Asclepias
Diamond Member
Why would driving a car be a sign of intelligence? It kills people and emits poisonous gases which birds are intelligent enough not to do. Cattle only make up 30% of Co2 emissions because of humans. Without humans their numbers would be naturally kept in check by predators.I brought it up to illustrate a point. A bird won't get injured driving a car, not bc it thinks cars are unsafe, but bc it simply can't. What you suggested is that we are less intelligent than animals, bc animals do not harm the environment (cattle alone make up for 30 or so percent of carbon emissions according to the UN), implying they do so out of some sort of altruism.I dont see the relevance of a bird getting into an car accident. I said animals could be said to be smarter than humans. It all depends on who is doing the measuring. For example for years people have used an IQ test and its been discovered that there is no way that test can measure human intelligence simply because they werent smart enough to have it measure all types of intelligence. Even though there are other types of intelligence in humans whos to say they found them all?A ridiculous thought. A bird will never get into a vehicle on vehicle accident, that does not make them smarter. Animals; outside of crows, Dolphins, some primates, and beavers, do not participate in manipulation of their surroundings to their advantage because they do not have the immense brain power, or energy to supply that brain power. Not out of altruism for Mother Earth. If what your saying is correct, zoology and behavioral psychology should not be considered sciences, since we have no way of measuring intelligence in any sort of way. So I'll ask again. Can we measure intelligence?Right place, right time, right conditions.I get this might not necassarily belong in CDZ, but since I can't stand any of the other forums, this is where I'm posting it. I hope that this becomes a fun conversation
First question: How did chemicals from lifeless reactions, turn into life?
Second: How did the early simple, single cell prokaryotic forms of life that had reached their available energy threshold, jumped to a higher energy threshold and turn into a eukaryotic form. A much more complex cell, that becomes the building block for complex life.
Finally: How did the jump happen from standard animal intelligence to human consciousness? Sure there are some smart animals out there, but they do not hold a candle to human intelligence.
See number 1
Fire.
There are animals out there that are smarter than humans. You are being a human chauvinist. One may say that animals are all smarter than humans. Humans are the only animals that mess up their environment intentionally.
You are also implying that we have no way to measure animal intelligence, since we can't know all of the types of intelligence. So we can understand the functions of each section of the brain in the animals, but we cannot accurately measure the intelligence on animals that have no concept of intelligence, nor a section of their brains dedicated to conceptualization?
I'm mot implying we cant measure animal intelligence. I am saying its subjective because we are biased in what we regard as intelligence. We simply dont have the intellect to say what intelligence consists of for anything. My mention of the IQ test was to illustrate the inherent bias. What we know right now is bias in itself because we can discover a new form of intelligence tomorrow. During the dark ages in europe it was believed by "intelligent" people that water contained evil spirits so people rarely bathed.