Why are we the only intelligent species on the planet...

Why are we the only intelligent species on the planet? Intelligence seems to be such an advantageous trait that it seems weird that other animals don't have an intelligence race. And we didn't even compete for intelligence (maybe?).
And not only are we the only intelligent species on earth right now we're also the only intelligent species that has EVER existed on earth.
Think about how crazy that is

Not crazy at all. Evolution isn't a buffet where you pick whatever trait you like best for the next generation. If an advantageous mutation occurs (read: random) it might be kept next generation and spread throughout the population. If something works, it spreads (roughly speaking). Our brains could probably be a lot more optimized but they weren't, because they were already advantageous enough to ensure both our survival and complete dominance over every other species in the food chain. Even if something came close to developing intelligence, we would have wiped it out a long time ago, it wouldn't ever coexist with us in the early dawn of man.

I think it takes a lot of coincidences. I mean chimps are getting smarter. There are also Dolphins. Maybe intelligence is a relative thing. Are we really that much better off as a softer civilization than we were as a bunch of hunter-gatherers? I think we just exist, man. What we do with it is what matters.

> Why are we the only intelligent species on the planet?

We literally aren't, lots of other animals use tools and language. We just do it more.

Evolution will seek the same traits over and over again once a niche has been found

The horseshoe crab hasn't evolved for 400 million years

The tarpon hasn't evolved for 100 million years

That's because you don't need intelligence to survive and intelligence is only advantagous in certain conditions.

graph is false, neandertalensis had
greater cranial capacity than sapiens
Lrn2homo fgt pls

We aren't the only intelligent species. The only trait that gives us our ridiculous advantage is that we are the only species that can cooperate flexibly in very large numbers. Other species can cooperate flexibly, but can only do so in numbers that max out at around 150. And other species can cooperate in very large numbers but can only do so in very rigid ways.
The way we do this is by collectively believing in things that exist only in our imagination, such as gods, nations, money, and human rights.

Cranial capacity have nothing to do with intelligence though.
Africans have a tiny cranial capacity, yet are equal cognitively to non-africans.
There's also the elephant with its huge brain yet no elephant ever painted a canvas or played a music instrument.

And i think you perfectly know that, and you're only baiting /pol/tards like yourself.
So, why not go back to your shithole,

I agree with this.

We share the mammalian brain architecture with all of our mammalian relatives. Besides matters of proportion and size, there is shockingly little difference between a human brain and any given mammal. So we are all sharing the same basic architecture for intelligence.

Besides the fact that our brains simply have more horse power than other mammalian brains, language and culture are our biggest assets. Every other mammalian species has to learn from direct observation. A monkey can watch another monkey do something clever with a stick and learn it. Humans are the only animal it seems, that can learn something novel, spread it to his peers through language, and save and spread that idea through culture, traditions, writing etc.

Dolphins are a good example of an species which seems like it has a similar level of raw intelligence to us, but their language and culture are severely lacking. And by raw intelligence I mean very raw things like just pure pattern recognition, generalizing from examples etc.

Take some new born humans, and place them in a jungle environment with no contact with the modern world. And rig this up somehow so that they won't die immediately. A contrived exampled I know but it illustrates a point. When they grow up they will seem smart in the sense that they have very good pattern detection etc, but they will basically be living as sophisticated apes, maybe they will reach caveman quality of life if they are very clever. But I suspect they would essentially be foragers eating berries and shit. Maybe they could figure out hunting but in 1 generation even that seems like a stretch.

The average human is the same as a talking animal

> there is shockingly little difference between a human brain and any given mammal

That's a shockingly confident statement given that we know next to F U C K A L L about how the brain works at even slightly intricate levels (relative to how insanely intricate it appears to get).

This.

I'm a bit disappointed that people who normally have very critical outlooks are willing to throw it all out and become suddenly very disingenuous and gullible when it comes to these kinds of subjects.

Not having the answer to everything isn't something to be ashamed of. There's plenty to be learned and it's fine to admit to it when you just don't know.

human brain growth velocity in utero outpaces all other species. Number two can't even compete.
When they say human DNA and chimp DNA are greater than 98% similar, one of the primary differences is in the number of cell divisions for cortical neurons in utero.

But the human will never have as much instinct as the other wild animals, no matter how much time he spends living in the wild. If we humans lose our technology/intelligence, then we have nothing going on.

When you recognize that our intelligence is highly dependent on the accumulation of knowledge, you'll realize that we aren't as intelligent as we seem.

A human being completely cut off from the socialization process of child-rearing will not be particularly more intelligent than the average bonobo.

You should perhaps allow the chimpanzees and bonobos to accumulate knowledge for the next 150000 years and maybe things will be different in the future.

Well, I think this guy talked about the brain structure and size, compared to some mammals. Anyway, his argument is widely accepted by anthropologists.

that's basically a bunch of guys who've agreed "yup, that's probably it. great work!" and called it a day.

It is pathetic when compared to the level of rigour expected from the scientific community.

>our intelligence is highly dependent on the accumulation of knowledge
I don't see this as a problem, humanity's solution to not being smart in whatever criteria you think it should be is to consolidate small bursts of brilliance into the formal framework of science so that one hairless ape can use another hairless ape's idea no matter where or when it was first conceived.
>A human being completely cut off from the socialization process of child-rearing will not be particularly more intelligent than the average bonobo.
I don't understand this, you mean an individual that is cut off and doesn't care about making and raising kids is suddenly retarded?
>You should perhaps allow the chimpanzees and bonobos to accumulate knowledge for the next 150000 years and maybe things will be different in the future.
Except they've had the same amount of time as humankind to form any kind of structured anything. You a bonobo apologist or something?

>and doesn't care about making and raising kids is suddenly retarded
That was not his point. More like, if the kid is not raised properly by adults, they won't be as intelligent as an average human. If the kid grew up all alone without any human contact they would be no more intelligent than any other animal.

And a supercomputer unprogrammed won't be as intelligent as a programmed one. Does that make a supercomputer the same as a hand calculator?

I think what the guy's getting at is that intelligence isn't our actual advantage over other species, it's the amount of knowledge we can transmit to one another because of our intelligence.

A person who could not invent a combustion engine can learn to assemble one and use it just as well as someone smart enough to invent it.

Which part do you disagree with?

You sound like a bigot.

What? Fuck off back to /co/, there was nothing racist to find there.

Your mention of /co/ imply that your intent indeed was bigotry.
back to your den, filth.

It's true. The basic structure of mammalian brain is very consistent across species.

The only physical attributes of the human brain different from chimps is the relative size and proportion of the parts. Humans don't have any new brain modules that make us smarter than chimps, our brains are just bigger.

I know /co/ is a place filled with people like you that leap to conclusions and shout "Racist!" at the drop of a hat. I don't need to go to /pol/ to know what a laughingstock some people are in /co/.

>Why are we the only intelligent species on the planet?
We're not. Aboriginals, Negroes, Amerindians and Asians are all fairly intelligent. Stop being elitist.

...

Both are shit. Because you don't know hot to program a human.

Fuck off to /pol/, it's not that hard to reach that conclusion.

How is raising a kid not like programming a human, samefag sensei? A kid raised by cavemen is, in most cases, not going to be more intelligent than the same kid raised in a civilization with proper scholars.

I want SJWtards to leave

Plain Human Intelligence imo is overrated, it's the structure of our intelligence and our bodies.

What we have at this point is beyond intelligence. In fact as individuals we are probably becoming less intelligent, humans rely more and more on outside enviromental factors to function, for example it always suprises me how bad our memory is, some people also are completely dependent on other people to solve problems wherein they will immidietely seek another to solve their problem, rather than figure it out themselves.

It was also recently discovered a fair portion of the populus don't even have the ability to visualise, I believe this trait has been a recent appearance in human history and could cascade through the population to lesser our individuality in our current form of society.

Do you even know how the fuck does the human brain works? Will you agree with pseudoscience claims which assert they know how to "program" a child?

If you want to program a certain project application, you literally do it. You literally know what are you doing. You know how an error of onw kind can affect the result.

When you raise a kid you literally don't know shit.

Come on. Think a little. It won't hurt you.

ayy lmao, you're freaking out over an analogy
go back to

Were just the first intelligent species, there are more to come.

see
This is the real nature of our intelligence. You take an individual ant or bee away from its society and it seems completely aimless and worthless. The only way you can really see the true intelligence of those species is in how they work together and cooperate to achieve great things together. On its own, a single sapiens is an inconsequential ape, but due to language and the development of collectively-agreed-upon fictional entities (god, countries, corporations, money, human rights) we have become the only species to cooperate flexibly in massive numbers.

And?

So, "analogies are not valid arguments" is proved again?

I think we tend to overestimate intelligence. There are plenty of proofs that animals can be surprisingly intelligent too. I think what distinguishes us the most is not intelligence, but rather the ability to communicate and to pass on the knowledge.

Greeks where shit before their colonial economic behavior of gathering resources and knowledge on the Mediterranean shores. Every prosper and "advanced" nation, has gathered culture across their "world". The cause of their success is literally knowledge and primitive colonialism.

The circumstances can be simplified when we are analyzing ancient tribes and empires, but now there are other important factors, such as logistics and multiple kind of PIB-increasement sources.

One theory is that humans have become so intelligent due to sexual selection, more specifically the Fisher's runaway model. In the human case, females select for males which are able to use to complex communication and social skills involved in interacting with the female in specific ways to "impress" them so they will mate. This requires high intelligence on the part of the male, and a preference for this behaviour in females selects for the intelligent males. Their offspring therefore will have a genetic predisposition for intelligence and for preference for intelligence. The females again select for intelligence (via the advanced social behaviour) in the next generation, so in each generation the most intelligent males are the most successful. Since these males also have the genetic predisposition for female preference for intelligence in females, intelligence is selected for more and more each generation, hence it being called the runaway model.

I want to learn that "complex communication" and being able to put in practice those "social skills".
Where do I sign?

Nice amateur philosophy but that still doesn't say shit about why humans are the only ones able to do this. Also, where is your evidence of that being the only difference? Maybe humans have a far higher memory capacity, logical reasoning skills, visualisation etc?

You say humans are the only ones capable of learning from each other and that this is why we're smarter than every other thing on earth. Ok, that's nice to know but it doesn't answer any of the big questions and there is no evidence to back up that claim.

Might be easier to find a mutant female without a preference for those things

Why? [citation needed]

It's anthropology. They research topics such as human anatomy and animal behavior. That claim is just a part conclusion of the past researches.

That idea can explain the success of the ancient tribes and empires such as the greeks and the early period of the roman culture.

Why what?

Source of that claims?
Why would it be harder to learn those topics?

Oh I wasn't being serious, just a little joke since user said they wanted to develop those skills and I was kind of implying that if you haven't learned them already then you probably aren't capable.

This seems like a highly probable scenario, except it wouldn't explain generalizable intelligence such as being able to solve mathematical equations, but would only explain social intelligence.

Unless of course you think that being able to charm a woman is the same as being able to solve highly complex mathematics.

Why? Can you back up those claims?

Of course it's different.
>implying there are differents kinds of intelligence
He implied the social traits are intelectual. Why do you keep implying bullshit?

That is true, charming a woman is nowhere near as hard performing complex maths. However, the theory as I know it suggests that the substantial level of intelligence required to maintain these myriad social interactions and to communicate effectively in such a complex manner, would be enough to account for our current level intelligence. Who knows if this would be sufficient to really account for our current intelligence but it certainly seems like it could be a major contributing factor.

Instinct is literally the lack of critical thinking.

Humans have just as much instinct, if not more, than other species but we socially train ourselves into higher levels of thought. When we've got a good understanding of a situation in which instinct would have normally taken over, we call it intuition - far more useful pham.

We made the others go extinct.

Brah, this is anthropology. The theories are basically ideas that most people think is plausible. You can't [math] prove [/math] any of it.

Go back to your hard science safespace.

I would argue, as someone who considers himself an ameteur in both, that charming a woman requires far more care and subtlety.

You make a wrong turn in your proof, it might set you back a bit but you can always go back. You say something wrong to yo gurl, you're never gonna live that one down.

This is actually questionable. You say we subvert instinct for critical thought, but massive parts of our lives are based around rationalizing and bowing down to our instincts.

Just look at how much effort, money, culture and art is directed at sex; because we still have the strong instinct to reproduce.

We conform, follow trends and fashion, try to get friends and feel ostracized because our natural herding instincts want us to stay in a group so the lions don't pick us off.

Our inbuilt tastes regarding fats and sugars are making us slow, obese and diabetic.

The truth is that it's impossible to tell how much of your life and thoughts are driven by subtle instinctual programing, because we are often blind to our own instincts.

It's not that crazy actually. The difficulty is that it requires a hell of a caloric investment to keep a big brain working, and having a brain like that does not necessarily equate to greater survival or reproductive capacities.

Its a fluke that the right combination of events occurred to allow our brains to evolve. It's entirely reasonable that a famine could have wiped out the smarter proto-humans and left the dumber ones alive and ended that ascension then and there.

The most successful, in terms of evolution, creatures on earth are not what you'd call intelligent, after all. They just accel at survival and reproduction.

Excel, not accel

Christ it's too early for me to be talking.

>Why are we the only intelligent species on the planet?
But we aren't?
We're just the most intelligent species, so much so that everything else looks like mindless retards from our point of view.

I always get puzzled about aphantasia.
Do people that don't have it literally see images when they close their eyes and imagine about something ?
As in, literal visualisation ?
As in, you literally see something akin to a movie or an animation ?

I can pass the aphantasia "test" but there's optic components, so the definition of "visualisation" is kinda important.
Do i have asphantasia if there's only the faint redness from light filtering through my closed eyelids, ever ?

Before we even existed? We are an extremely young species. Why has it never happened in the past?

High level intelligence is a heck of a tangent in terms of evolution. It's a long way and a lot of energy for something that is questionably helpful a lot of the time. Nothing else evolved it because their species didn't get the right combination of mutation and situations where it would be preferable.

A t-rex that could ponder philosophy isn't really any better than one that doesn't, in the end its survival is based more on physical ability.

We are an evolutionary oddity.

>Lrn2homo fgt... Ok you can return those sides when you are done with them.

>Evolution isn't a buffet where you pick whatever trait you like best for the next generation.

Actually that's precisely how evolution works

BECAUSE THE MASS EXTINCTION OF REPTILES HAPPENED. THAT'S WHY. -_-
Dude you really need to know history and science goes with each other.

>Why are we the only intelligent species on the planet?
because we are the ones setting the criteria for what's considered "intelligence".
Sheeeeeit we even named ourselves sapiens. I swear if another species was in charge of naming our species would be homo narcissus.

You're mistaking intelligence for consciousness. There are many other creatures, such as an elephant, which have consciousness. Elephants recognize other dead elephants.

One of the main benefits on consciousness is that you think about your actions and before you preform them and you can recognize patterns. One the reasons man has been around for so long is that we looked at the stars and figured out when winter was coming or things of that nature.

Evolution only works on what it has. It's not like tomorrow you're going to get a new species of spider that can fly or ant that can spin webs. The basic premise of evolution is if it works don't fuck it up. It's why sharks have changed very little. Why the horse shoe crab is pretty much the same. It's why the croc and alligator are so successful.

Also you just don't get to pick and choose what you want. For man it is advantageous to conscious because he had to worry about all the predators around him and his abundance of meat, you typically see an increased brain size with meat consumption. If I had to guess it's because of the caloric need of the brain.

However hoes does consciousness serve a croc? It already hunts and reproduces efficiently. It has a super powerful immune system. Consciousness would serve it little and it lacks the necessary hardware for it too.

Second the fuck out off that