Anyone else ever had the thought we aren't the smartest beings on earth?

[Egregious]

I don't think that is fair. I am alone here and need to fend off a lot of people just to get my point across. I have said many times in this thread but i guess i need to say it again, this isnt about the human definition of intelligence its about thinking outside the box and coming up with a new definition that does not massage our egos.

Fairness. Another derivative of intelligence.

*Edited for clarity.

[Simulacrum]

I don't think that is fair. I am alone here and need to fend off a lot of people just to get my point across. I have said many times in this thread but i guess i need to say it again, this isnt about the human definition of intelligence its about thinking outside the box and coming up with a new definition that does not massage our egos.

So... when you use the word "intelligence", you don't actually mean "intelligence", but rather something else, completely secret, that you won't share with anyone, and as far as we know may as well mean "apple". Are humans the most "intelligent" (see: "apple") lifeform? No, that's apples. Apples are the most "intelligent" lifeform by this definition. Is that your definition of the word? I doubt it would surprise anyone if it were.

[Gilgemesh]

I don't think that is fair. I am alone here and need to fend off a lot of people just to get my point across. I have said many times in this thread but i guess i need to say it again, this isnt about the human definition of intelligence its about thinking outside the box and coming up with a new definition that does not massage our egos.

Ah, lets make something up, quantify it not by how it describes anything but by how it doesn't. Teach it to dolphins and apes and parrots so they can work out whether or not we're all idiots. I see the concept you're trying to come up with, but the entire language is a buff to our ego. The fact that we have languages does that. Now, if you want to define something that vilifies humans, lets go with global impact. We've killed off countless species both on purpose and by accident, soiled everything we've touched, created the means to our entire world's demise, and we reproduce at an astronomical rate. No animal has done anything other than cause extinctions(rarely) and breed. Call it what you will at this point, I'm growing tired of this thing.

[Calfredd]

I dont subscribe to that manner of thinking. You are abandoning Socrates by speaking in those terms, my thread is at the root of what he was talking about. Lets not massage our egos here, lets think about what is TRULY important in life and decide if we are actually the most "intelligent" beings residing on this planet.

Pretty sure Socrates didn't mean humans were dribbling babies compared to other animals like you are hinting at.

[Gib Lover]

We aren't that smart... look at all the people voting for Hillary or Bern... or all the college kids that now need "safe spaces" when something irritates their precious delicacies... We've obviously started the precipitous slide towards Idiocracy.

Hopefully the smarter animals - like cows and dolphins - can survive the coming wave of stupidity...

That has absolutely nothing to do with intelligence, please don't be "that guy" and try to bring SJWs into absolutely everything.

[Fascinate]

Ah, lets make something up, quantify it not by how it describes anything but by how it doesn't. Teach it to dolphins and apes and parrots so they can work out whether or not we're all idiots. I see the concept you're trying to come up with, but the entire language is a buff to our ego. The fact that we have languages does that. Now, if you want to define something that vilifies humans, lets go with global impact. We've killed off countless species both on purpose and by accident, soiled everything we've touched, created the means to our entire world's demise, and we reproduce at an astronomical rate. No animal has done anything other than cause extinctions(rarely) and breed. Call it what you will at this point, I'm growing tired of this thing.

Language does not do that alone. What i am trying to get across here is that leave a little room in your head open to the possibility we aren't doing it right. The best example i can come up with is pleasure. To me pleasure is sex, food, and accompaniment. Animals are able to partake in all of these activites without the negatives that will inevitably follow a human trying to accomplish the same goals. Again we need to establish what intelligence means, if the best you can come up with is the human definition i really have nothing else to say to you.

[Kalador]

I never said that learning new things was bad. Simply that in my lifetime I don't think I've ever had someone start with, "...if you have an open mind" and actually have something good to say afterwards.

I think it's a pretty bad way to see thing... I think i'm open minded and as a scientist i think it's a good quality... When somone give me an article to read and tell me to be open minded about it, it drives me to take more time to think about it even if at first it seems to not make a lot of sense, witch is somthing good as somtime things seems to make no sense even if they're true.

Maybe you should be more open minded to people say you should be more open minded .

[Gheld]

I've yet to witness a human behaviour that couldn't be boiled down to 'stupid animal instincts'.

That said, we certainly demonstrate a great deal more foresight than other animals. And by we I mean the prodigal geniuses among us. Most people demonstrate no more foresight than a tomato.

[Gib Lover]

Language does not do that alone. What i am trying to get across here is that leave a little room in your head open to the possibility we aren't doing it right. The best example i can come up with is pleasure. To me pleasure is sex, food, and accompaniment. Animals are able to partake in all of these activites without the negatives that will inevitably follow a human trying to accomplish the same goals. Again we need to establish what intelligence means, if the best you can come up with is the human definition i really have nothing else to say to you.

I don't think you'll find a person alive that will say humanity is perfect or that the way we are doing things is perfect or even remotely correct.
That doesn't make us not the most intellegent, conversely it MAKES us the most intelligent for being so self aware. But you don't want to talk about that, you want to keep trying to twist things into animals are "more intelligent" because they are simpler and don't understand/experience what we experience that you conceive as negative. Animals not getting sad over being dumped doesn't make them more intelligent, because they are too stupid to understand what getting dumped means.

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I've yet to witness a human behaviour that couldn't be boiled down to 'stupid animal instincts'.

That said, we certainly demonstrate a great deal more foresight than other animals. And by we I mean the prodigal geniuses among us. Most people demonstrate no more foresight than a tomato.

I mean you are using hyperbole but let's call a spade a spade at this point: A retarded person is more intelligent than an animal. As long as you are not a vegetable on life support or are so handicapped that you require outside intervention to stay alive, you are more intelligent than an animal.

[Deleted]

Language does not do that alone. What i am trying to get across here is that leave a little room in your head open to the possibility we aren't doing it right. The best example i can come up with is pleasure. To me pleasure is sex, food, and accompaniment. Animals are able to partake in all of these activites without the negatives that will inevitably follow a human trying to accomplish the same goals. Again we need to establish what intelligence means, if the best you can come up with is the human definition i really have nothing else to say to you.

This "doing it right" is completely subjective, while you say you get pleasure from sex, food and accompaniment, others might get more satisfaction from money, power or intellectual pursuits. If animal life seems like paradise from your current human perspective, all that does is say something about the things in life you enjoy, nothing about relative intelligence or instinct or anything like that.

[Gilgemesh]

Language does not do that alone. What i am trying to get across here is that leave a little room in your head open to the possibility we aren't doing it right. The best example i can come up with is pleasure. To me pleasure is sex, food, and accompaniment. Animals are able to partake in all of these activites without the negatives that will inevitably follow a human trying to accomplish the same goals. Again we need to establish what intelligence means, if the best you can come up with is the human definition i really have nothing else to say to you.

The word you are looking for is balance. Nature reaches a balance through natural selection, which humans have largely eliminated. It all falls back on instinct. Humans have a difficult time maintaining balance with nature because they have gotten smart enough to remove nearly all the threats against them. Part of this lies in instinct. Humans instinctively eat breed and explore. We do not have a population control instinct...No species does. Humans do not have an instinct to protect nature. Again, no animal naturally has such an abstract idea for instinct. Intelligence is its own worst enemy. It is how the greatest minds convince themselves that the impact they make is worth it when a purely logical being would disagree.

I really do understand your concept. I'm just not sure you're capable of the english communication skills needed to facilitate a discussion in a text based conversation.

[GodlyBob]

Glad a reply like this popped up. None of what you said can i dispute on a human definition of intelligence. What i am proposing in this thread is something different altogether. Because animals are not burdened with all of the things the human mind inherently are encumbered with, is it possible they are the more intelligent species. They KNOW how to live life when they are born, they dont have serial killers, rapists, racists, slanderers, list goes on and on.

Human definition sure we are at the top, i am asking something different entirely.

You are asking about intelligence specifically, not happiness. I'm sorry to say, but you are asking positing something different than what you mean to say.

Animals DO rape, kill, ostracize and do everything else we do except for slander, which requires the abstract communication I was talking about (and talking with) earlier. Rape is a viable reproductive strategy for orangutans at least. Many animals can exhibit tribalism and rivalry and push out the older dominate animals from the group entirely to die on their own in some cases.

You're viewing the natural world very idealistically, everything in perfect synch with everything else, but that simply is not true. There is a prevailing myth in new age spiritualism regarding native Americans that basically said the same thing. However, native Americans were just humans like everybody else with violence and flaws. In the same way, humans are just animals.

[Deleted]

are we smarter than animals because we can build skyscrapers or map our DNA?

We are animals, and yes it's the reason why we are smarter.

Or is it possible animals are smarter because they know burdening yourself with such things is an exercise in futility
we also have debilitating flaws that no other species in the animal kingdom has

No. Evolution tries to optimize survival of the organism to its environment by various strategies. Our survival strategy is intelligence, endurance and heat dissipation in place of claws, fur or regeneration. Other animals don't have the cognitive capability to understand concepts of burden and futility.

Animals with more complex brains display human-like behaviour, or going by your words, debilitating flaws: Mourning of the dead, use of tools, sex and torture for enjoyment.

[Fascinate]

I think the gist of my post gets lost in the replies. Humans think we are the top and nothing can compare to our skyscraper building, DNA sequencing, nanotechnology having butts.

I am only proposing a different way of thinking here. Clearly humans are able to move OUR race forward more than animals, but does that mean we are smarter? If anything i just wanted to show more than one way of thinking about intellect, and hopefully some readers of the thread understood the gist.

[Deleted]

I think the gist of my post gets lost in the replies. Humans think we are the top and nothing can compare to our skyscraper building, DNA sequencing, nanotechnology having butts.

I am only proposing a different way of thinking here. Clearly humans are able to move OUR race forward more than animals, but does that mean we are smarter? If anything i just wanted to show more than one way of thinking about intellect, and hopefully some readers of the thread understood the gist.

Unless you define "smarter" in some way, the question is meaningless. You keep replying to others giving examples of humans being better at something than animals but then you come in and say "nono I don't mean intellect in that way". There is no clear answer if you don't properly define the question.

[Altrec]

I dont subscribe to that manner of thinking. You are abandoning socrates by speaking in those terms, my thread is at the root of what he was talking about. Lets not massage our egos here, lets think about what is TRULY important in life and decide if we are actually the most "intelligent" beings residing on this planet.

In that case the most important thing is survival and the propagation of the species, and in that case as the human population continues to grow and animal populations continue to shrink we are clearly the most "intelligent" species on the planet even with our additional baggage.

[Gib Lover]

In that case the most important thing is survival and the propagation of the species, and in that case as the human population continues to grow and animal populations continue to shrink we are clearly the most "intelligent" species on the planet even with our additional baggage.

We are so good at population growth, we are instinctively expanding. And now that we have expanded around the world, we are looking to the stars to continue expanding, combining our intelligence and instinct. We are the top dogs, no animal can compare to us. Woodpeckers not worrying about mortgages doesn't make them more intelligent.

[PixelFox]

First comes the ignorant view: We're humans so humans are the most important thing.

Then comes the naive view: Humans are just another form of animal and so considering ourselves "superior" is bad. All life is equally valuable.

Finally comes the enlightened view: Humans are the only animal to have developed complex symbolic thought and written language, as well as advanced technology. We are absolutely the most important and valuable thing on earth (of course that doesn't mean we should squander the Earth's resources or fail to maintain the diversity of life and a healthy planet).

[Stacyrect]

Their are tons of intelligent species on earth, but human beings are definitely at the top. Killer whales are supposed to be close to us in intelligence or cognitive function but yeah you don't see satellites being launched by killer whale nation. If their is a more advanced intelligence living on earth, it has not presented itself to us.

[Deleted]

Clearly humans are able to move OUR race forward more than animals, but does that mean we are smarter?

The answer to your question is yes.

If you want to be optimistic, think of it this way: We are nature's way to sustain the life of this pale blue dot. No other animal can make interstellar technology to evade the eventual cosmic sterilization of our lovely planet.