Are you ever super bummed that we didn't get more than one sentient organism through evolution/creation...

>may have

Nigga magpies "may be" sentient. Carrion crows "may be" sentient. Dolphins "may be" sentient. Neanderthals were human.

"human privilege"

no thanks, its bad enough as it is. We don't need another 'other' for the regressive left to put on a pedestal.

I know that feeling, OP.

>We will never live on a planet with multiple species who eventually learn to get along and forge an inter-species government
>We will never live on a planet where great things are possible because different species with different brain chemistries have differing strengths and weaknesses, but we all get along for the sake of progress
>You will never experience civil rights movements which includes other species

>we will never be displaced by another sentient species competing for the same resources
>we will never have a sizeable portion of our own species saying everything bad that happens to the other sentients is the fault of humans
>you will never experience interspecies wars of genocide

shame

you can discuss immigration on /pol/

The face is good but a neanderthal would have had much broader shoulders and much larger and more muscular hands. Also, although dark hair are possible, i would have chosen red hair, which is a more distinctive color for the species.

That it is.

Quick question:

Would inter-species racism still exist?

and it can be discussed on Veeky Forums also. oh and we're all user, so you cant stop anyone from doing anything! great, right? please suck a cock, thanks!

maybe, maybe not

but competition for resources definitely would

The shoulders are broad enough. I would have gone with a thicker neck though

> and it can be discussed on Veeky Forums also.

Not when you talk about modern imigration you ginormous horse's arse. Go back and stay back there.

Honestly, I think if inter-species racism did exist, it would be much more minor.

The differences between a black guy and a white guy seem minuscule compared to those between a human and a dolphin or a sentient ferret or whatever.

One of us would probably have exterminated the other before we got to 2017.

t. Neanderthal

Even weirder question:

Would black people be viewed as a separate species?

I'm the least /pol/-type person ever, but I genuinely feel as if the existence of multiple races would make pre-genetic science people lazier at classifying what was and wasn't human.

You are now aware dolphins are capable of thoughts as complex as yours but can only to communicate them to other Dolphins who they spend exploring the never ending abysses of the oceans with.

Blacks WERE viewed as another species for most of Europe's "scientific" age.

It depends on what the other sentient species would be like.

If the other species are relatively close relatives to humans genetically (like neanderthals) there would probably be debate before the discovery of DNA.

If the other species were something more exotic and non-humanoid, I doubt that there would ever be a question of whether different races are human or not.

TFW no cephalopod homie.

RIP Abbot :(

no other "body type" on earth has the capacity for a cerebral cortex and higher level brain functioning. You'll never see a super intelligent dolphin or parrot because they don't have the fingers necessary to build tools, nor the arms/shoulders to use missile weapons, nor the specific evolutionary conditions that led to the development of said appendices and therefore they have no means of developing their brains because their current forms are the optimal evolutionary form for their environments and any evolutionary development will come through different skills than what humans developed.

You can argue that some sort of alien species is impossible to comprehend and could be very different than us, but at least on earth we know for sure that only humanoids can develop intelligence as we know it. The variations there were inevitable mingled or were outcompeted and thus our forms today are the combination of several different types of hominids. The concept of "purity" is silly because there's no such thing as a "pure" homo sapien, we're all at least somewhat neanderthal and such, so if you're wondering where all the other intelligent beings went, look to your own genes.

If dolphins don't make tools because they simply don't need to or have no materials to make them with, does that make them stupid?

i made a suggestion, cuck. i never said i you should follow it or that i could force you to. if you can't understand that then you don't here. also your bringing politics into this discussion (albeit more humanities than history related) is shitting up this thread and this board and the sticky forbids "pol with dates" and also states a "25 year rule"

The quality of posts is extremely important to this community

There were both neanderthals and denisovans when homo sapiens hit the global scene. They got outcompeted during the climatic shift which made civilization possible. If say one of them were left in the Americas instead of homo sapiens reaching them before Colombus then they would have met with the same fate as the Amerindians.

I don't think multiple sapient species coexisting on one planet is stable.

Isn't there like 7 other sentient species and a ton of research done into dolphins and chimps that basically state they're way smarter and similar to us than we thought?

A moment of silence for those who could've been our political neighbors.

Be careful what you wish for.

wikipedia.com/en/Black_people

I mean, we already know that they practiced complex medicine.

That's sapience you fucking dipshit.

1) You are confusing the word "sentience" with the word that you actually mean to use, which is "sapience", as in "homo sapiens". The words are closely related, and sentience has a philosophical history of use closely bound up with "intelligence", but sentience also carries, along with wiki's "perceive subjectively" (of which animals are capable), in the same breath, a dumb-simple notion of "has the ability to sense, can receive sensory input and experience the world somehow". Mammals in general, and other animals, are /sentient/, and so sentience is not what is particular to human beings.

Lately, "sentient" is the stuff of cheap sci-fi, and is of itself supposed to connote "intelligence, foresight, self-awareness", and so on: "Skynet is a sentient computer, which became self-aware in 1997..." "Data is a sentient cyborg..." "agents are sentient programs that move through the matrix at-will..." these are imprecise usages. What the sci-fi writers really mean to say is that these fictional creatures are qualitatively /like us/, and /above animals/, in terms of mental capability. For this, the better word is sapient.

Humans, of course, will usually follow their instincts, like any animal. But we do have a limited capacity to over-ride or to refuse instinct, which is inaccessible to most animals. To borrow another sci-fi chestnut, this is what lets Paul Atreidies keep his hand in the box despite it being in incredible pain-because he knows that if he takes his hand out, he dies.

2) Intellectually comparable species would inevitably compete with each other "on this new level" until one or the other ceased to exist. Notice that two of the three above fictional examples involve creatures with whom human beings are locked in mortal combat, to-the-death, or the de-activation/deletion/etc. So in that sense, no, it's quite nice to be the only extra-smart beings that we know about. We'd better hope that if any aliums ever pay a visit, they're nice...

What about octopi? They have 8 tentacles, all of which can be manipulating like arms. They can also be used for different grips as you go down the length of it. For example, a precision grip (as with fingers) at the tips and a power grip (as with hands) at the wider points.

Additionally, there are other possible body plans that just haven't evolved on earth yet. Yes, convergent evolution exists and most species are just rehashes of and older species' niche and body plan, but there are still in fact new body plans being developed throughout history. For example, try finding an ape-like creature prior to the Oligocene, for example. Monkeys, even, have almost no similar bodyplans up until the diversification of mammals. Hell, large and complex arboreal animals weren't even a thing until the diversification of mammals, with very few exceptions prior to that.

TFW you never got to be on-par with humans.

if we would coexist in the same locations one would probably outcompete the other given that they don't have very different niches than us

if we don't coexist for most of history and they all exist in the americas and the australias then one of us would probably be vastly more developed when contact arised, and contact would arise really quickly since you only need to be able to cross the atlantic, so one society would basically be cavemen

though it could be cool if we could somewhat integrate the cavemen into society, but they would probably be vastly different from humans socially and not really fit to work together with us

Whats the diff between us and neantherdal? they were as smart as us, they were bigger than us, they were stronger than us

how did we kill them?

They required more energy to survive then we did is one of the theories.
Another one is total assimilation through breeding. But we will never know for sure.

We were better at organizing in bigger numbers.

we didnt kill them.

They did, we the Homo Sapiens learned to work together with other Homo Sapiens, Neatherdals however fought with us and each other

stupid idiot is stupid.

sapience is a philosophical concept that is synonymous with wisdom.

sentience is something else. are you perchance from /pol/? because you seem to have a terminal case of the stupids.

I'm certain Crows are self aware. I've seen them learn, adapt and make decisions based on what I would consider to be 'moral grounds'.

Its kind of a moot point by now because ive seen published sci fi misuse the terms but...

Sentient means able to sense. Dogs are sentient.

Sapient means able to think.

are you this idiot? because if so, refer to

> americkan edukeyshun. Intellygunt desin 4 lyfe!!!

>implying you didn't already know they are educated with an agenda in mind

Oh really? I didnt read the thread. Im this guy:
So sentience is more of a scientific term?

Or is it a "literally" situation where common use has changed the definition.

Also this guy is sort of right. Never learned a single thing in any of my schools except for one 22 year old wargamer history teacher. Got bullied by teachers another brick in the wall part two style.

Thank god for the internet and all you lovely intelligent people who like to discuss this stuff. :)

That means they have high problem-solving intelligence and a crude system of morality (helping each other, asking for help, shunning thieves, gluttons and extremely violent individuals). They also have the rudimentary beginnings of culture (communication dialects, tool use, social mores, even stories and legends if you're to believe some experiments).

But that does not mean they are self-aware. They may well be, but we have not looked enough into the matter.

Magpies on the other hand, display most of the above and have passed the mirror test, which is, at this time, one of our best tool of attempting to detect self-awareness. So they are very likely to be self-aware.

Sapience is an old term for wisdom. In fact Homo sapiens means "Man the wise" in latin. I've never heard it used to describe sentience or self-awareness in scientific (or even casual) circles. Sorry for my outbursts earlier. Dealing with idiots gets me on edge.

Question: Is it the honorable thing to use genetics and other sciences to "transcend" any animal we don't need to eat/use in society to our level?

We do not have the necessary technology yet, and most likely we won't for some time to come. But if we did have said technology, and found promising species, then yes, the ethical thing would be to bring them to our level. That, however, would mean finding a good avenue of comunication to said animal, so we could ask it if it wanted to be "uplifted" and explain to it, in terms it could grasp, what that meant.

>2019

Large crows encountered. Attributed to a growth in skull size to accommodate a growth in brain size.

>2026

Crows begin to form communities and are seen gathering and stockpiling grains and nuts.

>2029

Mass murders of crows take over abandoned buildings.

>2032

Captured crows show understanding of human language after intense expose.

>2036

Apparent thoughtful communication between crows is now well known among the species.

>2040

Crows considered more intelligent than Dolphins.

>2041

Crows seen using pieces of cloth as bags to gather objects with greater efficiency.
Who care to continue?

You know, ive always wondered about this after reading about koko the gorilla.

I think she was an outlier genius. They should have made koko have a 50 offspring.

> 2042

Mass confusion occurs over all media networks as footage spreads of New York youth exchanging dialogue with a crow. Crows are officially no longer mimicking speech.

(Would watch the hell out of this mockumentary)

2026 2029 2032 are already happening. 2040 is debatable. As for 2041 crows have already been observed building and using wooden harpoons to capture insect larvae in tree hollows. They've also been observed teaching toolmaking to other crows.

youtube.com/watch?v=ZerUbHmuY04

Are you ready to welcome your new crow overlords?

Man this thread is trips central

> 2083

Batallions of crow cavalry harrass the tattered remnants of human civilization.

Many apes use sign language. Koko was just the most famous.

Would there be less racism among humans if there were other intelligent races on the planet? Would the idea of races even exist?

They would probably still exist but be far less important, we would have a much more obvious divide. As humans we like having enemies to rally against.

>Would the idea of races even exist
Of course there would, the sliding scale is already

us - related to us - distantly related to us - not related to us

Non-human species running around would just add "not-human but smart" after "not related to us".

...

Most likely not. The idea of racism is quite new. Xenophobia is what is really old and ingrained in human culture. They probably wouldn\t have been racist against the other species either. For the most part of human history (that is to say prehistory) humans have been animists who saw most animals as their equals. Even as late as the Medieval period people (even scholars) thought that cynocephals (a race of creatures with human bodies and dog heads) existed, and weren't particulary racist about them. They even had a dog-headed saint.

Don't pretend as if today's situation is any different in principle than it was back then. Christian Slavs hated (and continue to hate) each other far more than the distantly removed Ottoman empire that had much more of an effect on them. White Americans hate Mexicans far more than the Chinese, despite the Chinese having far more of an effect on them.

Contact and closeness breed contempt and conflict. The only difference between now and back then is that progressive ideologues tried and continue to try and categorize people based on unscientific terms.

> categorize people based on unscientific terms

Both progressives and regressives do that user. "Racialism" and "racial science" is just as much a crock of shite as "100 genders" and the whole trans-morphers bollocks.

>youtube

That'll be me done. I've seen children up to the age of about 10 unable to figure out shit like that.

I feel like in my lifetime it will not happen, but I will most certainly warn my children of the Crows.

youtube.com/watch?v=yrPb41hzYdw

Is the update out yet?

Beats me. Haven't even bought it yet. Waiting for a sale.

Legit want to write about this in the future
Maybe a short novel

Deliver. Maybe ask Veeky Forums for world-building.

>We will never live on a planet with multiple species who eventually learn to get along and forge an inter-species government

We are though.

Just the nigger and sandnigger species aren't cooperating.

>White Americans hate Mexicans far more than the Chinese, despite the Chinese having far more of an effect on them.

The 'Chinese' effect on white Americans is that they can buy iPhones for $500 instead of several thousand dollars while polluting their own country and killing all their elderly from lung cancer because of that

Spics and in particular mexicans have high crime rates, low education rates, high reliance on social security

Get a grip dumbass

Eh, blacks are hated more here. I'm much more likely to cross to the other side of the road if I see a black guy.

Genetic engineering by some immoral petkeeper might make it reality in a few hundred years.

Koko understood signing in the same way dogs understand English.

Drew a shit hand with living underwater. No metal forging is kinda a bummer.

>The 'Chinese' effect on white Americans is
$19 trillion in debt

>high reliance on social security
Illegals contribute $12 billion in taxes for every $1 billion they use in services.

>What about octopi?
Their brains are donut shaped and wrap around their mouth tube. So they can't get much smarter or they'll starve.

Who was the best civ that didn't invent metallurgy?

>Intellectually comparable species would inevitably compete with each other "on this new level" until one or the other ceased to exist.

flawed premise

The Iroquois and Wyandot leagues.

>sentient
You mean sapient. It's sapient you're looking for. Everything except plants are sentient.

We were less autistic so we could cooperate with each other in huge groups to defeat the Neanderthals who usually only associated with their immediate family

Definitely no
Jews are very intelligent but Euros still hate them because they are different

see why do the spengbab pictures always belie idiots?

> t. /pol/

I have for a long tine been dreaming up a low fantasy setting that involves a large (slightly bigger than a raven) species of highly intelligent corvid.

There are all sorts of interesting questions that you can ask yourself about how they'd interact with humans. Would they live alongside each other, doing jobs that don't suit the other species' anatomy? Would they distance themselves from one another? For some reason I imagine the bird-folk could be rather peaceful and therefore find the ancient/medieval human society to be abhorrent.

In that case, there might be people who choose to exile themselves to live with the birds, or so. Wingaboos, basically.

>Would they live alongside each other, doing jobs that don't suit the other species' anatomy?
Saw a Ted talk once with an orthiologist put forward the idea of essentially bribing crows and other flocking corvids to pick trash up after parades and football games with free food. I could see humans doing this with a more intelligent raven species to perhaps clean up ancient battlefields, search for small valuables, using them as spies and so on. Perhaps people look down on them still for their penchant for eating corpses and sifting in trash. Could vary by cultural norms though.
As for whether a hypothetical corvid civ they'd probably be just fine with violence. Maybe they don't fight but obviously their hunger for dead flesh means they might try and start conflict between humans. They may abhor violence but gladly reap the benefits of it. All that stuff could vary by their own cultural difference between flocks.

What circles do you stand in, those of community colleges? Sapience is a commonly used term in scientific circles.

Wingaboo

I can see the anime

If anything the existence of a separate and significantly different intelligent species would emphasise that humans are extremely homogenous and similar for a species with the kind of spread we have. You would seriously struggle to name a species present across all of one continent, let alone all of them, that doesn't display far more genetic variation.

Species isn't a term with one set definition, but one of the most well accepted, albeit being acknowledged as imperfect and having exceptions, is whether two organisms are able to produce fertile offspring, something which represents absolutely no problem for all existent races.

These exceptions include the fact that Neanderthals could apparently produce fertile offspring with us, but those offspring would have exhibited far, far more radical genetic difference from a full member of either group, than you get from mix raced children in the modern world. On top of that it may also be a strong arguement that Neanderthals could be considered a race of humans that was simply far more genetically and morphologically unique than any surviving group of humans.

So it's unlikely this would have resulted in a different scientific evaluation of the human races.

I give it 3 seconds before I get some /pol/ duckspeak against facts

It's more that our definition of sentience needs to be adjusted. There's probably different gradations of sentience, with humans having the highest gradation of sentience at their disposal.