Sin 2 :)

[obscurus]

Domarius: Ant's put us to shame when it comes to agriculture.  (I saw an ant documentry once)

 

Ants do not engage in agriculture.  Agriculture is the science of farming, it demands abstract thought.  Ants may "farm" in a sense, caring for and harvesting living organisms, but this activity is instinctive not reflective.  How do we know?  Try getting a farming ant NOT to farm.  They cannot, it is part and parcel of their functions to conduct farming-like activities.  Philosophers refer to such activities as being "sphexish" after the sphex wasp.

 

The sphex wasp engages in what appears to be rather intelligent and cunning behaviour.  A bit of background, the sphex wasp family is known for paralyzing insects, dragging them to its burrow, laying eggs in the paralyzed but living insect, and then sealing the tomb.  WHen the eggs hatch, the larvae devour the paralyzed victim as their first meal.

 

Now when the sphex wasp was first studied, it appeared to engage in what some scientists described as abstract thinking.  Before the wasp re-enters the lair with its victim, it drops the bug right outside its hole and then goes in to see if anything has moved in since it went hunting.  Now this seems like rather intelligent behaviour, being conscious enough of the fact that something could have moved into the lair, but in fact its merely instinctive.  When the wasp is certain the lair is empty, it returns to get the bug and bury it.  But if you move the bug only a few inches away, does the wasp just grab it and return to the lair?  No, it will grab it, drop it in front again, and go through the inspection process all over again.  Dozens and dozens of times in a row in fact.  THis "carefulness" and "tactical thinking" is in fact the hard wired product of millions of years of selection.  Same thing with farming ants.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Is it relevant whether farming is the result of premeditated thought or innate hard wiring? It is not highly a meaningful distinction IMO. Human agriculture did not start out as a science, it started out the same way ant agriculture did - pure chance and the mechanics of evolution. Sure we may have refined it and developed it by using our metal faculties into the picture, but ants have been infinately more successful at it than we have.

 

Interestingly, elephants also farm grass - they deliberately knock down trees purely to clear areas so that large patches of grass will grow. It is not known whether this is done consciously with forethought, or just instinct (difficult experiment to conduct), but if you consider that: Elephants are very intelligent animals that demonstrate a high level of self awareness, they mourn their dead and seem to understand the concept of mortality, they have a complex communication system with over 500 as yet identified discrete sounds (= language?), they have demonstrated a high degree of cognitive flexibility in a wide range of areas, and they have very large brains (not that that necessarily means anything). The most probable answer (the one that requries the fewest assumptions or number of evolutionary steps) is that they have evolved a general intelligence that can recognise that removing trees makes room for their favourite grass to grow... True agriculture? Maybe not as sophisticated as our dealings, but interesting nevertheless.

 

And from an evolutionary perspective, it is just as reasonable to say that wheat and cattle have "farmed" humans. Co-evolution is a wonderful thing...

[FishFace]

"...but our intelligence is different from anything else yet found."

 

Well, I must say nonsense to what you imply. While no, we have not yet found any intelligence like ours, we haven't really been looking, nor do we know what to look for. For example, elephants are highly complex, intelligent creatures. We do not, however, know that they are so different to us - we do not know whether they discuss philosophy, whether they are self aware, capable of abstract thought.

 

"Rather simple designs can give rise to extremely complex behaviours."

 

Emergent behaviour does not make us different or special at all. If you look at a flocking simulation applet, or a rendition of Conway's life, you would not say that what occurs there is special, as you know its simple rules. Likewise, I think there's a good chance our vast intelligence, while not being as vast as we a tricked by ourselves into believing, is probably emergent in this way.

 

Without bringing in "weird stuff" we cannot conclude anything but autonomy for living things. Extrapolating from that to observed behaviour, we must conclude that our behaviour is simply more complex than its rules. Given that all animals appear to have similar rules, I think there are three options: 1 - there's "weird stuff" going on, with free will and suchlike. 2 - we have more rules and 3 - we are the same, but we cannot tell.

 

Clearly, we have more complex behaviour than an amoeba or, indeed, many other beings. But I think 3 is quite likely to be the case for at least some animals.

 

 

 

As for the fatalism/determinism, I don't know the correct term for what I'm describing. Essentially, there is only one path that we can take - if there were an end of time, looking back each choice that was made, we could only choose one thing (which may have been a combination of the choices) Now, with quantum physics it is unlikely that we can devise the entire history of the universe from the very beginning, since things occur randomly microscopically. However, randomness is not a basis for free will. I honestly don't see how "free will" can exist. There is simply no mechanism for consciousness, in the classical sense of the word - we are automata.

Of course, it doesn't matter one bit, but with that in mind, we cannot be so different to every other living thing.

 

Abstract thought is a pair of words that have been lobbed around a fair bit... What exactly do you mean by it? Putting two-and-two together? Whatever you mean, I think this wasp thing is probably just a case of the wasp not having enough rules. If you build in another rule, which in macroscopic pseudocode might be: "if ( lastcheck->time < time() + 60*60*10 ) { carry(&grub, &hole); }" then what would we have?

The difference in humans appears to be that our rules are usually built up of many many other rules, including neurones that migrate according to our personal experiences. This is a difference of scale - one that as far as I'm concerned, doesn't really count much towards Difference with a big 'D.'

[obscurus]

The difference between the wasp and the human is that the human can create new rules spontaneously on the fly, while the wasp is pretty much limited to the rules determined by its genes. Our human genes code for a higher degree of behavioural flexibility, which can be a good or a bad thing, depending on what sort of ecological niche you are trying to occupy. The downside of our cognitive plasticity is that we often conceive of things that are detrimental to our survival, in other words while our intelligence allows us to adapt all kinds of environments to our needs, it is prone to grievous errors of judgement, and behavioural disorders. Like all things in life, there are constant trade-offs - everything comes at a price.

 

And it is highly anthropocentric to assume that our intelligence is really so different to that of other creatures... Maybe elephants are smarter than humans, and have long ago reached the conclusion that living simply is more sensible that the enormously wasteful complexity of modern human civilisation - we just cannot know, unless we are prepared to depart with our long cherished assumptions of superiority.

 

As far as fatalism goes, the question to ask is "is anything truly random?" When you roll a pair of dice, you are imparting a specific force, which is interacting in a predictable way with the air, and will bounce in a manner according to the physical properties of the dice and the surface they land on. While the computations required to predict how the dice will land are extremely complex, it is not really random (and someone who practises enough can bias the roll of a die in their favour sufficiently to make a living out of playing craps for example). Same goes for the interactions of atoms in a gas for example. The collisions might seem random, but that is an artifact of the immense complexity of the system - it isnt really random, it is just so stupendously complex that you might as well call it random, because it is too hard to predict exactly what will happen next. Maybe quantum interactions are random, maybe they aren't, but theoretically, if you had an infinately powerful computer, you could recreate the exact unfolding of the universe from the starting conditions of the big bang by modelling every parameter. Of course, you would need a quantum computer with as many atoms as exist in the universe to do that, and a colossal amount of time to program it... the point is, the universe might not have anything random about it - what we perceive as the passing of time and making decisions that affect our future might really be an illusion - everything might exist as a static universe that is fixed in time and space. Who the fuck knows, and why would you care?

[FishFace]

So the difference is in the migratory tendencies of our neurones? While we haven't conclusively proven that wasps' don't do this, it seems an alright theory. However, we DO have proof that other animals' brains do do this. Any kind of training or learning is done by neurone development, I believe. So this difference is not really unique at all in any case. It's pretty groovy and all, but not really special.

 

The more I look at human behaviour, the more I believe it's not so unique anyway. We are easily tricked, bribed, led astray and even for us a lot of operation can be traced back to instinct. I believe looking for a grand difference is probably the wrong approach.

[Maximius]

CC: obscurus

So you mean to tell me that you believe there is no important difference between the premeditated human activity of agriculture and the automaton like behaviour of farming antsa? Come on. And human agriculture did NOT start out like the behaviour of ants, although it certainly did not begin as a science. Pure chance, evolution, sure, but it was pure chance combined with the evolution of an abstract thinking ape that led to human agriculture. Perhaps the ants are better at their farming then we are at ours, given our stupid mono-culture and dependency on chemicals/high energy input to low caloric output. Thats besides the point, the question is to what degree to ants get to play a critical role in the development of these behaviours? The answer is zero, zilcho, nada.

 

Let me ask you this, could a non-farming ant species suddenly decide to farm, outside of the realm of some mutation that suddenly gave it that particular "hard wiring?" Could a farming ant species decide to alter the way it conducts its farming, because it had discovered a better way of doing things? No, and no. These are possibilities only for reflective beings who can look at their own actions. This does not necessarily make our agriculture better as I stated above, but it certainly makes it vastly different.

 

Now what you are describing the elephants doing, well that sounds a lot more like how early humans began to engage in agriculture. Nothing ant-like about elephant behaviour, if you had to chose between placing it closer to our behavior and ants behavior which side would you choose? And no, wheat and cattle have NOT farmed humans, though they have certainly co-evolved with one influencing the other as much as vice versa. Again the difference is that there was no critical input from the cattle/wheat, you may as well say the E. coli in my guts have farmed me as well.

 

CC:FishFace

 

I can give you a few clues to look for when searching for a human style intelligence:

culture, dynamic technology, mass production/extraction of resources, complex written/stored information systems, division of labor, to name a few.

 

Again, I am not arguing for the superiority of human intelligence, as such standards are incoherent given that every intelligence is different from every other. I was simply pointing out that ours is vastly different from any other yet found on the planet, its artifacts are in fact re-writing the face of the planet. No other intelligence can make such claims, unless there is a non-human civilization living in the Marinas Trench. And elephants are certainly self aware, they may be discussing anything but they have not taken to writing those thoughts down, or building a library to house them.

 

I wasnt saying that emergent behaviour per say makes us different or special, I WAS saying that our particular emergent behaviour is both different and special from any other. Better? No, again such standards are not coherent. But definitely different and special. Or do you know of any ants with the hubris to try to reach other planets? Or to consciously redesign their genetic patterns?

 

You are describing a fatalistic universe, which does not exist, at least for conscious beings, a point I forgot to add yesterday. Although there may be only one path, that path was at least in part generated by conscious decisions that you made. Determined, yes, your choices were both determined and determining, but not fatalistic, otherwise you would have had no real choices. This is an important distinction because you do have real choices deeply embedded within layers of utterly deterministic influences. In short, your conscious mind is a determining factor, as determining of your will as any other influence, but it is utterly YOUR factor, in fact it IS you.

 

Consider the example of a man who has fallen into a hole from which there is no escape. He is doomed, no one is around to help and the walls of the hole are too steep to climb. Is his situation determined or fatalistic? As limiting as such a hole may be, it is still only a determining influence as there is still room for him to make decisions even trapped within the hole. He made chose to suffocate himself and speed up the process. He may thank the gods for digging such a huge grave for him. He may spend his last few days singing or crying, as suits his beliefs. The hole can hold him but it cannot utterly limit all of his choices, and this is the crucial distinction.

 

Which is why we are NOT automata. Automata are fatalistically doomed to do whatever their hardwiring tells them to do. They cannot alter their consciousness and therefore alter the one determining factor they have control over. Some try to bring in q-physics in order to give us a "dice roll" in our heads to escape what they see as the fatalism of being governed by consciousness but consider that statement again closely, being " governed by consciousness" To be conscious, as we term it, is to be both self aware and aware of ones external environment. Do we not wish to be determined by our consciousness? I dont mind that my will is determined by my mind, would anyone wish to have a will that was NOT determined by their own thoughts ?

 

Abstraction is being able to generalize information from the concrete to the specific. We could say that the wasp is operating under concrete conditions, hard wired in fact, it truly is an automaton. Its instinct compels it to search out the burrow, but it cannot decide to do it or not, it cannot say "ahh, im tired today, im going to skip the inspection part today." It cannot say hey there must be a better way to search this burrow, it cannot move from its concrete actions to the abstraction of "What does it mean to search a burrow?"

 

Language is an abstraction, its using a symbolic sound or mark to inform others or oneself about the world. Human langugage appears to be the most abstract that has arisen on the planet, it has more ways, and more dynamic, adaptive ways, of transmitting information, than any other. Does this make it better? Again, no, because such standards are inapplicable. It does make it vastly different though. And as to differences of scale, I believe that the notion of emergent behaviour demonstrates that differences of scale can develop into vastly different behaviour. So small d differences can add up to big D differences.

[FishFace]

On your farming: Well, ants do engage in farming and do put in effort. For example, they harvest leaves, place them in specific areas within the nest, which are built to allow fungus to grow on the leaves, which the ants again harvest. This is not a passive process, and so the ants definitely farm.

 

I can give you a few clues to look for when searching for a human style intelligence:

culture, dynamic technology, mass production/extraction of resources, complex written/stored information systems, division of labor, to name a few.

 

Where were these when humans first originated? We had the same intelligence, but we had no culture, technology, mass production, information systems or division of labour. I think we probably operated simlarly to elephants or apes. They have a rudimentary system of communications, just like we did when we started out. You have to remember that we cannot judge other species' intelligence around what we have now - that's skewing the data.

 

Although there may be only one path, that path was at least in part generated by conscious decisions that you made.

 

Give me a good reason to believe why I had any true choice in the choices I have made. According to what we know, it is impossible. However, according to what we know, it is possible to obtain the behaviour that we see - vis a vis, the illusion of choice. In reality, whether we have choice or not is irrelevant - it has no effect on the way we live our lives, as we can still only take one path. From your definition of fatalism, I don't think that is what I'm describing. I'm saying that the most logical explanation is that we have no 'choice' except an illusion thereof. Every choice we make is predetermined - it's not that it doesn't matter what we do, it's just that we do is also predetermined. If that's fatalism, then OK.

 

Anyway, you say that one factor is our own consciousness. Well, I agree - but our consciousness is simply a bunch of neurones - a set of logic gates. A factor is those logic gates, but provided precisely the same input, they will make exactly the same choice. We have no choice but to follow our logic gates - the only cool thing is that the logic gates can change themselves. If there is some mysterious "consciousness" controlling this process, then fine, but I think it's more likely that as a neurone falls into disuse, for example, perhaps it moves somewhere else. The rules governing its movement are also just that - rules. The neurone has no choice in following them. Therefore, we are automata as much as is the ant. The only difference between us and an ant is that the rules governing our automation change (according to another set of rules, that probably doesn't change) and we know that this difference doesn't exist between us and, say dogs - Pavlov showed that dogs can learn, and what is learning but changing the rules in our brains?

 

While you may not be arguing that there is anything better about the difference between us and animals, I think that it's important to remember that according to study, between us and animals such as octupi, dogs and so on, there may be no difference whatsoever.

 

Automata are fatalistically doomed to do whatever their hardwiring tells them to do.

 

The important word here is "hardwiring." neurones are well known for their tendencies to NOT be hardwired at all. There was an experiment done with neurones and a computer interface in a petri dish. Essentially, there was a matrix of electrodes that controlled a flight simulator, and they bunged some neurones in on top. The neurones grew, extended towards electrodes, retracted - this is the process by which they learnt. If there is any hardwiring, yes, it may be in ants and so on, but in larger animals, they are probably not hardwired in this sense. They are still, however, automata - or at any rate, that is the most likely explanation that I can see.

 

In your example of a wasp going home that is tired, a rule in our brains might say "if we are too tired, don't search the burrow." the wasp merely lacks certain rules. What actually occurs is that in the human brain each, "situation" (say, going home at night) is made up of many different ones (going home while drunk, while tired, when there's something on TV, etc) in each of these many situations, I think we probably will behave exactly the same - we do what our softwiring tells us to do.

 

If abstraction is language, then many animals have language in that they can communicate. Certainly, ours may be more complex, but complexity is not much of a Difference. Some languages are more complex than others - does that make those people who use them vastly different? Of course not. The point is that the animal in question can communicate somehow. I believe this is not always limited to concrete things such as "here is food" but manifests itself as emotions and so on.

 

All the ways in which we attempt to measure any difference appears to be done from the viewpoint of "we are Different - what are the differences," not "are we Different? what differences can we find?"

[oDDity]

What the hell is this reluctance to admit we're better than other animals?

Of course our systems of communication are better. They are capable of transferring far more complex and abstract data than any other, and have allowed us to achive what we have achieved. That, by definition, is better.

I'd like you to point out a better example of communication on the planet, and what it has achieved.

The downside of our cognitive plasticity is that we often conceive of things that are detrimental to our survival, in other words while our intelligence allows us to adapt all kinds of environments to our needs, it is prone to grievous errors of judgement, and behavioural disorders. Like all things in life, there are constant trade-offs - everything comes at a price.

Really. That sounds odd considering we're 7 billion stong and occupy almost every habitat on the planet. I think weve done astonishingly well from our population of a few hundred thousand hunter-gatherers 50,000 years ago, to our complete domination of the planet and its resources today.

Maybe you could point out exactly what these things are that are detrimental to our own survival, or just how many people you think should be on the planet if we had been doing thing 'right'. What should we have achieved if we had followed obscurus' grand plan?

Our population has been relentlessly growing, and still is. Aside from your unverifiable and spurious claims that the end is nigh and in a hundred years we'll all be dead, which I find risible, there is no genuine reason to think we won't continue to grow and expand extraterrestrially in the future.

All other life and resources on the planet are there simply to be used by us for food and commodities or labour as we deem necessary for our progression.

I know you're goig to say that evolution wasn't designed to produce us, that everything wasn't just leading up to us evolving, but you have absolutley no basis to make that claim. For all you know, intelligent, sentient, dynamic life like us could be the inevitable outcome of any process of evolution on any planet. We don't have any other examples, so we can't make the determinaiton one way or the other.

[FishFace]

Of course our systems of communication are better. They are capable of transferring far more complex and abstract data than any other.

 

oDDity: proficient in every language on earth, including those not spoken by people. I mean seriously, how on earth do you make a statement like that? Because you haven't heard chimps talking about the meaning of life? By this basis, foreigners are lesser lifeforms because you've not heard them communicating complexly and abstractly. Just because you don't understand it doesn't mean it's better.

 

Once again, you're arguing on the assumption that evolution can produce something that is better. How are we any more successful than a bacterium? Bacteria have more biomass than us, occupy more habitats than us and are more numerous than us. They can breed every 20 minutes given good conditions - how, in any sense other than self-appreciatingly, are we better than bacteria? More intelligent? what has it done for us? In terms of evolution, it's kept us alive, but in any evolutionary sense, bacteria are more successful than we are. For all our communications, abstract thought and self awareness, we haven't furthered the race as much as they have. It's very possible that bacteria seeded life on earth by being carried in on a meteor, and they probably occupy space already. Not by their own "will" if such a thing exists, but what does that matter?

 

You've yet to come up with a satisfactory way in which we are superior to bacteria.

[obscurus]

What the hell is this reluctance to admit we're better than other animals?

Of course our systems of communication are better. They are  capable of transferring far more complex and abstract data than any other, and have allowed us to achive what we have achieved. That, by definition, is better.

I'd like you to point out a better example of communication on the planet, and what it has achieved.

 

When you say something is better than something else, you have to qualify it by saying what it is better for. Saying X is better than Y is an inherently meaningless statement, because it is incomplete - you need to say X is better than Y because of Z reason, and only in the narrow context of Z does the statement make sense. You can also say that X is better than Y for Z reason, but Y is better than X for W reason - context is the key. Complexity does not inherently make something better - it is just a difference that can be advantageous in certain circumstances, and disadvantageous in others. You say "better", I say "better for what?"

 

In terms of a better communication system - there is none that is better than another - communication in whatever form exists to maximise the reproductive success of organisms. So a fiddler crab waving it's claw to signal to other crabs is just as good for it's particular needs as our languages are for ours.

 

Really. That sounds odd considering we're 7 billion stong and occupy almost every habitat on the planet.  I think weve done astonishingly well from our population of a few hundred thousand hunter-gatherers 50,000 years ago, to our complete domination of the planet and its resources today.

 

On an idividual level, complexity generates a greater likelihood of defective neural wiring for example, leading to psychosis, neurosis etc - the more cognitively complex organisms are, the more often they develop mental diseases, or behave in self destructive ways.

 

On a population level, we create all kinds of problems for ourselves as a result of defective thinking. Since in terms of pure mass, the simplest bacteria make up 90% of all life, and in terms of pure numbers, bacteria make up 99.999% of all life, the brief evolutionary success of our species is nothing to crow about. Our population is dwarfed by the number and mass of cockroaches, rats and mice on the planet.. Our domination is not complete, and our domination is unsustainable, so iis unlikely to continue for much longer.

 

Maybe you could point out exactly what these things are that are detrimental to our own survival, or just how many people you think should be on the planet if we had been doing thing 'right'. What should we have achieved if we had followed obscurus' grand plan?

We have used the resources of our planet at an unsustainable rate, we have destroyed many of the ecosystems that underpin our surival, we are grossly overpopulated, we have proliferated nuclear weapons that could destroy our planet if a few of them were accidentally discharged, causing a nuclear exchange... I could go on, but really, I shouldn't need to...

 

Our population has been relentlessly growing, and still is. Aside from your unverifiable and spurious claims  that the end is nigh and in a hundred years we'll all be dead, which I find risible, there is no genuine reason to think we won't continue to grow and expand extraterrestrially in the future.

All other life and resources on the planet are there simply to be used by us for food and commodities or labour as we deem necessary for our progression.

 

And that is the problem - the planet can only sustainably support about 2 billion of us tops. Human beings are a large omnivorous mammal that consumes a fairly large amount of food, and needs a lot of resources just to survive, let alone the wasteful consumption of modern civilisation. The average human individual requires about 20 hectares of land to provide enough food to keep them going, and when you factor all the services that various living organisms in ecosystems provide us, and the excess we consume, you start to realise that we are already consuming more than we can afford. We have already overfished the oceans, and within 60 years or so, the effects of that are going to be felt when huge numbers of fish species go extinct, and ocean ecosystems collapse. The more land we take for ourselves, the less room there is for the ecosystems that sustain us.

 

We are living on borrowed time, and borrowed ecological space, and we are going to have to pay back the debt pretty soon.

 

Supposing we expand into space, we have a chance at surviving, but the problem is, we are running out of time to do that before the global ecosystems collapse around us, taking us with them. I don't think you really understand how much we depend on complex, varied, diverse ecosystems for our survival. Viewing the earth as a commodity at our disposal is the sort of short-sighted thinking that will destroy us, and that is the price we pay for being overly intelligent.

 

I know you're goig to say that evolution wasn't designed to produce us,  that everything wasn't just leading up to us evolving, but you have absolutley no basis to make that claim. For all you know, intelligent, sentient, dynamic life like us could be the inevitable outcome of any process of evolution on any planet. We don't have any other examples, so we can't make the determinaiton one way or the other.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

 

There is nothing to suggest that creatures like us are inevitable. If the circumstances are right, then the niche for an obligate tool using ecological generalist will open up in any ecosystem, and provided there happens to be something that can quickly fill that niche before it closes up again, you might just get a similar creature to us popping up from time to time.

 

But the fact that there have been many failed contenders in the Eaths history, for example the Troodontid theropods of the Cretaceous era, the several species of hominid from before the last ice age, the odds are heavily stacked against creatures like us persisting long enough to develop all those fascinating artifacts of civilisation are remote. The fact that no extraterrestrial civilisation has contacted us in any way (whether aggressively or out of curiosity) suggests that the likelihood of a civilisation developing to the point where it can travel through space is vanishingly small, even if such creatures are common through the universe, so if you think that we can exist by sucking one planet dry and moving on tho the next one, think again.

[sparhawk]

What the hell is this reluctance to admit we're better than other animals?

 

We are better in some regards and wors in others. That's exactly what evolution is about. Find a niche and become the best therein. Each animal survived because it become very good in it's particular environment. Or at least good enough to survive.

[oDDity]

You want reasons why we're better?

I thought they were obvious.

Perhaps you can give me some other examples of a species that has spread from its starting point to every continent in the world within a hundred thousand years, has gone from a populaton of a few hundred thousand to 7 billion in the same time period and has gone from hunting and gathering to having access to every resource on the planet, whether it be on top of the highest mountain or in the deepest part of the ocean, or 10 miles underground.

If that isn't sucess, then I dont' know what is - and what has given us this success? Our extemely advanced system of communication played the greatest part, and that's what tells me it's the 'best' that there's ever been.

THere's no shame in it.

 

 

You've yet to come up with a satisfactory way in which we are superior to bacteria.

Its a very simple, yet pofound one. We live, they simply exist.

 

On an individual level, complexity generates a greater likelihood of defective neural wiring for example, leading to psychosis, neurosis etc - the more cognitively complex organisms are, the more often they develop mental diseases, or behave in self destructive ways.

 

On a population level, we create all kinds of problems for ourselves as a result of defective thinking. Since in terms of pure mass, the simplest bacteria make up 90% of all life, and in terms of pure numbers, bacteria make up 99.999% of all life, the brief evolutionary success of our species is nothing to crow about. Our population is dwarfed by the number and mass of cockroaches, rats and mice on the planet.. Our domination is not complete, and our domination is unsustainable, so iis unlikely to continue for much longer.

 

You say these things, yet here we are, 7 billion strong and still growing. That's the reality of it. What you say is all supposition and speculation. You have nothing to back it up with.

'We're all going to go mental cus we're too complex' or 'our domination is unsustainable'

There's no evidence that either is happening, and even if they dd start, you're forgetting our ingenuity. We'll solve any problems as they arise, as we always have done. Adaptability is our greatest strength.

Comparing us to lesser species is pointless. Those species are greater in number simply because of their small size, rapid breeding rate and very short life spans.

The price they have to pay for their greater numbers is a complete lack of progress for their species, as compared to our rapid progess.

 

We have used the resources of our planet at an unsustainable rate, we have destroyed many of the ecosystems that underpin our surival, we are grossly overpopulated, we have proliferated nuclear weapons that could destroy our planet if a few of them were accidentally discharged, causing a nuclear exchange... I could go on, but really, I shouldn't need to...

 

Resources? We'll find new resources, and find new ways of doing things that use different resources. We're nothing if not ingenious and adaptable. We're not overpopulated either, at least not western countries. There is more than enough food and resources to go around if the were distributed properly. It's not a matter of amount, just lack of distribution, but yes, our main drawback is the vast amount of resources we use.

We are living on borrowed time, and borrowed ecological space, and we are going to have to pay back the debt pretty soon.

 

And that's why we're starting to do something about. There are already laws in place in a lot of countires to stop overfishing, we plant more trees now when we chop them down. Governments are (slowly and reluctantly) starting to take note of global warming. It's not too late to turn things aeround.

Again though, that's just a symtom of our total dominance on the planet. The fact that we're capable of wiping out entire species and collapsing ecosystems and using the entire resouces of a planet to breaking point shows you just how far we're come in a short amount of time. One planet isn't big enough for our exponential expansion and progression.

That's why we're so great. It's not our fault that we're restricted and held back by this tiny planet. Our potential is far, far bigger than Earth, and far, far bigger than any other species that has ever existed here, and if there was another planet nearby for us to colonize, we'd already have done so.

We're still in our greedy and wasteful infancy in a way though, most of the things we're doing now were started way back when we knew no better, and they take a long time to change. I'm sure we will develop more and more efficient and smarter ways of doing things in the future.

[oDDity]

The fact that no extraterrestrial civilisation has contacted us in any way (whether aggressively or out of curiosity) suggests that the likelihood of a civilisation developing to the point where it can travel through space is vanishingly small, even if such creatures are common through the universe, so if you think that we can exist by sucking one planet dry and moving on tho the next one, think again.

That's a good point, but there are several reasons why it need not be the case.

1 - We don't know how common advanced species like ourselves are in

the galaxy Could be common, could be extremely rare, there's no point in even speculating about it. However the fact we're had no contact could be because sentient life is extremely rare.

2- THe vast distances and numbers invovled. If we say that advanced sentient life capable of interstellar travel is reasonably common, there is still the matter of the tens of thousands and hundreds of thouands of years it would take to get here even at nearing c speed. Also with the billion or so stars to choose from, the chances of any travelling species choosing ours is literally a billion to one. Also, we are on at the edge of the spriral arm of the galaxy, out in the sticks you might say, so it makes the likelyhood even smaller

3- If we were to be travelling the galaxy at some point in the future, I'm sure we would adopt a policy similar to the prime directive in Star Trek. If we found another plant with sentient life which wasn't nearly as advanced as us, we wouldn't attack them and we wouldn't interfere with them. We'd probably study them covertly.

THere is no reasont o think that advanced alien species wouldn't have exactly the same principals..

4 - We can't be absolutely certain that aliens haven't visited Earth. They might be covertly studying us right now, and it could have been aliens who 'planted' life here in the first place.

5 - You have to realise that we'd be looking for planets wthout any type of life to settle on, not planets with life. Planets with life would almost certainly be deadly to us, pretty much the point made in War of the Worlds, where our bacteria and viruses kill the aliens.

I'm not sure if bacteria from other planets would kill us, or if we'd so alien to them that they simpy wouldn't affect us at all They might not be able to breed in us or on us for various reasons. We mght be as deadly to them as they would be to us.

I don't know if bacteria and viusues would even evolve on other planets, though it's surely likely that single celled animals would evolve first, just like on Earth. It's not so certain that viruses would evolve to use them as hosts though. Who knows.

[FishFace]

So our superiority is our rate of advance? In other words, our rate of advance is superior. That does not mean WE are superior. So far, in evolutionary terms, it has not benefited us at all, so saying that we are a superior race is misleading at best; inaccurate is probably a better word.

 

THere's no shame in it.

 

If it were true, that is. We're not "ashamed" or "reluctant to admit." We are simply arguing the opposite viewpoint - I believe what I'm saying.

 

We live, they simply exist.

 

Again, how is this a superiority except in mental capacity? You can argue all day long that we are better because we are better in X and Y. But bacteria are better at reproducing, using resources efficiently and at living in more extreme environments. The fact that you used the phrase "live vs exist" implies a fundamental lack of understanding of what we're trying to say: there is no better if we are all alive. A bacterium is as alive as a human being - its lack of cognition is no disadvantage to it.

 

What you're not doing is explaining your reasons for superiority: "We are better because we can think" why is that better? "because it allows communication" why is that better? "because it allows technology" why is that better? "because it allows us to spread" but we haven't spread as much as bacteria, so it's no advantage. If anything, we are at a disadvantage to bacteria because they've spread more, for all their simplicity.

 

Those species are greater in number simply because of their small size, rapid breeding rate and very short life spans.

 

And yet they are still a more successful species!

 

As for self-destructive behaviour, that's debateable. However, our complex brains ARE more susceptible to psychosis and so on - how many bacteria do you get with such diseases? Our expansion has allowed us to become so fat that we die from it. How is that a good thing?

 

Once again, you've omitted to provide a reason for the human race itself being superior, wholly superior, to any other creature on earth. Once again, the superiority of a race is inherently in the success of that race. Its success cannot be measured by technology or by brain capacity - it must be measured through biomass, numbers, diversity, spread, or if you ask me, existence. I'm not sure it's accurate even to quantitatively assess the success of a species.

 

 

 

As for the rather off-the-wall topic of ET life... Well, there is an ecological niche for a species such as ours. Whether this is applicable on all planets is debateable, but hearing from aliens seems quite unlikely. What would it prove even if we did hear from them?

[oDDity]

The fact that you used the phrase "live vs exist" implies a fundamental lack of understanding of what we're trying to say: there is no better if we are all alive. A bacterium is as alive as a human being - its lack of cognition is no disadvantage to it.

So, you'd swap your life for the brief existence of bacteria would you?

No, I didn't think so. You know you're better off being human, yet you argue that a bacterium is superior

What you're not doing is explaining your reasons for superiority: "We are better because we can think" why is that better? "because it allows communication" why is that better? "because it allows technology" why is that better? "because it allows us to spread" but we haven't spread as much as bacteria, so it's no advantage.

We've been to the moon. Didn't see any bacteria, though they obviously hitched a ride with the men who went there. We will spread even furthur. Bacteria will always be with us, but they'd never get anywhere by themselves.

 

We're still only a few hundred thousand years into our existence remember, bacteria have had billions of years. Our potential is what separates us from bacteria. They have none. There's no predicting what we will achieve in the future, the potential is almost limitless.

 

 

As for self-destructive behaviour, that's debateable. However, our complex brains ARE more susceptible to psychosis and so on - how many bacteria do you get with such diseases? Our expansion has allowed us to become so fat that we die from it. How is that a good thing?

More bacteria die every second than the entire human population of the Earth. After a billion years you'd think they'd have increased their mortality rates a little if they're so great.

 

As for the rather off-the-wall topic of ET life... Well, there is an ecological niche for a species such as ours. Whether this is applicable on all planets is debateable, but hearing from aliens seems quite unlikely. What would it prove even if we did hear from them?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

It would prove we're not unique for a start. ONce you have two examples of sentient life evolving on different planets, and the proximity of that other planet, you can begin to work out how many species like us there may be in the universe.

[obscurus]

You want reasons why we're better?

I thought they were obvious.

Perhaps you can give me some other examples of a species that has spread from its starting point to every continent in the world within a hundred thousand years, has gone from a populaton of a few hundred thousand to 7 billion in the same time period and has gone from hunting and gathering to having access to every resource on the planet, whether it be on top of the highest mountain or in the deepest part of the ocean, or 10 miles underground.

 

Again, you fail to grasp the concept that words like "better" require qualification to make them meaningful. Consider the following statements:

 

*Copper is better than aluminium.

*Oranges are better than apples.

*Dogs are better than human beings.

*Human beings are better than dogs.

 

Then consider the following revised statements:

 

*Copper is better than aluminium at conducting electricity and heat.

*Oranges are better than apples as a source of vitamin C.

*Dogs are better than human beings at sniffing out explosives, because of their more sensitive sense of smell.

*Human beings are better than dogs at detecting patterns in static colour images, because of the way our eyes are structured.

 

 

The first set of statements are utterly meaningless, because I am using a comparative without qualification. The second set are meaningful, because I have given the statements a context in which the comparison makes sense.

 

Without qualification, a statement like "humans are better than other animals" is nothing more than an empty statement of opinion. What you are really saying is "I like humans more than other animals", which is fine if that is your opinion, personally I like sea otters more than humans and other animals, but it is nothing more than an aesthetic prejudice.

 

Now, as far as species that fill all the criteria bar the last two, well I could list several thousand, but I will just mention, for example, rats. And of course rats have access to every resource we do by proxy, and since they were never hunter gatherers, that criterion doesn't apply. And of course bacteria have access to far more habitats and resources than we do - they live everywhere from several miles underground to floating around in the upper atmoshpere - they permeate this planet almost completely. There are even some that live in nuclear reactor cores. We are far more limited than they are.

 

If that isn't sucess, then I dont' know what is - and what has given us this success? Our extemely advanced system of communication played the greatest part, and that's what tells me it's the 'best' that there's ever been.

 

Sure, we have been successful so far, but we have hardly been around long enough to start making statements to the effect that we are the most succesful thing to ever live. Crocodilians have been a success story for over two hundred million years, primarily because of the fact that they can go for very long periods of time without eating, and they are very effective predators.

 

Bacteria have been successful in vast numbers for 4+ billion years. When we have been around longer and all bacteria are extinct, then you may feel free to make some comparisons about success, but the fact is, while we have had some temporary success, we have a lot of success stories to beat before we can start blowing our own trumpet.

 

THere's no shame in it.

 

 

Its a very simple, yet pofound one. We live, they simply exist.

 

 

WTF is that supposed to mean? I can assure you bacteria are just as alive as we are. We simply exist just as much as they do. You are making a meaningless distinction that has no basis in reality.

 

You say these things, yet here we are, 7 billion strong and still growing. That's the reality of it. What you say is all supposition and speculation. You have nothing to back it up with.

 

Ooh 7 billion strong... wow. Would you like to hazard a guess at what the ratio of sheep to humans is? Or mice? Or pigeons? 7 billion is a small number for many species, but it is too big a number for us. I won't go into the details of the complex ecological modelling involved, but most ecologists have put the most optimistic figures for a sustainable human population well below 6 billion, and ther are a number of warning signs that global ecological systems are at breaking point.

 

The biggest concern we have is oestrogen mimicking chemicals - birthrates of male humans are falling quite remarkably, and this seems largely due to plasticisers that act like female hormones.

 

Our next biggest concern is due to our high population densities - with high population densities (plus a number of other behaviours we indulge in), the outbreak of a nasty virus like the one that casued the Spanish Flu pandemic can easily wipe out two or three billion of us in a matter of months, and another billion or two over a couple of years. I have plenty to back that up with, but this post is getting long enough as it is...

 

 

...you're forgetting our ingenuity. We'll solve any problems as they arise, as we always have done. Adaptability is our greatest strength.

 

We are ingenious, but we are not infinately ingenious, and I suspect you have been watching too many hollywood movies if you think that some bright spark will suddenly pull us from the brink of extinction in the last hour. Perhaps you are unaware of how many human civilisations have been wiped out as a result of typical human short-sightedness and over-zealous faith in their ingenuity, but there is an all too common pattern of civilisations reaching the peak of their sustainability, and then crashing. I refer you to the Maya, Easter Island, New Zealand, the Romans, the Babylonians etc, etc, etc - all societies who plundered their natural resources until there were none left, or ran their societies into the ground out of sheer decadence or fatigue, for whom ingenuity came sadly too late. We are adaptible, but not invincible, we are smart, but not omniscient. Failure to accept and understand one's limitations leads to a failure to adapt, and that failure to accept our limitations (and perhaps more importantly the limitations of our planet) is our biggest weakness.

 

 

Comparing us to lesser species is pointless. Those species are greater in number simply because of their small size, rapid breeding rate and very short life spans.

The price they have to pay for their greater numbers is a complete lack of progress for their species, as compared to our rapid progess.

 

Again with the inappropriate use of comparatives. What exactly is a lesser species? In what way is it less? Really.

 

Ahh progress. What is that again? What do you think we are progressing towards, and what about this progression is it that enamours you so? Progress is a meaningless triviality, like everything else. It has no inherent value of its own. And since bacteria are indisputably the most successful organisms known to exist, I would hardly say they are "paying" for their lack of "progress". More like laughing all the way to the evolutionary success bank.

 

 

That's why we're so great. It's not our fault that we're restricted and held back by this tiny planet. Our potential is far, far bigger than Earth, and far, far bigger than any other species that has ever existed here, and if there was  another planet nearby for us to colonize, we'd already have done so.

We're still in our greedy and wasteful infancy in a way though, most of the things we're doing now were started way back when we knew no better, and they take a long time to change.  I'm sure we will develop more and more efficient and smarter ways of doing things in the future.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

 

That is the sort of statement a wide eyed six year old might make. You appear to have been watching too many movies, or reading too many science fiction novels, or both.

 

Potential for what? What is so great about that potential? Whatever planets we find and colonise, if we ever make it that far, bacteria will have long ago beaten us to it, and if they haven't, the ones that hitch a ride with us will have far more success out of the venture than we ever will.

 

Your faith in human ingenuity is charming and cute, but somewhat misplaced and naïve.

[obscurus]

We've been to the moon. Didn't see any bacteria, though they obviously hitched a ride with the men who went there. We will spread even furthur. Bacteria will always be with us, but they'd never get anywhere by themselves.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

 

Wrong. Bacteria are entirely capable of surving a journey of several tens of thousands of years plus in spore form on a commet, or a peice of rock blasted from the surface of a planet. There is plenty of indirect evidence to support the theory of panspermia, and there is no reason at all to suggest that bacteria haven't been floating around the universe billions of years before the Earht was a twinkle in the Sun's protoplanetary disc. It is the most probable explanation for the ubiquitous proliferation of bacteria on earth so early in it's formation, and the spectral signature consistent with bacteria found in interstellar nebulae.

 

And we would never get anywhere without bacteria, so any argument vis a vis bacteria using us as transport is moot. We are dependent on them, they are not dependent on us.

[FishFace]

So, you'd swap your life for the brief existence of bacteria would you?

No, I didn't think so. You know you're better off being human, yet you argue that a bacterium is superior

 

Sure, I can have fun as a human being, I can be self aware and so on, but "better off" is the wrong phrase. If I was a bacterium, I wouldn't give a crap. Judging a bacterium's worth by whether or not a human wants to be one is utterly meaningless. Not only does it have no bearing on a species' success as a whole, it also is subjective and biased. Few people would swap their lives with another human, never mind another animal, because they have a natural want to be themselves and stay that way. It has no bearing on the respective people's worth or success.

 

We've been to the moon. Didn't see any bacteria, though they obviously hitched a ride with the men who went there. We will spread even furthur. Bacteria will always be with us, but they'd never get anywhere by themselves.

 

You do not know that we will spread further - you place a lot of emphasis on pure conjecture. There is more evidence for an ecological collapse than there is worthwhile speculation that we will visit the planets before we wipe ourselves out. To take things down to the level of "better" where would we be without bacteria? We rely on them, more than they do us, so how are we any better than them? If we're so great why do we need something so inferior?

 

We're still only a few hundred thousand years into our existence remember, bacteria have had billions of years. Our potential is what separates us from bacteria. They have none. There's no predicting what we will achieve in the future, the potential is almost limitless.

 

And so what? Bacteria have obviously done very well without any potential or development. The fact that they have a relatively static form is evidence itself that their form is perfect for the job. Otherwise they would have evolved or become extinct. You STILL haven't grasped the idea that "better" simply doesn't mean anything with respect to evolution. Nor have you answered the Ice-cube analogy: how is one ice cube better than any other because the water that makes it up happened to spill into that compartment?

[oDDity]

It's very simple. Bacteria, like all other species, float along on the tide, to whatever random location it happens to take them.

We choose what direction we want to go in and start swimming.

THat's the difference, and I say it makes us superior. Being able to plan ahead is a significant advantge. We're perhaps the youngest natural species on Earth, and yet we've reached the top, so high that the planet isn't big enough for us any more.

[FishFace]

We choose what direction we want to go in and start swimming.

 

The validity of this has already been debated - are you suggesting that we can choose anything other than what the neurones in our head dictate, according to the inputs we are given? It's barely different to an amoeba reacting to a chemical gradient in water and moving towards it.

 

We're perhaps the youngest natural species on Earth, and yet we've reached the top, so high that the planet isn't big enough for us any more.

 

Well, we reproduce far slower than other species, so we have grown really quite slowly given the environment, and once again "top" is only the top if you believe we are the greatest. Now, a phenomenal growth rate is an approximately valid reason for believing humans to be superior, but we haven't got the history to back it up. As far as ecologists are concerned, we're more likely to burn out and become extinct than to overtake other species. There is a limit to how many people one planet with one sun can sustain, and we take a lot of sustaining - a lot more than other organisms. We're unlikely to carry on at this rate without migrating (and soon,) fizzling out, or burning out.

 

[choice is] the difference, and I say it makes us superior.

 

Iff (if and only if) it makes us more successful on a species level, which so far it hasn't and evidence points torwards it not doing. That and the fact that it is still misleading to say any species is better than another when they both occupy their respective niches.

[Maximius]

The validity of this has already been debated - are you suggesting that we can choose anything other than what the neurones in our head dictate, according to the inputs we are given? It's barely different to an amoeba reacting to a chemical gradient in water and moving towards it.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

What the neurons in your head dictate? What the neurons in your head dictate IS you, the product of their processes IS your consciousness. There is no distinction between the activities of your neurons and you, their activity is what makes you you. Why would you possibly wish to be influenced by anything BUT the neurons in your head? Consider the alternative, NOT being influenced by the cells in your brain. Is that freedom?

 

This is actually an ancient argument in the free will debate, its worded thusly "freedom of the will is freedom FROM the will." I disagree with this position, my rejoinder is how can one be enslaved, or freed from, what one is? Ones will is a part of ones consciousness, you can change your will to another but whatever it is, that is your will. A free will is not free of the influences of ones conscious mind, a free will is the PRODUCT of one's conscious mind. Look at this example:

 

FishFace is about to cross the street, when he notices a speeding car flying down the lane in his direction. His neurons tell him "Stop, danger!" so he stops and waits for the car to pass.

 

Now was FishFace acting of his own free will? You would say no, that your neurons dictated to you to stop. But those neurons are FishFace, are they not? They are attached to his eyes, which informed those neurons that a car is coming, as well as his ears which did the same. Those neurons also hold memories specific to FishFace, they tell him that getting hit by a speeding car is dangerous, probably deadly,and definitely very painful. They are an integral part of the organism known as FishFace, they store old information and process new information. There is no other you, that is being ordered around by these bossy neurons. THEY are YOU. In fact,you have other neurons, ones that might have said "Hey, your dog died, your girl left ya, and your feet stink, why not step in front of that car and have done with it?" Here is freedom, the ability to compare the world with one's memories of it and then take action based upon those analysis's. It is determined from step one, but YOUR neurons, the ones that make YOU YOU, are a determining factor as well. This makes your decisions free, the fact that your mind plays a role in the determination of your actions.

 

Now, true neurons operate along bio-chemical processes, thinking is in fact a electro-chemical process. But one chemical process can be a lot different than another. This particular chemical process stores information, processes information, all the crap that neurons do. THIS is the mechanism which allows us a degree of freedom in the world. It is the fact that we are sensitive collectors/processors of information about our environments AND that we can use that information to make decisions about ourselves/world that gives us a degree of freedom. There is no absolute freedom, only degrees in a mostly unfree experience.

[obscurus]

Yet it has been shown time and time again in the lab that the percieved experience of being conscious, when making decisions or absorbing information, is about 2 seconds behind what your neurones actually do. You have already made your decisions before you are consciously aware of them. You are a passive observer in your own body and mind, and the feelings that you (the conscious you) make the decisions are illusiory - they are the processed responses of neurones to stimuli. Consciousness is an artifact of a neural net that can only respond to the stimuli it recieves. That it does this in a more complex way than a bacteria or a nematode and gives you a conscious experience is neither here nor there.

 

Free will?

 

I contend that there is no such thing as the "will" - free or otherwise - to begin with. It is a meaningless concept, because for all practical intents and purposes you have to assume that a person with normal mental function is responsible for their own decisions, even if they technically are not in the sense that people typically think they are.

Edited August 17, 2005 by obscurus

[obscurus]

It's very simple. Bacteria, like all other species,  float along on the tide, to whatever random location it happens to take them.

We choose what direction we want to go in and start swimming.

THat's the difference, and I say it makes us superior. Being able to plan ahead is a significant advantge. We're perhaps the youngest natural species on Earth, and yet we've reached the top, so high that the planet isn't big enough for us any more.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

 

Really? Bacteria are usually motile creatures that move towards food under their own steam. Birds fly to whereever they want to go. Fish swim wherever they wish to. All kinds of animals plan out their days ahead of time.... etc... What you have said here is factually wrong, but at least you have tried to give a context for your comparison this time. You're learning oDDity, albeit slowly...

 

But you are still making dubious distinctions where none exist, and you are still expressing nothing more than a statement of aesthetic preference and trying to claim it has some kind of cosmic significance.

[oDDity]

I wasn't refering to individual birds or fish, I'm tslking about them as a species when I say they float along aimlessly with no goals or plans.

And before you bring up some example of squirrels planning ahead for the winter by burying nuts, that is obviously programmed behavioiur, and they have no chocie in the matter, they just do it automatically. If any unforseen circumstance arose, like the nuts they stored were gone, they'd just die, becasue they haven't a programmed response for that eventuality( apart from starving to death)

I think another big advantage that we have is that we can do things for reasons other than sex or food.

For example, those squirrels can be very clever, they can complete all sorts of obstacle courses for a bag of nuts, but take the nuts away and they wouldn't bother. Given an infiinte supply of nuts they'd do nothing at all.

[FishFace]

Actually, oDD, almost everything a human does is driven around survival and procreation. There's something else added in, sort of, which is happiness, people do things for that, too. But that's merely a byproduct of our brain - if you eat, you feel happy. It is a coincidence that other things trigger the pleasure centres of our brain, such as chocolate, drugs and so on. Still, I can't quickly think of anything a human does that isn't for procreation or survival.

 

"But those neurons are FishFace, are they not?"

 

Yes, certainly. What I'm debating is that free will implies we have a choice in stopping or not. If you asked someone advocating free will whether or not I had a choice to stop, they'd say yes. If you asked me, I'd say no - because my neurones dictated what I did. The fact that they ARE my will is a valid point; yes, I have free will in the sense that nothing else controls me, but the concept of free will is more vague (usually) and implies that for a given situation I can do more than one thing.

 

The distinction is tiny, really - yes, I could HAVE done something else, but only if something was different. As you say, all the different factors affecting me feed into my response, but that response is the only one I can take. The act of making a decision is merely an illusion, as I have no choice in the matter. I know exactly what you mean, and the problem is that in this context there is "choice" and "choice." They mean essentially the same thing, but have different connotations.

 

The argument stems from oDDity saying, for example, that squirrels are programmed to bury nuts. Well, we are programmed to store food in advance as well, and it is exactly the same programming as a squirrel's, but a bit more complex:

 

Will I have enough food? -No- How do I get enough food? (Eat less, Find more, Store for later) -Store- How can I store it? (In a barn, in the freezer, leave it at the supermarket)

 

We are just as programmed as the squirrel, we just have about 5000 times the lines of code. And occasionally they change, or add bits, or remove bits, depending on other experiences. This kind of thing also goes on in a squirrels brain, so we're not special - just bigger.

[obscurus]

I wasn't refering to individual birds or fish, I'm tslking about them as a species when I say they float along aimlessly with no goals or plans.

And before you bring up some example of squirrels planning ahead for the winter by burying nuts, that is obviously programmed behavioiur, and they have no chocie in the matter, they just do it automatically. If any unforseen circumstance arose, like the nuts they stored were gone, they'd just die, becasue they haven't a programmed response for that eventuality( apart from starving to death)

I think another big advantage that we have is that we can do things for reasons other than sex or food.

For example, those squirrels can be very clever, they can complete all sorts of obstacle courses for a bag of nuts, but take the nuts away and they wouldn't bother. Given an infiinte supply of nuts they'd do nothing at all.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

 

And you think humans as a species have some kind of collective goal or plan? Sorry, not the case at all. An individual might have a goal of interstellar space travel for example, and that individual might share that goal with some other individuals, but there will be just as many people (at present considerably more) who have no interest in space travel, or think it is a pointless idea or are against it in one way or another. We have no collective group mind that has any cosmic significance. We are animals that are born, eat, reproduce and die. The things we do in between are of no relevance to anything but the individuals that do them.

 

Your assumption that squirrels behaviour is completely genetically programmed is not really correct, because all suirrels have is an urge to find nuts and bury them - the rest is idiosyncratic thought and planning. Adaptive software that runs from the inputs of the senses and a few very basic urges. Genes and instincts don't work in the way you seem to think they do.

 

But it is quite irrelevant anyway - whether an organism is hard coded or soft coded is of no significance, it is the end result - perpetuation of ones genes - that is an organisms modus operandi.

 

The things we do besides eat and have sex are all ultimately geared towards the task of finding food and having sex, and procreating, except in a few individuals that have a behavioural quirk that makes them do strange things unrelated to survival, everything ultimately comes back to reproducing your DNA.

 

When humans do other things seemingly unrelated to sex or food, we are acting on an instinct that directs us to be curious and exploratory, and to fiddle with things. We act on this instinct blindly, because it's primary function is to help us find food and mates, and when we have food and sex in abundance, this instinct will be redirected in strange, idiosyncratic ways, like making computer games or tinkering with a V8. We are hardly the only species that does this type of thing - most mammals and birds will indulge in strange idiosyncratic behaviour when all of their instinctive needs have been met, or if they cannot meet them at all.

 

A human being is nothing more than a vehicle for transporting and replicating DNA, and nothing we do matters to anything but ourselves.