So we're not special enough anymore and we have to come up with a new word? I don't buy it.
It's likely that humans' extraordinary achievements stem from our immense ability to communicate and cooperate. A single human on its own isn't all that smart really.
Many intelligent animals suffer from limited knowledge transfer between generations and low cooperation between individuals. So each is only as smart as itself. Or maybe as itself and a couple of friends.
Whereas every human is able to tap into the intelligence of very many other humans. That's really one of our biggest superpowers.
Whenever I see this written I like to point out that the "we" in this case was only a vocal minority of people throughout history.
Anyone who's ever lived or worked with animals, at the very least mammals and birds, would have observed them being intelligent.
I'm sure this idea that people used to think animals weren't intelligent is a myth in the same way we think people used to believe the Earth is flat is a myth[1].
> Be civil. Don't say things you wouldn't say in a face-to-face conversation. Avoid gratuitous negativity.
Agriculture, written language, metal smelting, universities, space shuttles, nuclear bombs, radio, computers, etc.
It was obvious to me that we're in a whole other category from other species. But then I thought about human tribes in the rain forest that don't have any of those. Are they not as intelligent us? But they are us... Hm, well you've made me think. Thanks!
Look at the recent discoveries in the Amazon basin. Layers of dirt thousands of years old, still filled with the charcoal used to improve soil quality. Species of plants that were clearly selected for over time. The list goes on.
Lol no we are not. We share 98 percent of our DNA with various simians. We share 97 percent of our DNA with mice.
Are we the only species to communicate? No. Are we the only species to communicate symbolically? No. Great Apes use hand gestures.
Are we the only species to recognize themselves? No. Plenty of animals do. In fact, even wasps can perform facial recognition on members of their species.
Are we the only species to use technology? No. Corvids and apes use tools all the time.
Are we the only species to develop culture? No. Simians teach their young various customs, some of which (such as the washing of food by macaques in Japan [http://alfre.dk/monkeys-washing-potatoes/]) are local to the group.
Are we the smartest species? Monkeys have been able to naturally memorize a sequence of numbers after looking at it for fractions of a second. It took dedicated teams of research scientists several practice sessions to even come close to the performance of a so-called "lesser animal".
Humans are exceptional (I honestly would just say lucky), but are we truly in a different category? Highly recommend the book "Are We Smart Enough To Know How Smart Animals Are?" by Frans de Waal.
The difference is in degree, not of kind.
Everything is a difference of degree. At a certain point, a difference of degree becomes a difference of kind. There is a difference of kind between a fungus altering its environment through enzymes it produces from its genetic programming and people inventing steam engines.
Or in more general terms, we have the ability to use our environment as a durable supplemental memory. This is what I would look for in assessing whether another species has the potential for human-like intelligence.
Painted or etched drawings on cave walls came long before writing, and no other existing species on Earth does that except if we teach them.
Non-homo species also do not domesticate fire. Fire means not being afraid of something that you usually have seen only in scary situations, and it can lead to writing tens of thousands of years down the road (papyrus happens to preserve well in a pyramid in the desert, but cooking clay tablets or melting metals works better everywhere else).
I feel pretty safe in saying fire had no direct influence on the development of writing anywhere. Chinese characters first show up carved into bones. (They are well-developed at this point; obviously they originated some other way. But we don't know how.) Cuneiform tablets were originally unbaked; baking for preservation was an innovation that happened long, long after writing was established.
And the difficulty of working with metal means it is totally unsuitable as a writing medium. Although particularly important cuneiform documents (peace treaties) were sometimes cast in metal, only the final draft would be -- as the treaty was "in negotiations", messages back and forth were in clay. A society that can only write on metal is a society that will never develop writing in the first place. There is no reason other than wishing to impart a ceremonial permanence to write in metal.
You mean like how some species of nut-hiding birds can hide over 20,000 nuts in distinct locations comprising several square miles of territory and then recall precisely where they are when necessary?
But imagine if the birds also carved symbols into tree trunks and taught their friends how to interpret the symbols to find hidden caches of nuts, or to share techniques for building more durable nests, etc.
Written language allows us to store, access, and share information beyond our individual memory limits. It is sort of a collective memory as well as an expansion of individual memory. I can write down the locations of 21,000 nuts, and I can hand that book off to you.
(I make no assumption as to why we have Turing machines, but note that implementing one usually requires some work)
My point isn't that humans aren't amazing, it's that we perhaps think too highly of ourselves in relation to our incredible relatives.
There is nothing to translate, basically.
We can get a good grip of the meaning of their sounds though, if we spend some time listening, but there is no deeper meaning hidden that we can not access.
See, species tit-for-tat is easy. What's your point?
And yet, somehow Humans are in a completely different category than all other life. It's not just a matter a degree ("more" intelligent), it's a completely different category.
So that means your definition of intelligent is flawed because it is unable to capture that distinction. Perhaps you need a new word.