Re:People Aren’t Dumb, the World Is Hard
by simonh on Friday July 13, 2018 @12:04PM
(#17524105)
>To truly argue on this point you need to, I think or at least in my opinion, settle on a definition of "smart" and "dumb".
That's exactly what I just did - the level of intelligence necessary to build a technological society. On that scale we only just register above the threshold, as a species.
I'm not saying our intellectual capacity is rubbish or useless, we make the grade to be significant on this scale. Yay us!
I'm just trying to put our intellectual achievements in perspective given that we have no other intelligences on the planet anywhere close to competing with us on this scale. Making a comparative analysis of a single data point is alway difficult, but I think this is a useful way to think about the problem.
That's exactly what I just did - the level of intelligence necessary to build a technological society. On that scale we only just register above the threshold, as a species.
I'm not saying our intellectual capacity is rubbish or useless, we make the grade to be significant on this scale. Yay us!
I'm just trying to put our intellectual achievements in perspective given that we have no other intelligences on the planet anywhere close to competing with us on this scale. Making a comparative analysis of a single data point is alway difficult, but I think this is a useful way to think about the problem.