or growing. Most animals only care about reproduction, that's their lives goal. Salmon literally spend their entire lives, growing up, leaving home, going back home to mate, and dies.

I'm not sure what your point is anymore, are you still campainging that animals are smarter than us? Because they're not, they may be better at filling certain niches, but our niche is literally being smart. There are intelligent species but none have come close to what we can achieve with our brains. We sacrificed primate stretch and agility for higher brain power.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Maybe content was the wrong word, animals just don’t care about advancing technology or growing.

My last point is that you literally can't know what animals care about, and its weird you keep asserting you do. I think you mean that evolution selects based on reproduction, and thats true for humans as well. So do humans only care about reproduction? If so, then we can say they are exactly equal to animals.

[–] Wooly 1 points 1 year ago

Yes, a lot of humanity only cares about reproduction. But we've also elevated ourselves to creat art, science, music, etc.

I can't know for sure what animals care about, but I can make an educated guess based on evidence and observations. Most animals haven't got past the "find food, survive, reproduce" mindset - at least not much more than that, maybe add entertainment to pass the time. There's documentation of dolphins getting high recreationally.

Pretty much, some animals have other have a slightly varied goal set, but none are able to do anything close to our achievements. Which are mostly based around intelligence as we're not physically gifted.