ardly:
There are regular fist fights about "species" now. At the heart of it is that we have come to realise that the Darwinian "tree" is not a tree at all because branches split off but then recombine later. One definition of a 'species' is that members can produce viable offspring. It was considered that Neanderthals were a separate species from Homo Sapiens but the discovery that most living humans (apart from Africans) have some Neanderthal DNA means they interbred - so are they the same species?
No, just very close with the same immediate ancestor, Erectus who did chip stone tools and use fire to cook with. There were no Neanderthal children with some Sapiens DNA, just Sapiens children with some Neanderthal DNA. the mitochondrial DNAs were different enough that that's how it worked, the newer people were not backward-compatible so here we are all Sapiens.
Funny but I don't view most of humanity as intelligent but some get smart and others are downright clever yet .... take the potential IQ of anyone and subtract for pride, hate, greed, ignorance and delusion, that's what I see keeping us headed for extinction. Pass the nukes, it's time to rebuild the arsenals!
Here's an example: we can't explain something so let's make shit up!
Do a search on asteroid spin sunlight and see what you get for hits. IIRC that was explained in Analog magazine decades ago.
AWOL:
..Atom Heart Mother, Meddle, The Final Cut, and best of all, Wish you were here (among others)
Pipers at the Gates of Dawn with The Narrow Way and Grantchester Meadows, I liked their early work as better actual art, it has more energy than their later work. Dark Side is pretty commercial by comparison but if you haven't heard it then look for the Rainbow Theater Feb 1972 concert bootleg as a comparison of the studio album. It's billed as the first live performance of Dark Side of the Moon, back then called Eclipse. I got a vinyl bootleg of it in 76 and it did change how I view the commercial album.
I did see them on the Wish You Were Here tour. I love it when a band starts the show with stuff I never heard before!
GoForSmoke:
No, just very close with the same immediate ancestor, Erectus who did chip stone tools and use fire to cook with. There were no Neanderthal children with some Sapiens DNA, just Sapiens children with some Neanderthal DNA. the mitochondrial DNAs were different enough that that's how it worked, the newer people were not backward-compatible so here we are all Sapiens....
GoForSmoke:
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Funny but I don't view most of humanity as intelligent but some get smart and others are downright clever yet .... take the potential IQ of anyone and subtract for pride, hate, greed, ignorance and delusion, that's what I see keeping us headed for extinction. Pass the nukes, it's time to rebuild the arsenals!
Here's an example: we can't explain something so let's make shit up!
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Probably most life is intelligent it is just a question of degree. Looking at domestic animals they obviously have individual personalities, know when they are doing wrong, and have some intelligence. I agree with your point about humans. An advanced civilisation might look at us and debate if we are intelligent or not; limited to one planet, unable to master simple fusion, not organised enough to prevent Global Warming, irrational and violent.
GoForSmoke:
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Do a search on asteroid spin sunlight and see what you get for hits. IIRC that was explained in Analog magazine decades ago...
Oumuamua is not just spinning it is accelerating. Scientists from Harvard are saying it is not behaving like any known body e.g. comets outgas and that can produce thrust and a visible tail but outgassing does not seem to be happening. I think a Harvard scientist is going to present a paper today (?) in Berlin (?).
ardly:
An advanced civilisation might look at us and debate if we are intelligent or not; limited to one planet, unable to master simple fusion, not organised enough to prevent Global Warming, irrational and violent.
I think that is a different interpretation of the word "intelligent" - verging on "sensible".
I view intelligence in a much more primitive sense - human brains are capable of stuff that is orders of magnitude more complex than any other animal on earth. For example, speech, reading and writing.
What we do with that intelligence is different thing altogether. Humans have not been around long enough to know if intelligence is a feature that improves the prospects for a species to survive.
Most of the evidence around us suggests that humans use their intelligence very selfishly and short-sightedly - for example buying cheap foreign goods without any care for putting local businesses out of work. (Just like any other animal species, really).
What I had read about the object accelerating, it's almost none at all. They were looking for minute effects and wondering what they didn't take into account.
So between alien spaceship making next to no acceleration vs yup they didn't take something real into account, which is more probable by an astronomic margin? I'll go with humans not having all the facts but fitting what they do have into their personal worldviews.
The most powerful countries on the planet are starting to build up nuke arsenals at the same time they are burning carbon at ever increasing rates. Is bringing on the next major extinction event a sign of INTELLIGENCE? Insanity, I could agree to, intelligence I cannot.
Yes the race has some intelligent members but the people with the means to direct things are thick as bricks choosin their delusion. Nothing that changes what works for them can be accepted or allowed, none more blind STUPID than those who refuse to see.
However it is common for everyone to believe that s/he herself/himself is the sensible one. Unfortunately that includes the crazy psychopath with his finger on the nuke button who believes he should press it before the other guy does (whom he believes is just as sane and aggressive as himself).
Robin2:
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I view intelligence in a much more primitive sense - human brains are capable of stuff that is orders of magnitude more complex than any other animal on earth. For example, speech, reading and writing.
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Your examples are just two methods of communication and there is no basis for stating that they are orders of magnitude more complex than any other animal on Earth.
There are animals that communicate over hugely larger distances than we can and we don't know what they are "saying", so we cannot say our speech is superior. Reading and writing are a form of visual communication. Cuttlefish communicate visually and the potential bandwidth of that communication is vastly greater than human speech, writing, or visual signalling. To cap it all humans think cuttlefish are colour blind yet they, like octopuses, can obviously somehow "see" the colour of their surroundings.
GoForSmoke:
What I had read about the object accelerating, it's almost none at all. They were looking for minute effects and wondering what they didn't take into account.
So between alien spaceship making next to no acceleration vs yup they didn't take something real into account, which is more probable by an astronomic margin? I'll go with humans not having all the facts but fitting what they do have into their personal worldviews.
In reality I agree. However it is much more fun to speculate on a flyby.
ardly:
Your examples are just two methods of communication and there is no basis for stating that they are orders of magnitude more complex than any other animal on Earth.
ardly:
Probably most life is intelligent it is just a question of degree. Looking at domestic animals they obviously have individual personalities, know when they are doing wrong, and have some intelligence.
As far as I can tell 'intelligence' is defined by the development of higher brain function and the ability to mitigate the autonomic nervous system. On that basis, most life, by volume and by species, is not intelligent.
I agree with your point about humans. An advanced civilisation might look at us and debate if we are intelligent or not; limited to one planet, unable to master simple fusion, not organised enough to prevent Global Warming, irrational and violent.
Pride, hate, greed, ignorance and delusion, and making shit up when we can not explain things - Somewhat ironically, are all survival traits.
What I find interesting is when humans attribute 'stupidity' to other humans, they often attempt to separate themselves from the species. The fact is that we humans are all roughly similar. We all reason in roughly the same way, driven by roughly the same innate motivations. It seems to me that the difference between a stupid or smart decision is largely down to circumstance and environment, altering the perspective from which a decision is judged.
msssltd:
The fact is that we humans are all roughly similar. We all reason in roughly the same way, driven by roughly the same innate motivations. It seems to me that the difference between a stupid or smart decision is largely down to circumstance and environment, altering the perspective from which a decision is judged.
I agree with the "roughly similar" but within that description there are some people who are significantly different in some respects. Think about gifted musicians or Olympic athletes or the "business skills" of the super-rich or the uncaring nature of psychopaths (only some of them are murderers).
GoForSmoke:
But then if your idea is that sentience == intelligence, we have different standards.
If your use of the word "you" means me then I agree that people use the word "intelligence" very loosely. However "sentient" seems completely out of place.
My Concise Oxford Dictionary defines "intelligence" as "the ability to acquire and apply knowledge and skills" and that is the sense in which I have been using the word in this Thread. (Aren't I lucky that I got it right )
It defines "sentient" as "able to perceive or feel things" which might (just about) represent the difference between plants and animals.
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